MATCH THE HATCH ON YOUR ZIG RIGS FOR CARP SUCCESS
Korum’s Mat Woods explains why his spring campaigns revolve around what’s flying around his head and swimming at his feet
FOR me, spring carp fishing become much more like fly fishing. In fact I can’t remember the last productive spring I had targeting fish on the lakebed.
Despite this, I still meet lots of anglers who are seemingly afraid of fishing in the surface layers.
I can understand this – it involves using much lighter line than most carp anglers are used to and a hookbait that is usually just an inanimate piece of foam.
But trust me, one look around your swim the next time you’re fishing will bring all the confidence you’ll ever need.
Do this, and you’ll notice all the aquatic bugs and wildlife that wake up at this time of year. Look in the margins and you’ll see what the carp have readily available to them out in the lake. The key is to try and replicate what you see.
Head to the wind-facing back of your carp lake, scoop out a bucket of water and see what’s lurking.
Right now, the margins of all my local lakes are filled with tiny tadpoles, frogs, snails and beetles. All these make nice easy meals for a carp – which is why you will often find them creeping around in very shallow water.
As the carp drift out into the lake, however, I’ve found they tend to stay at the same level. So if they are happy to creep into 3ft of water and feed on the deck, chances are they will remain 3ft below the surface out in the lake, and this is a good starting point for your zig and margin fishing.
When it’s cool in spring, shorter zigs work and I’ll start at the lakebed and work my way up. However, once the sun comes out and the temperature creeps above 15ºC, I’ll start at the surface and work my way down.
If there’s fresh weed, you may find the carp are picking off the hatches at their source. I caught some really big fish the last couple of years fishing 1ft zigs over fresh weed growth. This seems to be linked to when caddis are
hatching – probably the most welcome insect in the universe for a carp angler. Caddis tend to start climbing out from their larval state when the sun is out, or the light levels are fairly bright, and they will appear from weedbeds, or climb up pad stems and reedbeds.
When this is happening, I go for a long, thin zig. It’s not something I see many other anglers using, but it’s a massive part of my spring fishing. The thinner the better, and I’ll often just angle the top of the foam to resemble the outline of a caddis more closely.
Other days, more mosquitoes and mayflies will be hatching. This is where Zig Aligners work best, as the profile is fairly similar, though I prefer to use a separate aligner and hair, to give me the option to touch up the aligner with a pen, add some stripes or alter the colours. Quite often a red aligner will work very well when bloodworm are hatching.
WATCH THE BIRDS
Birds are really important when it comes to zig fishing. You get swifts and swallows taking off the surface, but watch the mallard, swans and geese, as they will often join in on a big hatch.
Watching the birds and where they scoop up their meal can often pinpoint the centre of a big hatch. The spanner in the works, for all this hatch-matching, is the carp’s periodic preference for brighter zigs. I’ve caught on yellow in the same session as catching on black. I think this is mainly to do with dropping the rig at the right layer on their patrol route, where the carp aren’t necessarily feeding on a hatch, but are quite happy to enjoy an opportunist meal.
I caught a fish recently popping a bright zig on a patrol route I noticed while surface fishing. While continuing to feed surface baits I clocked a few fish that had no interest in the floaters, but were still cruising the same path as their hungrier mates. A zig plopped on this route produced a stunning fish, much bigger than anything I caught off the top.