Bait and leave for extra bites

We spend our whole lives on the clock, right? Working 9-5. “Don’t be late.” Places to go, people to see. And not enough time in the day to get everything done without missing at least one deadline. We book our fishing sessions with the fishery, or with the missus. Either way, we’re watching the time and trying to maximize every second. Mat Woods

No way to live you life, right? But we do. We fish like if we don’t get the rods in right away we’ll miss out and we daren’t reel them in for the same reason. I see loads of guys on the lakes I fish who operate like they’re clocking in and out of their session. They’ll have a lead around, but not for too long. Even if they haven’t found anything worth fishing over, they’ll give up, chuck a couple of Choddies on and sit back to take it all in. If they do recast, it will be on last light, in a mad panic where they’ll usually change their minds and repeat the same process as they started with. Everything done in a hurry, no matter the venue.

Now I understand wanting to get the rods out if carp are crashing in an area, especially as they’re a nomadic creature and can often disappear as quickly as they arrive. Most of my Zig captures come as opportunist bites, putting black foam out where most would throw a single pop-up. But once the spring silly season is out of the way, I think we need to slow down a bit and really consider what we want from the session.

After Spombing hemp and maggots for an hour, I left the rods in the rest until early evening. Once I saw this, all three rods were dispatched and promptly produced a fish apiece!

Scout’s honour

I noticed a few years ago that baiting spots and not fishing them was a much better way of catching numbers of fish. It doesn’t take long for carp to realise the food is free and there are no lines present and on some venues, a matter of a few hours without disturbance is enough to get those initially inquisitive ‘scouts’ very interested.

Have you ever watched the swallows in the spring, appearing on the lake when there’s a hatch? You’ll always find a ‘scout’ or two that visit the lake first, before the rest of the crew arrive to join in. Cormorants act in much the same way and I believe carp are very similar. I think that even the noisiest of baiting sessions draws the attentions of a certain group of fish and they do a bit of a sweep to see what’s going on.

When they have cover, I think you shouldn’t be scared about making some noise

It’s no coincidence on the venues that are clear enough to see this happening that the first that show interest in a baited area very early on aren’t always the ones to get caught first. To some extent, they’re sometimes the fish that feed with more caution than their mates, but it’s like if they’re happy, so are all the others.

Last summer I was baiting a spot in a weedy bay and every time I saw the carp there in the morning, the leader of the pack was the biggest fish, visiting the spot two or three times before up-ending and starting to feed. Once he’d had a munch, the other smaller fish would join in and they’d be snuffling up pellets like pigs in a trough until the whole spot was clear. When I put more bait in after this, the smaller carp would be straight on it – their guard was now down. I knew that to catch the bigger one I needed to get a rig in before I baited the spot. I did this on the next trip and my first bite was the biggest carp – if only it always went to plan this way.

Horseshoe was always good for bites, but every big fish I saw get caught from there was after a quiet period

Big fish first

I noticed at Baden Hall’s Quarry Pool that if I baited up and left the spot to simmer for a few hours, quite often my first bite would be the biggest carp of the trip. In fact, looking back through my catch reports on there, every time I left an area after a heavy baiting up session, all the 30lbers would come either right at the beginning or right at the end of a hit. A coincidence? I’m not so sure.

I caught the big mirror ‘Cath’s Fish’ from Rob Hughes’ syndicate four times after heavily pre-baiting areas. She would always be the first to trip up from those baited spots, followed by the second biggest mirror, ‘George of the Jungle’.

I must admit that the whole concept of ‘bait and leave’ is not something I carefully calculated. It often involved a trip to the pub, or the chippy, or another lake. A lot of anglers reel in to pop to the shops, or go and take a picture for a mate, but never think about what might be going on in their swim during their absence.

A doodle in my diary, following the capture of the biggest carp in the lake after leaving a baited area quiet for a few hours

Ellis Brazier is an angler who always tries to factor in a spot or two that get baited and not fished, no matter how short or long his session. So many times when I fished with Braz he’d have a flurry of takes, or a really big fish, after a few hours of being away from his swim. Before leaving, though, he’d always top up his area a bit heavier than normal. He knew leaving the spot with no leads splashing in and no lines for a while would get their guard down.

Spodding, generally speaking, doesn’t get carp flocking towards the disturbance, but I do think it peaks their interest. I personally don’t subscribe to the idea that carp will vanish if you make some noise, especially if you’re doing it on the end of a big wind, or a weed-laden lake where there’s plenty of sanctuary from your activities. I know that dropping a few rigs in as stealthily as possible is a good way to get a bite, but I’m more interested in getting more than one bite. They don’t swim around on their own, so why fish for them like that’s true?

Priming areas during a session is a bit like pre-baiting, only you don’t go home!

Sure, if you’re doing a day’s fishing, or a quick overnighter, dolly dropping the leads in and approaching carp in a stealthy, controlled way is a good idea. But why not bait another area of the lake and save it for later in the trip? Doing that has bailed me out on every single day ticket feature I’ve done this year. I agreed to do a series for another magazine that involved fishing lakes that you didn’t need to pre-book and due to time constraints, I just did the days. On four of the venues I fished, a little baited spot that got left alone all day produced the goods in the afternoons.

Would those spots have produced for me had I put a rig there and left it all day? I’m not so sure, as on most occasions I had a rod that I left as a ‘sleeper’ and never had a bite on it once.

Socialising works

One of my favourite stories relating to ‘bait and leave’ is my first trip to France. Myself and buddy Glen Watmough caught our fair share for the first few days, but we felt it should’ve been better. We wound in mid-week for a big social BBQ with all the lads, so before that we stood at the front of the swim with the throwing sticks and put 10kg of boilies all over the place. The guy who was in the peg to our left had moved swims, leaving a big part of the lake all to ourselves. With an empty swim either side of us, Watty was buoyed by catching his first 50, and didn’t really care what happened, so was egging me on to fill it in. We did, and boy did it work. After 5-6hrs away from the swim, we returned to find the water in our margin had changed colour. Carp were fizzing up in the bay to our left, it was looking the best it had all week.

That night we didn’t sleep at all, catching carp one after another. Most of them were upper-doubles, but Watty slipped the net under a 39lb leather first. I lost a 50 at the net, but that’s my least favourite bit about the story! We both ended up with over a dozen carp each that night, about half of what we caught in total for the week.

Silence is golden

Another great ‘bait and leave’ example was Ellis Brazier fishing down at Horseshoe. Braz found some fish cruising the roadside margin in Winter Bay and rather than fishing out in the lake to one of the known spots, he decided to put his rods side-by-side under an overhanging tree 20yds down to his right. Not many anglers fish a margin like an open-water spot, do they? But Ellis proved to me and anybody else that it was very possible.

To start with his put about 5kg of bait on the spot with a spod, clipped two rods up, then left the area unfished for most of the day. He was helping his buddy Steve ‘Bog’ Redding, who was visiting Horseshoe for the first time. Boggy was round in Disabled Point, on his first ever magazine feature, so Ellis was talking him through the finer points of tying rigs for sequences and holding things up for the camera that weren’t fish!

When we returned to the swim, Ellis still didn’t fish the margin. There were some carp showing beyond a weedbed at 50yds, so he cast a couple of long rigs with mesh bags of powder to them and caught half-a-dozen fish quite quickly. As he played in his sixth 20lber of the trip, his margin spot came alive with carp crashing and fizzing up on his bait. The rods were quickly clipped up and popped onto the spot.

His first two bites were 33lb and 35lb mirrors. The next two were 29lb mirrors. Rather than keep fishing, though, Ellis baited up the spot with 5kg again and suggested we walk to the local shop to grab a couple of beers to celebrate. We got a bit side-tracked by the pub next-door, but having stocked up on breakfast supplies in the corner shop, we made our way back to the lake just as it was getting dark and Ellis plopped his rigs in again.

What followed was a precession of takes, all fish between 25lb and 32lb. Compared to previous trips to the ‘Shoe, the average size was incredible.
Ellis surmised that leaving the area unfished actually got the fish to return to the baited area sooner. He’d noticed on lots of venues that leaving the rods in after a few fish, even if you topped up, seemed to postpone the return of the carp. Leaving the rods out, meanwhile, would get them back on the spots much sooner.

It’s no exact science, however, and there have been plenty of occasions when I may as well cast in the field than cast to a spot I’ve baited, but incorporating it into your fishing can really transform the way you think about a session.

For me, it’s about reading the situation and knowing when to give it a rest. If the carp are still there and you’re getting signs, there’s no need to leave them alone! But if your spot goes quiet and you’re not sure why, popping for a brew with a few mates around the lake won’t do you any harm. After all, not watching the time tick away behind silent rods is nowhere near as much fun as forgetting what time it is and having to dash back to a swim full of carp!

Six Prime Examples Of 'Bait and Leave' Situations

Example 1:
I used to heavily pre-bait Rob Hughes’ Birchwood Pool and each time I baited a particular spot, the biggest mirror in the lake used to be my first fish from the area. I’ve discovered similar findings across many other venues - so it’s definitely worth thinking about.

Example 2:
I caught two fish quite quickly from an area I’d baited heavily with 10mm boilies on the Abyss, before everything went quiet. I topped up the area and spent the rest of the day out in the boat exploring. When I put my rods back out for the night, the biggest fish was mine!

Example 3:
Ellis left a baited spot in the pads at Birch Grove for 24hrs before trotting down and lowering in a solid bag. Five minutes was all it took for one of the rarest mirrors in the lake to trip up! There’s definitely something in this ‘bait, socialise, put the rods out’ method!

Example 4:
I was Spombing for over two hours (so that’s a lot of bait) and then left it to simmer for another four hours. My first bite? The second biggest common in the lake. I caught this fish again at over 40lb after I found it munching someone else’s old bait… coincidence?

Example 5:
We were filming on Monument 1, so Jason and I decided to fish Monument 2 afterwards. That morning, we baited our spots heavily before heading back to M1 to finish filming. When we returned to M2, I caught this 42lber, the biggest fish in there, within five minutes.

Example 6:
My first trip to France yielded many bites, especially after we filled it in with boilies and then disappeared to a social BBQ for most of the afternoon. When we started fishing again later that evening, it kicked right off, and we banked an incredible amount of fish!