Why you shouldn't follow the unwritten rules

I’m sure we all have, at some stage or another during our angling lives, heard, or rather been told, that we’ve got to do such and such to catch from a water or that we won’t catch unless we fish in a certain way. I know I certainly have, so this month I’m going to run through five different scenarios I’ve come across and tell you what I did differently to these unwritten rules.

I didn’t feel the need to do this during my time on Burghfield (Picture courtesy of Pat MacInnes)

'You'll have to use a boat to catch the Burghfield Common'

The first subject is boats, and I don’t mean the little remote controlled jobbies, I mean rowing boats. Before I’d fished Burghfield, or even considered fishing it, a couple of my mates, Jim and Paul, were secretly giving it a go and another one of our mutual friends, Rob, who knew a little bit about that water told them that they wouldn’t catch from the mighty Burghfield unless they cheated – i.e. used a rowing boat to tow their rigs out with. Seeing as both Jim and Paul were both very accomplished anglers they took that advice onboard but to begin with they started in the edge and then worked their way out and caught a few. In time they even geared up for long-range casting and become exceptionally good at it. Now, as this was well over a decade before I considered fishing it, I heard most of their stories but was sworn to secrecy about the lake they named ‘Oakmere’.

Spot the cheat! (Picture courtesy of Pat MacInnes)

As mentioned on countless occasions, some years later I found myself taking on the Burghfield challenge and luckily for me I did have some of Jim and Paul’s hard-earned information to fall back on and Rob’s advice about the having to use a boat. Luckily for me, during my first year on that water I managed to find fish and catch them by close-quarters type fishing so I never considered having to cheat. In fact, as is well documented in my book, I spent several years pursuing my target and after catching most of the lake’s residents but not managing to bank the huge common I was after, I did, on several occasions considered taking Rob’s advice. However, every time I thought it through I came up with these three things…

1. I’d possibly hooked the common twice, definitely once from the margins and the other time from 20yds out.

2. I’d come close to catching it
on a fair few other occasions and because I could see what was going on from treetops there was again, no gain from using a boat.

3. It was commonly known (excuse the pun) that a lot of Burghfield anglers had been boating out baits for years and to my knowledge only one of the three known captures had been caught on a lowered rig. Incidentally, that spot could have quite easily have been cast to as it wasn’t even at extreme-range.

With all this going on in my head and also having Ian Welsh (the fisheries manager at the time) on my side, willing to help and wanting me catch that fish, I had full permission to do as and what I had to, to catch it. Now this is where my etiquette came into play and despite how desperate I was to catch that fish, which was taking up so much of my life, I kept reminding myself of the above three pointers and fished the lake to the same rules as everyone else who was fishing it had bought in to.

I’m sure a few of you might say, ‘Sod it, I’d have got the boat out’ but like I’ve just written, etiquette and the three thoughts ruled me and I also don’t like my captures getting slagged off by forum felchers so I caught it my way and enjoyed every minute and footstep of my Burghfield experience.

The Mixer hungry Horton hippos taught me a lesson

'You need to feed small amounts of mixers'

This is one we have all definitely heard at sometime or another, and that’s that the, ‘Carp won’t eat floaters’, or that they are really hard to get them taking and if you do get them feeding, you’ve got to be quick.

If I had to look back at one point of my angling career when I heard this, it would definitely be during my short stay on the famous Horton Church Lake. Most of the lads/regulars had told me how tricky the fish were to get going but from my observations I could see that given the right conditions, the Church Lake residents loved a Mixer but they were simply not getting fed enough to send them into a frenzy. At the time, even I considered a 2.5kg bag of Chum to be a lot of Mixers but over the course of a few days trying with my good friend Nick Helleur, we both managed to get the carp competing. However, it soon became apparent that firing out Mixers with a catapult or making up bucket-loads of PVA bags stuffed full of Mixers and stones from the car park just simply wasn’t enough to get the shoal of Horton hippos competing with one another to get the bites we should have been getting.

Since my short stay on Horton, the Spomb and spod rod have become an important part of my floater kit

Long story short: Terry, like he does, was also quick (quicker than us) to notice that pinging bags out wasn’t enough and one morning broke out his spod rod and sent a raft of Mixers across the front of us both. The result of him doing that can only be described as watching a shoal of piranhas taking Mixer like farmed trout. The result that came from them being fed in that way was my capture of a certain fish that hadn’t been tricked from the surface since it had been stocked into Horton, and that was Shoulders.

Aside from that being a memorable capture and smashing my floater PB by over 20lb, that form of feeding floaters taught me a massive lesson and I’ve replicated it on several other waters where I’ve heard all the above floater folklore and have chalked up even more memorable days floater fishing since.

The way I look at floater fishing now, is that we’d think nothing of Spombing out loads of particles, boilies etc. onto a spot so why not do it with Mixers to gain their confidence as well? And besides, Mixers are on the surface and on the move so they constantly need topping up to keep the momentum going.

The Road Lake’s Dink liked a bit of red bait

'Red baits won't work on here, mate'

On my return to The Road Lake back in 2007, the belief was that these carp didn’t like red baits. Now there’s a bit of a story as to why the regulars believed this, and it was purely because one of the lads who had been successful on there during the first year of the CEMEX syndicate, owned a small bait company and used a flesh coloured boilie. Because he wasn’t only a very good small water angler, he soon had several lads using his baits over the years that followed. Those were the few years between my two campaigns on The Road Lake and understandably (like any water with a baiting team) if that’s what most of the lads were using, I can fully understand why they were confident in that bait and not red fishmeals.

Although I’d had a few years of absence from the water, I still had memories of catching a few on red fishmeals and knowing that Jim Shelley had also done well on a very similar bait to mine on The Road Lake I didn’t give it a second thought about sticking to what I knew had worked for me in the past on my return. The only real difference was that I was now with a different bait company and they were currently testing a fishmeal without Robin Red in it. To me, confidence is everything, and my confidence lay in fishmeals with a bit of the red stuff in them, so much to the bait company’s dismay as they was trying to get away from the red fishmeals trend, I got them to add some into the test bait for me to try out.

‘Nope, they won’t eat a red bait in here, mate’

Luckily that first batch of bait arrived ready for the early June start of the 2008-2009 season and I hit the ground running with the capture of the Zip Linear on the first dawn. It didn’t stop there, as I managed to get in the same swim again for my next few sessions and I banked two other mid-thirties known as 3 Scales and The Pug. After that I had a hit of four fish from another swim and then concentrated my efforts in a swim known as The Dogleg as it controlled the open water where I’d noticed most, if not all of the dawn feeds were going on until I caught my target fish, The Dink in mid-July.

All of those fish were caught on short Chod Rigs fished over a couple of kilos of tightly baited red fishmeals, salt and a few large tiger nuts. The salt was added to the mix purely to keep the fish visiting the area and the nuts were to keep them chomping for as long as possible to prolong bite times.

Unbelievably I managed 13 fish from that tricky little water in six weeks and they all fell to the red fishmeals. Really, with the tight baiting I’d not only gone against the grain with the type of bait I used, I’d also gone against the “You’ve got to spread the baits if you’re going to fish Chods” rule of thumb so it was a double whammy.

In the past I’ve fished slack lines all the time, but over the last few years I’ve found on pressured waters that fishing a tighter line can be more of an edge

'Slack lines will get you more bites'

These days, the in-vogue fashion is to fish our lines as slack as possible no matter how far out in the lake we are fishing. Now don’t get me wrong, I do think that there is a time and a place to fish in this way, but one thing I definitely don’t buy into is the saying that the carp are scared stupid of our lines. The way I look at it is, if they are pressured, they already know what lines are and they sure as hell don’t get a sharp jagged feeling in their mouths from them. Like bait, spots and marker floats, they are used to seeing them so don’t spook off them, and from my own observations I’ve actually seen fish just simply swim around them.

On one water I was warned of the, “They spook off the lines” saying and next morning a group of carp came swimming along the deep, clear margins. Just as they neared my lines I actually lifted a rod from the rest to see what their reaction would be. As it was late April and there were all sorts of overnight build-up on my main line, it resemble a barge rope so I waved it in the coming fishes’ path. What I saw was that the carp just kept on swimming and not one of the small group even twitched like it was spooked by the line. Later that morning I actually caught one from that group of fish and I hadn’t even slackened the lines off, nor had I cleaned them.

The Vicar, one of Mill Lane’s elusive ones, caught after tightening the lines up after getting done

In more recent times on pressured waters like Mill Lane and Frimley’s Pit 3, I’ve actually fished my lines tighter than the norm and I’m convinced by doing this I’ve caught more carp than I’d have done on slack lines.

On Mill Lane, the water was clear and weedy so by fishing lines tight they were pulled down and camouflaged by the weed rather than draped over it like tinsel on a Christmas tree. Another reason why I think I did well during my short time on that water was the fact that my tighter (than the norm) lines helped with bite indication and stopped me from being thrown by the fish. As it’s a water that has a strict barbless hook rule I also think a tighter line helped with my catch-rate. While I caught consistently, other anglers were sitting behind what were dead rods. The first they’d know that they’d been done was when they’d wound in rigs that had been thrown from the spots and quite often been dumped in the weed and they’d not even had an indication.

On Pit 3, if the weed’s down, the water is coloured so I see no point in trying to drop the line to the bottom and hinder bite indication. Being as most of my bites have been just a few bleeps, I feel that again, like I did on Mill, a tighter line has helped me hook and land more fish than I would have if I’d followed the line flapping in the wind fashion. Well, I’m convinced anyway.

We’d use this up against a far margin or island so why shy away from using it in the edge I say

'Pop-ups don't work in the margins'

Although I can turn my hand to most, if not all forms of carp fishing, I don’t claim to be an expert at any of them. One thing I do hear and see a lot of is margin anglers or as they prefer to be known, ‘edge anglers’, reluctant to fish with pop-ups in the margins. My thoughts on this are purely because of the way they have conditioned the fish to feed in such areas and if the baiting strategy was changed they’d find that the fish they’re trying to outwit would be less likely to be ‘slugging it’ on the bottom.

What I’m trying to say is, if you constantly drip-feed micro pellet or small seeds on a postage stamp-sized spot, it’s all very carpy but a fish has to finish feeding before it moves off and straighten the link to hook itself. The way I look at it, if the bait’s spread out and slightly bigger ones are used, the fish are more than likely to be moving between freebies so are therefore easier to hook and also with larger freebies – i.e. nuts and boilies I can get away with using less fiddly bottom bait rigs and even get to use pop-ups.

Sometimes on larger waters the fish can be less riggy so I’ve found I can get away with using cruder tactics like pop-up rigs in the edge, which sometimes have been forced to as the bottom was covered in debris and not glowing like a yellow brick road. Understandably, a lot of that is down to having to react to an edge chance on a big pit quicker than I would on, say, a smaller more pressured water where it sometimes takes days or weeks to build up a carp’s confidence to feed.

Burghfield’s Cut Tail caught from the shelf of an island on a Hinge Rig over scattered boilies

The way I look at this is, on the more pressured, smaller lakes, why follow suit and make things harder for yourself, why not try to condition the fish to feed differently to what everyone else is doing? The point I’m trying to make is if you were casting close to an island you’d still use a pop-up and the edge of an island is also a margin so effectively no different to under our feet. The only real difference is that we’d be more likely to bait it via Spomb, stick or catapult, but that said, we’d be less likely to be as accurate as in the edge so therefore why not reverse this and do it in the edge?

On countless occasions I’ve done this and I’ve caught plenty of carp on pop-ups from the margins and over pellets. The only thing I will say that mirrors what I’ve just written is that the tighter I’ve fed my freebies to the hookbait, the longer I’ve had to wait for a take and quite often with tight baiting, the hookbait’s been the last to go and that’s on both big and small waters.
Another thing I’ve also noticed with the tight baiting of pellets/bits in the edge is that it’s a very ‘one-bite-and-the-swim’s-dead-scenario’. By spreading the freebies out I’ve personally found that I can quite often get more than one chance from a marginal area. I’m not the only one who’s found this out on a tricky water – a few years ago my old fishing mate Punx’s braced The Crop Tail Linear and The Brute at their top weights of 39lb+ and 54lb 1oz respectively – and yes, you guessed it, he caught them both on a Hinged Stiff Rig in the edge over spread baiting.

One of five caught from the edge on a big pit last year. I might as well have used just one rod that weekend

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