CARP TACTICS The biggest mistakes and how to avoid them – with Julian Cundiff
Reckon you could have done better? Julian Cundiff knows the feeling...
BELIEVE me, nobody is born a great carp angler. Some progress quicker than others, but every top carp angler will have made many mistakes.
The crucial thing is that they learn from them. I’ve been carp fishing for more than 35 years, and having fished countrywide with some of the best, it’s clear that consistent success is not gifted to anyone. It’s worked for.
During my time I’ve witnessed several common mistakes I see carp anglers making which cost them fish. Thankfully, these can all be easily rectified…
Not catching enough carp
The only way to learn about carp fishing is to catch plenty of carp and understand what does or doesn’t work.
You can’t do that by catching five fish a year! Fish venues where you’ve a good chance of getting plenty of bites.
Not going regularly
The more you do something, the more you learn – providing you try hard when you are there. It’s better to go regularly for shorter sessions than fish a longer one once a month.
Getting the wrong advice
It’s great to be inspired by big-fish anglers. But unless they fish waters similar to yours, their advice can have little relevance to your angling. Instead, look to those anglers who fish your type of water. Prolific day-ticket waters, perhaps?
Having a sloppy attitude
You can never be too exact. Nobody ever caught less by getting things right. Be it knots, accurate baiting up, feeling the lead down... it’s got to be right.
I say: “It’s right or it’s s***e!”. A knot cannot be tied too well, a cast be too accurate, and so on.
Only social fishing
The more you concentrate, the better you will fish and the quicker you will learn. Leave socialising to times away
from the bank. There can’t be two best swims when you arrive can there? When you socialise, you chat and stop watching the water, you make more noise, you become unduly influenced and your concentration levels drop. Have you ever wondered why most of the great anglers fish on their own?
Chopping and changing
There is no wonder bait, rig or tactic. What is important is the confidence with which you apply starting points that have worked for you.
I know what works for me, having caught thousands of carp over three decades. That has only come about by hard work and an ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ mentality. If you are constantly changing your bait, rig or application, you can’t build up confidence in anything.
Not pacing yourself
A carp fishing year is 365 days. I see so many potentially talented anglers go at it hell for leather in the spring and summer and then blow out from autumn onwards.
Constant effort week in, week out, month after month, is the key to success.
All great anglers endure tough times and accept that it’s not the falling down but the getting up that matters.