Improve Your Coarse Fishing (UK)
Baiting with a difference
Sticky’s ROB BURGESS baits in a particular way during spring to achieve incredible hits from popular UK day-ticket lakes
TRADITIONALLY, a less-is-more approach in the spring has always been the most successful way to fish. However, I have found a different way of baiting that has been even more effective. The lakes that I fish at this time of year are often well-stocked and they are therefore very popular with other anglers. I have found that making a disturbance after getting a bite, particularly when baiting again, can sharply increase the time between bites. To get around this problem I began to go in heavy with the bait once I was sure that I’d found a swim containing carp, and that they would be happy to feed. I am not shy with the leading rod and like to spend a bit of time casting around an area where I have seen fish show. The purpose of this is to find any raised areas that are nice and clean. I want the lead to hit down with a thud and a smooth pull on the tip. If the fish have been showing in this area, they will have visited, or most likely created, this feeding spot.
Spread it about
I start with 40 Spombs of bait, around a full bucket load. This ensures I have plenty of bait out there to draw in a shoal of carp. If there was only a kilo of bait on the spot it wouldn’t be enough to entice a big group of carp into feeding. A large bed of bait will encourage fish to grub around and coax others to join in. I don’t do it too accurately. Once I have found the spot, if it is 20 wraps of line for example, I take it out of the clip and give it another 4ft of slack before clipping back up again. This spreads the bait and causes the fish to move around as they pick bait up. If I am lucky to hook one, it wouldn’t alert the rest of them and I would be able to get away with a recast too. Even if I spook a couple of carp, there will still be fish feeding away from that lead and I would still have a chance of a bite. By altering your clips on the spod rod, you can do the same on the fishing rods too. If you know what is out there and you are not getting bites on top of the bar, reel in and have a recast to the back of it instead to see if that will produce a bite.
The three-bait mix
The mix I use is simple and relies on just a few key ingredients. The bulk is whole, broken and crushed Manilla boilies. They release so much attraction and are easy to digest. I then add 6mm Bloodworm pellets and sweetcorn that is a great year-round bait. I finish off with some Cloudy Manilla liquid, which makes the mix smell even more divine. All those flavours and attractors will leak out off the spot and hold the fish down there for long periods of time.
Hookbait options
With all of that wonderful bait on the bottom, getting them to pick up the hookbait quickly can be tricky. I usually go for a simple rig, which incorporates a stiff hooklink. This eliminates tangles on the cast and enables the rig to easily reset itself. There will be lots of activity down there, so I want something that will kick the rig away should it be lifted up. I start with two rods on bright pop-ups and the third with a match-the-hatch hookbait. I can then gauge what the fish want and change accordingly. When using pop-ups, I simply balance them out so that the rig sinks nice and slowly and the bait can be easily inhaled without too much effort from the carp. I heavily glug the match-the-hatch Manilla pop-ups with the matching glug. This should help pull the fish down to my hookbait first, above the rest of the mix. I give the bright ones a spray too, making sure they offer attraction by sight, smell and taste. Instead of spodding regularly, I like to recast my hookbaits. It creates far less disturbance and simply repositioning a fresh hookbait can be enough to tempt the bite you are after. It is a tactic that has helped me achieve some big hits in recent years, particularly on lakes at the Linear complex.