Adapt your Hybrid feeders
Steve reveals why he’s been adapting his feeder tactics for carp in the cold
RIGHT now, with the water being so cold, feeder fishing is all about feeding just enough bait to catch a fish.
Rather than trying to build up a swim with feed, at this time of year it’s a case of finding the fish, catching one, and then repeating the process.
This might mean you end up fishing in 15 or 20 different spots during a session, looking to drop a small parcel – just a mouthful of bait – right on their noses.
For this reason I have spent a lot of time lately fishing the mini Hybrid feeder. Small feeders are brilliant in winter and I’m not sure why some anglers shy away from using them. However, I do make a little change to my feeders to make them more effective at a time when every bite counts.
Today’s session is on one of my favourite winter waters, Warren Pool at Meadowlands, a perfect location to show you how to get the best from this tactic.
HOOKLENGTHS
There’s much debate over hooklengths when using such a small feeder. Some will tell you a small feeder means you should use an even shorter hooklength than usual. I stick with a 4ins hooklength made up of 0.19mm N-Gauge, as I believe a slightly longer one lets the hookbait behave in a more natural manner.
Hook is a size 12 QM1 which takes into account both my choice of hookbait and the size of the fish in Warren Pool, which range from 1lb right up to 20lb!
HOW MUCH TO FEED
In the cold, feed is all about 2mm pellets. I like to make mine stand out from the crowd, though, so I give them a flavour boost with Dynamite Baits F1 liquid.
This very sweet additive has caught me a lot of fish and gives the pellets a slightly yellow colour to give them a bit more visual attraction in clear water.
MAKE EVERY CAST COUNT
With the water being cold and relatively clear at the moment it’s vital that disturbance is kept to a minimum.
A small feeder helps, but perhaps the most important thing you can do is to keep the number of times you cast to a minimum. Nothing is more likely to spook fish than repeated casts to clip up before the starting whistle.
The first time I break the water will be when the match starts. Every cast must count, especially when casting to a new spot. Nothing is worse than having to recast because you didn’t get it quite right the first time.
CLIP UP
At the start of the session I will always clip up. Then, if I do catch a fish on that cast, I
can return to the same spot.
I’m a big believer that carp don’t swim alone, so if I catch one from a spot then chances are I’ll catch two or three.
However, if I have one cast without a bite or an indication I will take the clip off and go looking for the fish again.
HOW LONG TO GIVE IT
I know timing bites is something I mention a lot, but in the cold I really can’t stress how important it is to use a stopwatch.
Nine times out of 10, if you start to get a few bites you will find a pattern emerges which then allows you to fish more efficiently.
Even if you don’t get a bite it’s always good to know exactly how long your feeder has been in the water.
SEEING LINE BITES
When fishing the feeder on commercials in winter I always like to fish with a slack tip, as I don’t like to have a bowstring-taut line running through the swim.
That said, unlike a lot of anglers I do like to get line bites. It’s always good, in my opinion, to know there are fish in the swim – I can then chop and change things once I know there are fish present to try
and catch them!
For this reason, in the cold I never really succumb to an obsession with pinning everything down to the bottom.
In doing so you are basically eliminating liners, but these tell you so much about what’s happening in front of you.
KEEP AN EYE OUT FOR SIGNS
Despite it being flat calm and bitter cold on my day at Meadowlands, I could see where the carp were sitting, as the odd bubble was rising to the surface.
By dropping the mini Hybrid right in among the fish I was able to catch immediately.
Then, when it went quiet, I simply kept my eye out for those bubbles, cast to the spot and caught again straight away.
This is the other great thing about the mini Hybrid feeder. Being so small, it doesn’t create a lot of disturbance on the cast, therefore I can cast right on the fish without spooking them.
This isn’t always the case, though. If I hadn’t been able to see where the carp were sat then I would have started off short and worked my way out.
By doing this I can often pick fish up every time I move as they get pushed out from the bank.
If you start at the extreme range of your swim, however, it doesn’t leave you anywhere to go.