Out of the starter blocks

Having thought about the problems the blanket weed was presenting me at the shallow pit, and based on my previous experiences with particles I decided that it was time to adjust my approach away from PVA bags, PVA sticks and other similar methods of shielding the hook and jump on the 'Choddie' band wagon! I'm not normally a follower when it comes to tactics and methods - I like to beat my own path and learn from my own experiences, be they good or bad - but in my mind the advantages of the presentation on a chod rig really were perfect for the situation I was finding myself in.

As I had found previously I could easily clear areas in the weed by using particle, obviously I could have raked the weed as well, but due to the crystal clear water, and depth of the lake I knew the fish rarely visited the margins during the day at this time of year, so I would be gambling on marginal spots in the evening. I opted to create feeding areas rather than fish existing known spots or busy swims - this had a two-fold advantage of giving me a greater chance of always getting in my chosen swim, and also being able to keep my captures relatively secret.

I opted to just use hemp as my particle, you really can’t beat it as a fish attractor and I always fish with confidence over a bed of hemp as it’s irresistible to most fish, which would mean all the lakes residents would be on my spots pushing back the blanket weed, and exposing the lake bed. Also with my decision to change to chod rigs it meant that even if the weed was not fully cleared I could be relatively confident that the hook bait and hook would remain weed free and fishing effectively even if my casts did not land exactly on the spots I was trying to create when casting at night.

Finally on the 9th of April I had my first screamer and after a great scrap I had finally landed my first carp of the year - a very pretty common weighing in at 19lb 60z. The weight was largely irrelevant at this stage - I was just over the moon that my campaign had started to produce carp, and that my new bait was working. However the fish had not fallen from the hemp baited spot, it was from my rod on an island margin baited with only boilie. The amount of line bites on my hemp patch did however suggest that there were fish in the area and that it was only a matter of time before I started catching.

New bait and realistic targets

Since coming back to carping, and even before I took time away from the sport I have always been a huge fan of particle fishing. I'm not sure if it’s my love of spodding out buckets of bait, or the great results I've experienced in the past or even the relatively cheap price and variety of particles, or maybe even the good feeling from the effort/reward equation I get as I always prepare my own particles but something always brings me back to a big bucket of sloppy seeds!

The problem is I don’t want to be a one trick pony, and since I returned to carping and it seems to be fashionable to 'spod the granny' out of waters with tuna and salt mixes! As I've said before I like to forge my own path and I don’t like to be doing the same as every other chap on the lake.

this lead me to the conclusion that it was time I really got back into boilie fishing, especially as I intended to target larger carp rather than high volumes of carp - also the lack of preparation involved in boilie fishing better suits my plan to fish back to work overnight sessions in the week.

It appears every magazine you open and every way you look these days in the world of fishing you get Nash, Mainline or similar thrust in your face and touted as the most reliable way to catch carp - the problem is unless you don’t really need to worry about money there is no way you can fish effectively with boilie's 4 or 5 nights a week and continue to pay £10+ for a kilo of boilie’s.

Don't get me wrong the bait works, I've caught plenty of carp on Mainline and Nash bait in the past - infact an old favourite of mine was Carp Company Caviar and Cranberry, the problem is at this time I cannot afford to use their bait in the way I want to. My intention is to put a lot of my chosen bait into my 2 pits in the spring and summer in the hope that I can get the fish to view it as a safe and reliable food source - this meant I needed a quality food bait, that I could afford to get in amounts of 10kg or more at a time.

Fortunately I was pointed towards an excellent bait company called 'Active Bait Solutions' on a forum I like to frequent. These guys were able to offer me bait 10kg a time at half the price of 'high street' brands! On top of that the bait is really high quality and has been used for many years, to catch many large carp.

With a new boilie chosen for the coming spring and summer I was happy to put it into the lakes in large quantities and begin my own baiting campaign. The shallow pit especially is a known boilie water and if I can start catching on the bait then I know my friends who fish the water will soon change to my chosen bait too.

Changing the subject completely! I felt that it was important that I also set myself some realistic targets this year. Both the pits I’m fishing have a decent head of 20lb fish, with both having around 8 know 30's, and both have the chance to produce a 40lb common at the right time of year.

Now that we don't have a traditional closed season on still waters I think my targets should run annually, because it better represents the cycle of fishing in a year. I've decided that I'm going to aim to catch 20 20lb carp, one of which should be a winter 20 - I would also like to bank my first 30lb fish. It seems that a 30 isn’t that impressive these days, but before I quit fishing for university a 20 was a real result and a 30 was the fish of a season, if not the fish of a few seasons!! It seems these days most lakes have 30lb fish in them and 20's are not even that special - well to me they are - infact all carp are, and I intend to photograph all the carp I catch this year irrespective of their weight.

Hopefully I will have to re-evaluate my targets as the season goes on, but for now this gives me a good benchmark to aim at, and should keep me focused even when the weather turns miserable!

It may be shallow, but its still hard work

The first few sessions I had in late February and early March on my new ticket were largely unsuccessful, in the previous year the weed had grown to the surface across most of the lake, and although you couldn't see it anymore after a very harsh winter - it was still there, and there didn’t really seem to be too many noticeable holes or gravelly areas to target.

In all honesty I really didn't fish to the best of my abilities in the time I spent there, and I think I applied far too much bait, which in turn attracted the bream - in fact it became a running joke with a friend that I was a bream fisherman!

The fish that were coming out at this time were very few and far between and were coming to lightly boilie baited areas with single pop-ups, quite often flouro's. In retrospect my particle approach really wasn't the way; especially as it was not something I had tried and tested the previous year.

The other thing that the people braving the conditions seemed to be using was the 'Chod rig' this was really something new to me - although I was aware of helicopter rigs, 'Choddies' didn't exist to my knowledge the last time I was into carp fishing. In my mind I didn't like the thought of not being directly attached to a fish, and the angle that the rig/lead creates was an issue to me.

One thing that I was doing properly in my mind was putting in the time. I think I managed to get at least 10-15 nights on that pit before the end of March, and I had an idea of where the fish were coming out, what times of day were best for a bite, and what the few regulars that were brave enough to fish in the cold were doing. I even managed to catch a Pike at the end of one blank session!

Another thing that was working to my benefit was a side effect of my particle approach and 'bream fishing' I would often return to my old swims and find that the areas I'd been fishing were now hard or silty bottoms, but more importantly weed free! This would turn out to be an important discovery and combined with another revelation and some better weather would play a part in kick starting my season.