How to join a venue and re-write the rule book

Ever been the ‘new guy’ on a syndicate? More to the point, ever been the new guy who has it off in their first season? If you haven’t, then this article is going to be well worth a read, as I look at how and why some anglers are able to join a venue and simply re-write the rule book. We’ve all been there, right? “They don’t like big beds of bait in here, mate.” Really? “They don’t like you spodding on their heads.” Really? “Nobody’s ever had one on a floater…” Really?

The problem arises when lakes become their own little bubble. A new set of rules get written for the carp – about what they like, where they like spending time and how you need to catch them. Unfortunately, folks, whilst some carp do have their own little idiosyncrasies, and certain strains may have certain characteristics, at the end of the day they are all carp. And carp do carpy things no matter where they live. No matter who tries to tell you otherwise, what you know about carp from one lake will stand you in good stead elsewhere. Mat Woods

Angler #1 Jeff Gales

YEARS ON THE VENUE: Six
SEASON’S CATCH: 12 carp
PREFERED METHOD: On gravel over a bed of particles and boilies

Angler #2 Guy Murphy

YEARS ON THE VENUE: Seven
SEASON’S CATCH: 11 carp
PREFERED METHOD: Particle on a clean gravel area

Angler #3 Chris Poole

YEARS ON THE VENUE: Four
SEASON’S CATCH: 14 carp
PREFERED METHOD: Boilies and particles on the top of a bar

Angler #4 Dan Mosel

YEARS ON THE VENUE: Eight
SEASON’S CATCH: 10 carp
PREFERED METHOD: A bed of particles and boilies on gravel

Angler #5 Josh Burt

YEARS ON THE VENUE: Five
SEASON’S CATCH: 11 carp
PREFERED METHOD: On gravel over a bed of particles and boilies

Angler #6 Paul French

YEARS ON THE VENUE: Six
SEASON’S CATCH: 13 carp
PREFERED METHOD: Fishing to the clear, gravelly areas with particles

Angler #7 Stuart Peake

YEARS ON THE VENUE: Seven
SEASON’S CATCH: 12 carp
PREFERED METHOD: Pop-up over a bed of particle on a gravel bar

Angler #8 David Hahn

YEARS ON THE VENUE: One
SEASON’S CATCH: 36 carp
PREFERED METHOD: In the silt, with a nice wide baited area of just boilies

Inner belief

In my experience, there’s a certain kind of angler that joins a new lake and immediately starts catching. When I was younger, I watched guys turn up and make the rest of us look daft, catching from the off and getting the carp they wanted quickly. In subsequent years, I’ve been that bloke on a few places, but only by learning from exceptional anglers along the way.

So what makes a successful ‘newbie’ – because there are plenty of guys who join a lake and catch two tenths of f*ck all?! I think the best thing to do is give you some examples from over the years for each essential ingredient. That way, you can apply it to your own fishing, and be ‘that guy’ the next time you join a new venue.

Prep is everything

Research, research, research

One of the best anglers I know, Ryan Need, is no stranger to being a newbie who tears lakes apart. In fact, quite recently he did it on my target venue, Baden Hall’s Quarry Pool. Now once upon a time, I was the new kid on the block and I enjoyed multiple hits of fish quite regularly. Even today, for the small amount of time I get to fish there, I come away with a great average number and size of carp every season. Because of this, Ryan leant on me and a few other successful locals who have fished the venue to find out more about the resident fish.

What Ryan wanted to do was visit the lake once and have a big hit, so he researched when that was most likely. With a window in mind, he also did his homework about what baits the carp responded to most, and how to apply that bait to get the best results. He also watched the captures carefully on-line and once a few better fish started coming out, he arranged his trip. (Interestingly, I had done the same, only I arrived a day later). Armed with that knowledge, Ryan visited and in 48hrs caught 31 carp, including the big common at 41lb. It’s double my biggest hit on there!

Ryan, like myself, had also tracked the big common’s previous capture history, and added to the tally of appearances it makes in that period. It was a remarkable bit of angling that I don’t believe will ever be repeated. Not for a long time, anyway, when a new pattern may emerge.

With the power of the internet, it’s not difficult to get information about venues. Most lakes have daily catch reports on Facebook, so you can quickly piece together the puzzle about when a big hit is on the cards, and also when a big fish might be due! Look back over a couple of years and you’ll see the bigger picture.

The guy behind the camera is the fishery bailiff. Ryan Mallon, on the left, has fished the venue for years. Ryan Need, on the right, has fished the venue twice. Guess whose tally is the highest this year!

Ryan picks his moment and researches the living daylights out of venues before applying his big hit mentality. His results are remarkable

Buck the trend

Another angler who I have a massive amount of respect for is Jim Wilson. Jim’s a Yorkshire lad, but travels for his fishing most of the time. God bless the A1, eh Jim? He’s a busy boy, is Jim, balancing his family and work life with his fishing. A bit like lots of anglers, Jim will join a lake with the sole intention of fishing it as little as possible, for the maximum return
of captures.

When I first met Jim we were both much younger men. I was fishing a private syndicate near Grantham and Jim started to have the odd walk around. Over a few chinwags and brews, Jim obviously started to piece together a clear picture of what the rest of us were doing. Nobody was really baiting with any frequency and those who did, usually got tench and bream on their spots pretty quickly. Jim didn’t really care about that and came and did his own thing.

He picked the swim that absorbed the biggest, warmest winds and in prime conditions, dropped on and filled it in with micro-pellets, small boilies and corn. It was a recipe for disaster, right? Not quite. Jim caught two thirds of the stock of the lake over a few days and I took a lot of pictures for him. It was a real lesson learnt, for me, not to always listen to the elder statesmen on a lake and to do your own thing. I caught my target fish that trip on a single, bright fluoro wafter. Nobody was using anything like that. I started to use them on every rod and didn’t shy from baiting after that either. Subsequently, I caught loads of fish. It took me over a season to catch up with Jim’s tally, though!

Jim Wilson was the ‘newbie’ and absolutely rinsed the lake at the first time of trying, ignoring all the ‘rules’ he’d heard from everybody else and doing it his own way

Don't buck the trend

Sounds like a contradiction, right? Well, sort of. Let me explain what I mean. You see, some venues just don’t allow you to be too different. Take RH Fisheries’ Weston Park. For most of the year, the lake is savagely weedy. The maximum depth is around 4ft in most swims, and searching for a drop usually takes just about long enough to scare every carp away from the swim for a while. Most anglers on the lake are using Chods, or longer balanced rigs to enable them to drop on fish and start catching right away. It works, most of the time, but you end up with syndicate syndrome, where the only guys doing better than anyone else are simply doing the ‘necessary evil’ better than everyone else.

Alex Lister had an incredible winter at Weston Park, tweaking what many others had tried to work in his favour. Seriously good angling!

On countless occasions on that lake I’ve watched guys come out with big annual tallies of fish doing the same thing as everybody else.

When I first joined the lake I baited the living daylights out of the lake at every available opportunity and that enabled me to create areas where bottom baits were presentable. I baited tightly with a catapult rather than with a throwing stick like everyone else, but you had to use boilies because of the small carp and mental rudd population at the time. I was catching on Chod Rigs sometimes, too, though mine were set-up totally different to everybody else’s, with the beads right at the end of the leader, leads smaller than 0.5oz on the end and hooks filed to within an inch of their lives. I don’t think I caught a carp further out than 10yds for three months!

The biggest fish from my first session at Weston. I had 18 fish over a ridiculous quantity of boilies. I took what everyone else did and just increased the volume!

After that, some good friends have done well on Weston putting their own spin on something lots of other anglers were trying. Alex Lister, Tom Forrester, Chris Jennings, to name but a few successful anglers on that lake. If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. Just make sure you’re doing it better than everyone else.

Chods are a necessarily evil on some waters and the key is to make sure yours are better than everyone else’s. Look at what others are doing and see if there’s a better way

Timing is everything

This links to my point about research, but you don’t need to know everything about a venue to know when the major windows of opportunity are. If you can fish mid-week, you will inevitably get a wider choice of swims and find much happier carp. If you can use your annual leave at short notice to make the most of low pressure fronts, even better.

At Tyram, this was common for me. I had sessions where I had to borrow nets and sacks from other anglers to keep up with the action following an extended period of baiting

In every season the moon phases tend to have a say in the weather, so you can pre-bait for a period before the low front hits, making life even easier when the right conditions do arrive. I did this at Tyram Hall, in Doncaster, once upon a time, and had a double-figure hit of carp each time I visited the lake. Baiting heavily on the windward banks of big westerlies and waiting for them to arrive paid dividends.

Baiting the bank that received the Westerly winds brought consistent rewards over a short period of time

I’d spent time finding the notable features and made sure I kept baiting them, so despite being unable to fish for weeks at a time, the carp got to know my bait and got used to feeding on certain areas. It’s stood me in good stead on every lake I’ve done any ‘campaign’ fishing since.

Timing can be very important to catching consistently on a new venue. This shot was taken on New Year’s Day. I had the lake to myself and went on to catch half-a-dozen carp

Be ready to get lucky

I’ve enjoyed some good hits on several venues over the years and witnessed some even bigger ones. Successful navigating a hit isn’t just about being lucky.

How many anglers have been in the right place at the right time only to get caught out by not having enough bait, not having enough of the same pattern of hook, or by not having spare braid for their utility rods? There are dozens of things that can go wrong during a hit and even more things that can simply run out. Preparing for the best possible outcome paves the way for success.

An angler who provides a good example of ‘being ready’ is Kev Hewitt. Fishing a lot of the high profile matches and in the England team gives Kev and all those guys, to be fair, a competitive edge. In their own fishing, they’re competing with themselves most of the time – they crave that next bite. Something all of them do is keep things simple with the last metre of tackle. Rather than carrying a tackle-shop-wall-full of terminal gear, they stick to what they know, what they like, and make sure they’ve got plenty of it. What’s more, they’ll always have spares of essentials like leads and line in the car. I doubt if the likes of Kev, Mark Bartlett, Tom Maker, Billy Flowers, Jamie Londers et al are ever caught short on the bank. And if they are, they’ll do something about it.

I’ll never forget Kev telling me about a UK Carp Cup qualifier where he was struggling in a bit of a duff peg. His old man brought him a couple of gallons of maggots and it totally transformed Kev’s fortunes, winning the match easily. Kev had read the situation perfectly and knew what to do to turn things around. That commitment, that never-say-die attitude is what sets ‘a newbie’ apart from other anglers on lots of venues. It’s very rare for any of the England Team members to blank – even on venues totally new to them. They’re truly next level.

Prepare to be lucky. Here’s a shot during a hit of 12 fish in as many hours. One rod clipped up ready to go back to the spot and two spod rods next to buckets and buckets full of bait

“Zigs don’t work in here, mate?” Really?

“They don’t take floaters in here, mate?” Really?

Ignore the myths

If someone tells you a carp has never been caught on a floater somewhere then it should formulate part of your plan when conditions are right. If someone tells you Zig’s “don’t work” then find out for yourself, because I’ve never fished anywhere where that’s the case.

Roy Russell is one of those guys who can dispel any myth. I reckon he’s caught a carp on everything you can possibly imagine over the years. When Roy visits Christchurch, for example, he always comes away having caught one out the edge, or off the surface, even when it’s below 10-degrees and blowing an easterly. He was part of the Shimano DVD a couple of years ago at Holme Fen. Whilst the rest of the guys were catching off the bottom in deep water, Roy was catching 40s off the surface.

The first time I met Roy he caught an upper-thirty on a float fished worm at Cuttle Mill during his lunch break. With the roach population as it was at the time, you’d have never thought of taking worms to Cuttle Mill in a million years. Nor would you have used one to catch a fish fizzing up in the margins. That’s what makes Roy so unique, and why Roy has been ‘that guy’ on more than one occasion!

Roy Russell is a great example of ignoring the folklore attached to many lakes. He catches them however he wants by doing what he’s very good at very well, even where others have tried and failed

Conclusion

Nobody flukes their way to a good season. Anybody can turn up at a lake and catch the big ‘un on their first trip, which is often more down to luck than judgment. By the same token, there are guys racking up lots and lots of fish captures but can’t get through to the one they really want – I know which angler I’d rather be! I’ll take the numbers over the flukey ones, but it helps if you can get both. Hopefully, after reading this you’ll be able to really analyse the lake you’re fishing and find a way to turn yourself into the newbie that re-writes the rule book. That way, you can join another new venue and do it all over again!

The Lincolnshire estate lake was one of the hardest lakes I’d fished until the ‘newbie’ came along and showed us all the light!