Talk Angling fishing chat and tackle advice - View Single Post - A groundbait approach on a difficult water?

yoda · 27th August 2006, 08:34 PM

I fish a venue which is good pleasure fishing (70lb bags on pellet corn etc) but completley changes in a match. It is predominentley stocked with carp which are mostly in the 8oz to 1lb 8oz bracket with the odd one about 3lb, and there is a reasonable head of tench (well, they are a bonus fish, usually a good handful come out in each match and they are mostly 4lb or over, but rarely more than one per angler is caught.) There is little in the way of quality silver fish, mostly they are "plips" but the occasional skimmer shows up.

In a match situation, the fish shut up shop and there can be some abysmal winning weights. Fishing close in and down the edge rarely works, although odd fish can be picked up. Fishing shallow doesnt work because there arent enough fish to compete when there is a whole load of anglers on the lake. When i fish it, i often cup in say half a cup of 3mm pellet with a little corn at 11 or 13m, leave it for a while as i check my inside swims (might pick up one or two early fish but thats all for the duration of the match) and then i go out and have a drop in on pellet or corn. Usually 3 or 4 of the stockie carp will follow, and then i refeed in a similar way and struggle for bites. I also dont get bites if i dont refeed. Its about 6ft deep at 13m, and from 8m it steadily slopes up getting gradually shallower right out to 16m and beyond.

I read an interesting article by adam wakelin on fishing a positive groundbait approach for slivers in winter. It got me thinking, maybe doing this would work on the venue i fish, because then i could feed once really heavily (e.g six to eight jaffas full of squats, caster and pellet) and then just sit over it all day without topping up, or at least not for several hours. Does anyone think this approach would be too positive for such a venue, where 30lb would be a really good weight usually (last match won with 20!.) Do you understand my thinking that feeding once heavily might let the fish settle a bit and so i could just catch whatever drifted in throughout the day rather than keep forcing the peg and trying to attract more fish? I may be totally wrong but its something that other people dont do, especially putting in squatts which i think should hold the carps interest when they do turn up. I would fish over this with maggot, or if i could bitted out then i would switch to probably corn.

So go on, whats your opinion on that for an approach? I need to find a way to get a balance so that it will work if my swim fishes well or there is a slightly larger weight on the cards, but also i can just fish it out if the match turns out to be a struggle as it so often does.

27th August 2006, 08:34 PM	#1 (permalink)
yoda Club Member Join Date: Aug 2006 Posts: 7	A groundbait approach on a difficult water? I fish a venue which is good pleasure fishing (70lb bags on pellet corn etc) but completley changes in a match. It is predominentley stocked with carp which are mostly in the 8oz to 1lb 8oz bracket with the odd one about 3lb, and there is a reasonable head of tench (well, they are a bonus fish, usually a good handful come out in each match and they are mostly 4lb or over, but rarely more than one per angler is caught.) There is little in the way of quality silver fish, mostly they are "plips" but the occasional skimmer shows up. In a match situation, the fish shut up shop and there can be some abysmal winning weights. Fishing close in and down the edge rarely works, although odd fish can be picked up. Fishing shallow doesnt work because there arent enough fish to compete when there is a whole load of anglers on the lake. When i fish it, i often cup in say half a cup of 3mm pellet with a little corn at 11 or 13m, leave it for a while as i check my inside swims (might pick up one or two early fish but thats all for the duration of the match) and then i go out and have a drop in on pellet or corn. Usually 3 or 4 of the stockie carp will follow, and then i refeed in a similar way and struggle for bites. I also dont get bites if i dont refeed. Its about 6ft deep at 13m, and from 8m it steadily slopes up getting gradually shallower right out to 16m and beyond. I read an interesting article by adam wakelin on fishing a positive groundbait approach for slivers in winter. It got me thinking, maybe doing this would work on the venue i fish, because then i could feed once really heavily (e.g six to eight jaffas full of squats, caster and pellet) and then just sit over it all day without topping up, or at least not for several hours. Does anyone think this approach would be too positive for such a venue, where 30lb would be a really good weight usually (last match won with 20!.) Do you understand my thinking that feeding once heavily might let the fish settle a bit and so i could just catch whatever drifted in throughout the day rather than keep forcing the peg and trying to attract more fish? I may be totally wrong but its something that other people dont do, especially putting in squatts which i think should hold the carps interest when they do turn up. I would fish over this with maggot, or if i could bitted out then i would switch to probably corn. So go on, whats your opinion on that for an approach? I need to find a way to get a balance so that it will work if my swim fishes well or there is a slightly larger weight on the cards, but also i can just fish it out if the match turns out to be a struggle as it so often does.