Improve Your Coarse Fishing (UK)
Tom Maker Home in on the hotspots
Tom Maker reveals his approach to pinpointing holding areas for carp on lakes and targeting them effectively and safely
ON MOST lakes with any snags or underwater obstacles, carp will use them to seek refuge. It may be an overhanging bush, a fallen tree or a bed of lilies – anything offering cover and comfort for the fish, will act as a holding area.
I can think of countless sessions on a wide variety of lakes where snaggy features have produced the majority of bites, and that’s mainly because the carp feel safe in there.
However, when there is food nearby, they will come out and freely investigate the source and, if you get your tactics right, you can capitalise on this behaviour and enjoy a session to remember.
‘ Recce’ the spot
While snaggy features can be great to fish, it’s very important that you do so in a safe and responsible manner.
Firstly, have a good look at the feature that you want to fish near, both above and below the waterline. As a starting point, I always don a good pair of polarised glasses and have a scan around to see if there is anything else near where I want to present my hookbait, such as fallen tree limbs or branches.
Ideally, I want to be fishing to an overhang or canopy, but one without anything else in the water that might render it unsafe to target. If in doubt, then I would never target the area to avoid putting the fish in harm’s way.
Clipping up
Once I’ve sussed a spot and decided that it is safe, it’s time to clip up the rods. To do this, I cast a few yards short of the feature, and put the line into the clip on the spool.
Next, I recast the rod to make sure I have it spot on, before taking the line out of the clip and pulling a yard off the spool before putting the line back in the clip and repeating the process. The idea is to take a few casts, inching ever closer to the feature by paying off a little line each time. If you try to get it bang on first time, you’ll often end up with the lead hanging in the tree.
The next step is to pop the lead next to a wrapping stick and measure the safe distance
I need to cast each time to get the rig under the snag, rather than hanging from it. I can then clip up my remaining rods to the same distance and have a cast on each to make sure they are also clipped up correctly.
If I’m fishing really tight to the overhanging feature and intend on fishing a PVA bag of some sort, I always clip up just a fraction shorter than the initial measurement. This is because a large PVA bag will weigh more than the lead that I’ve clipped up with, and the stretch in the mono can take it a little further towards the snag or feature.
Another thing to consider when fishing tight to an overhang is the manner in which you cast out. I have found that, instead of casting as normal – with moderate power and a high trajectory – if I drill it harder and aim for the lead to travel nice and low across the water, I can then bring the rod back and, when it hits the clip, follow the lead round.
This helps the rig to land tightly under the overhangs or close to the snag, with little fear of it hitting the trailing branches.
Get them grazing
There will normally be large, polished- off areas under many overhanging features. However, due to their location under the foliage, they will often be littered with detritus such as fallen leaves and small twigs.
It is because of this that I often use a PVA meshed bag of pellets when targeting such spots. My favourites are Sticky Bloodworm pellets, which seem to create such a huge feeding response from carp that they make the ideal choice for ‘ cleaning off’ areas. They slowly leak off a cloud of attraction for hours and definitely help to draw the fish out the snag.
To give the carp a little extra to home in on and spread some bait across the zone, I also like to put in some halved boilies.
Quite often when you are fishing to a marginal tree, the lakebed beneath the spot will feature some form of slope. By introducing halved baits, they will stay where they land and not roll off as round baits would, away from your baited rig.
The fish are already there, so you don’t need to put down a big bed of bait to draw them in. Just a small amount of highly- attractive bait will be enough to tempt them out and get a bite.
When it comes to what to put on the hook, I’m a big fan of using bright baits with this approach, and by trimming down a small pop- up it’s possible to balance it to sit perfectly, just above the hook. Pink is a great colour and works everywhere and so do yellow and orange.
Sometimes, something bright in among the dull- coloured pellets and halved boilies can be enough to make the fish exit cover and investigate what it is. They can only find out by sucking it in, and by then it is too late and they are hooked!
Take no prisoners!
For this type of fishing I always keep my rigs mega simple, but strong. I’m a big fan of large hooks in all of my fishing, normally size 5s, even when I am targeting smaller carp. I don’t think that it costs me bites, and I know for certain that it helps me to land fish, especially in situations where you have to put pressure on the fish to steer them away from any submerged obstructions.
The final consideration is bite indication. I like to fish a fairly tight line, with just an inch gap between the bobbin and the rod blank. I turn up the sensitivity on the alarms, and one beep can often indicate a bite in this situation.
I also tighten up the clutch on my reel. I don’t want to be giving the fish any line at all. Just the stretch in the mono alone will enable the fish to move a few yards, enough if there are obstacles.
Fishing to overhangs and snags is a highlyproductive tactic at any time of the year, and you can bet that if there are any areas on your lake that offer the carp sanctuary from the attention of anglers, the fish will be in there. Have a great session!