THE IMPACT OF RAIN AND BITE INDICATION
TWO KEY things to discuss this month, namely rain and bite indication. The first one because it’s almost completely dominated my angling style for the last month, and the second because we recently released the latest Understanding Underwater film covering bite indication, and there were some very interesting findings.
Rain first, though, as it’s so relevant. Even though it might not be the first thing you think of, rain at any time of year has a massive effect on carp behaviour. I think I touched on this in autumn too, but cold rain falling into a lake sinks to the bottom and the fish will tend to avoid it. When it’s really cold, as it’s been in recent weeks, carp normally move down into the slightly deeper water. However, cold rain going in lifts them off the bottom and I think that this is what’s been happening recently, as it’s been really slow fishing down on the deck. I don’t know about where you are, but it seems to have been raining almost constantly for ages, and my sessions have been planned to dodge it. Even though it’s not actually raining when I’m fishing, the effects of it are affecting the way I fish.
I’ve been down to the local day lake a few times and speaking to a few of the lads down there. Quite a few have been getting liners, yet only one or two fish were getting caught. These were generally up on the island shelves or in the margins, and the usually productive open water wasn’t producing. The lakes are usually quite prolific and there’s a fair few carp in them, so I tried zigs but only ended up foul -hooking one. It became clear that there were a few off the deck in the open water, so I went for a pop-up off the lead. Only 8ins-10ins, but it’s a tactic that I use in January and February every year and it can be really good. On three trips now it’s accounted for five bites each time, whereas the bottom baits have accounted for none.
I eventually gave up on the bottom baits completely and exclusively fished pop-ups off the lead with 12mm yellow or pink Hit n Runs. It’s been out-catching everything else. Rigs are the same as I normally use, just without a balancing shot, and it’s really simple angling. A small mesh bag and a pop-up standing out above it and we’re away.
UNDERSTANDING UNDERWATER
The recent Understanding Underwater ‘dropped’ a couple of weeks ago on the Dynamite Baits
YouTube channel. I look at indication, the difference between three set-ups, and slack lines versus tight lines.
The first test was to put a lead clip, a running rig and a heli set up against each other and see if there was any difference in indication between the three. They were all cast in the same way to the same sort of spot and, to cut a long story short, there wasn’t a lot of difference between them. I then took the clip system and ran a tight against a slack line comparison to see which would be the more sensitive. Usually, it’s the tight line that wins, but this time it was the slack. I couldn’t understand why that would be, so I repeated the test and the same thing happened. I followed the line back to the rod and found that the lines were passing over a weedbed and that was affecting the sensitivity. The slack line was sliding over the weed giving indication, whereas the tight was trying to move it, and not. Interesting findings, and certainly something to think about if you’re fishing over weed.
There’s a fair bit more to see in the film, so do have a quick look if you haven’t seen it yet. With zigs and drop back season coming soon, it’s always worth brushing up on your indication.