Improve Your Coarse Fishing (UK)
Bag up on one tin of meat
A quid's of luncheon meat is all you need to get more and quicker bites on commercials right now, explains Spotted Fin's Matt Bingham
SUMMER isn’t renowned for being the season to ease off the feed. The carp, F1s and silvers in your local commercial will be at their hungriest and piling in the bait is seen as the best way to keep them in your peg.
The thing is, do you really want that many fish milling around in front? The obvious answer is ‘ yes of course!’ but Matt Bingham would have a different outlook.
He is happy to draw just a couple of fish at a time over his hookbait and that mentality is saving him an absolute fortune.
“Commercials are home to literally thousands of fish and, as a result, you are never going to be far away from one or two,” said the Spotted Finbacked angler.
“Topping up with small quantities not only gets you quicker bites, it also prevents many of the problems, such as foul- hooking, associated with having large numbers of fish in your swim. A single £ 1 tin of meat is all you need for a mega day’s sport right now,” he stated.
Frugal feeding
The first thing that Matt does on arrival is to run a tin of meat through a 6mm cutter. And that’s his bait prep done for the day! There’s no need to put down a big bed of feed to kickstart proceedings, with the negative mindset adopted from the off.
“I trickle in 10 cubes of meat via a small cup directly over the top of my float and it is then a case of lifting and dropping the rig regularly to trigger a response.
“I don’t add any more bait until I have landed a fish. There’s no point in adding more until it has all been eaten because I am only interested in attracting a couple of fish at a time,” he explained.
“If I draw in an entire shoal I will be plagued by line bites which inevitably leads to foul- hooking and a lot of frustration!”
After each fish Matt cups in half a dozen cubes and then feeds the same by hand a split second after setting the hook.
“Once I have hooked a fish the swim is likely to be empty so chucking in a few cubes gives me the chance to draw in another fish while I’m playing one. This reduces the amount of time I have to wait for the next bite.”
Two shotting patterns
Many anglers expect the float to shoot right under at this time of year, but Matt insists the tiniest of knocks should be struck at.
“Bites on meat can be cagey so I shot my float so that only a small pimple is visible above the surface. It is then a case of striking at the slightest movement.”
The shotting pattern is dictated by how prolific the action is on the day. When the fish have dropped their guard and are feeding confidently, he uses a bulk of shot a foot up from the hook with two small droppers below.
This bombs the rig through the water column, with the dropper shot slowing it a little just before it hits the deck.
When the fish are proving trickier to fool, Matt strings out his shot through the bottom half of the rig. This slows the fall of the hookbait to a more natural pace which ensures it blends in with the loosefeed.
This means the hookbait takes longer to get to the deck but this is sometimes what is required to fool your target.
His mainline is 0.17mm Preston Innovations Powerline to an 0.11mm hooklength and a size 16 Preston Innovations SFL- B hook. His preferred float is a slimline and sensitive 4x12 Warren Peaty Pukka while the elastic is a
Preston Innovations 9H.
Tunnel Barn tonic
The prolific Tunnel Barn Farm in Warwickshire is one of the venues where Matt has perfected his penny- pinching approach. Setting up on the banks of the complex’s Canal Pool, he plumbed up just beyond the base of the nearside shelf.
“I find that plenty of fish patrol at the bottom of the shelf but I go a couple of feet off the base of it as a lot of silt congregates here and I want to be fishing on a firm area,” he said.
The meagre initial dosage went in with the strung out shotting pattern used to start with. Lifting and dropping was required for almost 10 minutes until a little dip registered on the float. A 2lb F1 was soon subdued.
A few cubes of meat were fed by hand as it stretched the elastic and the same quantity was cupped in on his next drop in.
Three more F1s came in the next quarter of an hour before he suddenly started to miss bites as the hookbait sunk.
“It is almost certainly small silver fish pecking at the bait as it sinks and, because it is so soft, the meat comes off instantly when I strike,” he said as he switched rigs to the bulk of shot and two droppers.
“This should get the hookbait past where these tiddlers are sitting.”
This fine- tuning had an instant effect. With F1s going in the net frequently, it was clear to see why this approach was so effective. The only time his float moved was when it registered a true bite because of the small number of fish around the rig and foul- hooking was never an issue.
A couple of quality carp capped off a frustration- free session, with more than 80lb accumulated in four hours.
“Meat is a deadly bait in the heat of summer and you’ll soon see that less is definitely more.”
“Topping up with small quantities not only gets quicker bites it also avoids foul- hooking”