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I thought you might like to see what a day's fishing in England looks like.
In my part of the country, we get warmer weather than most. This helps carp to feed well much later in the year, but even so, there was a very cold wind blowing today that would not help matters!
Pellets are a great bait for carp on the fishery I visited, often fished just a foot deep for cruising common carp. I set up two identical rods; one for fishing pellets shallow and the other for fishing on, or just off the bottom.
This is what the shallow wagglers look like. Basically a tube of balsa wood, as short as possible. The idea is that the float pops up as soon as it hits the water and bites should come instantly. Notice all the shot is around the base of the float.
This is a normal waggler, with most of the shot around the base to provide casting weight. I had just one number 8 shot two feet from the hook and a swivel weighing the same as a number 8 shot one foot from the hook.
I started by fishing this float four feet deep, that set the bait about a foot off bottom to begin.
A small carp of around a pound was first to fall to a hair-rigged pellet, then I had a few knocks on the float, which told me the fish were higher in the water. Shallowing up brought the first proper carp of about 5lbs.
I tried a couple of casts on the shallow waggler and had one decent carp before reverting to the standard waggler rig.
This is the pellet on the hair rig. A knotless knot is used to tie the hook on, with a silicon band tied into the hair loop. The band is pulled over the pellet, it is a quick and simple method of hair-rigging.
I was feeding three or four pellets every thirty seconds in a bid to encourage the fish to come shallow, but they were reluctant to come into the feed.
Most of the bigger fish were cruising around the area and took the pellet out of instinct if it landed close to them.
I decided to try sweetcorn on the bottom; a cold water killer.
Feeding three grains every five minutes at twenty five metres out, is soon started to get indications. They were mostly from smaller carp like this linear mirror.
But I did manage to winkle out a couple of bigger ones by twitching the bait very slowly across the bottom.
At the end, I had landed ten carp between a pound and a half and eight pounds, and lost four. Two of the four I lost were foul hookers earlier on when fishing deep.
It is a common problem when the fish are not sure if they want to feed deep or shallow. With the float dotted right down to a mere dimple, you need to strike at every dip, but some are caused by a fish brushing the line from higher up in the water. Occasionally you will hook one of them, but the hook pulls out almost straight away.
I also lost two carp by putting too much pressure on when they were uder the rod tip - stupid.
This was the last fish of the session, an ugly old, battle-scarred mirror carp.
Hopefully that will give you an insight into fishing in English conditions.
Don't forget to get involved with the Mad Idea thread on the coarse fishing forum.
Steve
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