Try Jon Arthur’s deadly corn slop attack for stillwater carp.
Sloppy feed delivered from a height rings the dinner bell for fish weary of pellets
ON JUST about every commercial fishery I visit these days, people are pinging pellets. It’s such an easy option… but the fish have seen it all before. So I have been trying something different – feeding ‘slop’ through a pot. It’s perfect for balmy sunny days when the carp are up in the water but need a bit of coaxing. There’s nothing stopping you from combining it with a bit of pellet pinging too! I’ve come to the beautiful Bishops Bowl Fishery in Warwickshire to show you my corn slop tactics. I’m fishing a lake called Marshes One for the very first time today, so it’ll be a great test for the effectiveness of this method. Hopefully I can show you just how easy it is to sack up with a soupy corn slop concoction!
THE THEORY
The aim of my feeding strategy is to pot in some sloppy feed from a height and really ring the dinner bell. There are several key things you must get right, however, the first being colour. I like a bright yellow mix at this time of year as it’s so visible and a proven colour for big fish.
As for consistency, add lots and lots of water. It needs to be completely saturated so that you can only just gather it in your fingers to fill a pole pot. I mix my groundbait up as per normal, then riddle it to remove any lumps. Then I add the extra water. You’ll be surprised how much extra water groundbait will take in, and it will soon double in volume.
Today I’m using a bag of
Dynamite Swim Swim F1 Sweet groundbait, a rich, aromatic blend. It’s a nice yellow shade and contains milk powders, which enhance the cloud effect.
Another really cloudy addition to the mix is Dynamite Sweet Tiger liquid. Tip some neat into the water and you’ll see how it creates a lovely lingering cloud.
My final ingredient is a tin of sweetcorn blitzed in a liquidiser. Throw some of pulverised kernels down the edge and you’ll see an attractive cloud as well as lots of larger bits of sweetcorn skins hovering and wafting around enticingly. Those larger bits of fleshy skin help to keep the bigger fish excited in the upper layers.
I always have a tub of water on my side tray so I can add more as I go along. This tub is also vital to keep my fingers clean immediately after filling the pot. And a towel, of course!
HOOKBAITS
The best hookbait today was either a banded 6mm coarse pellet or a 4mm Dynamite Durable Hook Pellet, again popped into the band with the help of a stretcher tool. A squashed piece of corn or two or three maggots are great ‘wafty’ options on lots of venues.
CLOSE-IN CRUCIANS
Of course, you can feed this slop mix by hand too if you’re planning to fish much closer in. That’s what I’ve done today on a shorter 5m line before venturing out to my main 13m zone. You may need a fractionally less sloppy mix for throwing, but it still needs to explode on impact. And if your ball of slop breaks up mid-air and pebble-dashes the swim, so much the better!
As I hadn’t fished this lake before I wanted to see just how close the fish would venture today. I caught a few chunky carp in this closerange swim, but what it attracted best was a shoal of crucians.
Yes, I got this traditionally shy and tentative bottom-feeder taking my hookbait up to 2ft deep in 6ft of water! If that doesn’t prove the potential of a slop attack I don’t know what does!
A CRACKING CATCH
After a great run of fish close in at five metres I noticed a lot of carp milling around in the middle of the lake. Pushing the pole out to 13m (I actually prefer to hold my pole between the joint of my 13m and 14m sections for comfort) it took just two helpings of my
sloppy mix before I latched into a carp of 3lb. More followed, fish from 1lb to 5lb, and whenever I had to wait for bites I simply catapulted out a pouch or two of pellets.
A great big dollop of corn slop in my largest pole pot, tipped in from a metre above the water, was best to begin with. Then, as more carp were attracted, I dropped down to a medium pot and caught even faster.
Each time the slop goes in, try to ensure your hookbait is plopped right into the centre of the cloud. This definitely brings a quicker reaction and proves they are homing right in on the cloudy feed. It’s such an exciting way to catch, and a great alternative to pinging pellets!