Autumn Choices with Keith Jones: Although I’ve had quite a productive spring and summer, as is often the case at this time of year I’m thinking about making some subtle changes to my bait and end tackle. I’m moving onto new waters, so one or two aspects might need more of a radical re-think too.

It’s getting to that time of year again, night time temperatures are plummeting, water temperatures are on a downward slide and there are lots of changes happening below the surface. During the daytime the sun is traveling lower in the sky and the hours of day light are shorter too. From an angling perspective it’s all good, as many of these changes will be eventually interpreted by carp as signs that mean its time to go on the feed and build themselves up in preparation for leaner times ahead. I say eventually as the fishing seems a bit slow or patchy on many waters at the moment, but I’ll come back to that shortly.

The new 9ft and 10ft Nash Scope rods seem to be causing quite a stir at the moment. I’ve done a lot of fishing since the spring with 9ft rods and despite some early scepticism I’m now sold on the concept. I can cast as far as I need to and I can’t think of any situations when the shorter rods put me at any real disadvantage, in fact they’ve often provided an edge. The unique retractable handles on the Scopes mean that two rods, Scope net, Sirens and other related stuff can all be packed in the purpose designed Sling which also suits my hyperactive mobile approach. The Scope concept and other radical ideas in the pipeline from Nash could well change the way many of us fish forever!

Part of my responsibilities at Nash involves keeping in regular contact with sponsored anglers fishing different waters up and down the country. A slow down in the fishing seems to have been a common problem in many areas, but if you take a flick through the weekly mags at the moment you’ll find that some fisheries continue to fish well, in some cases some anglers are continuing to catch well whilst many struggle. I’m sure this will be just a temporary blip as the fish take time to acclimatise to a changing environment.

The seasonal changes I’ve mentioned encourage the carp to adopt new patrol routes or settle into new comfort zones, they might even be searching out new natural feeding spots. It’s probable that the anglers that have continued to catch are the ones that have been first to understand the changes and adapt to them. And it’s also worth remembering that the anglers who are not so in tune with their waters may have to endure a more prolonged lack of action!

One thing I often do throughout the year when first dropping into a swim is to dig out my Refresh Water Bucket and scoop out some water from the margins to see what’s available to the fish in the way of natural food. The bucket is used to set up hook baits too. One thing I have noticed recently is a significant drop in the number of creatures suspended in the water. Not that many weeks ago on one particular water, I counted upwards of ten different items of food swimming and hoping around in my bucket, but now despite making several scoops I can only identify one type. Interestingly though, if I scoop out some silt or lake bed sludge with my baiting spoon there’s a significant increase in life living on or in the bottom.

So does this mean its time to drop the Zig Bugs? I used to think of zig fishing as more of an opportunist tactic, for sure there have been situations when I’ve been switched on enough to notice some kind of fly hatch or other natural occurrence and switching to a mid water bait has produced a bonus fish. But zigs also work when the water is as sterile as tap water and devoid of anything alive and edible and just like floater fishing, there will be opportunities to catch on them throughout the colder months. Although we think of carp as bottom feeders they do actually spend most of their time throughout the year anywhere and everywhere but on the lake bed. Zigs will catch twelve months of the year and I’ve caught or seen carp taken off the top for ten months of the year out of twelve, December and January are the only two exceptions to that.

Despite the potential offered by zigs, the majority of carp anglers will spend all their time fishing hard on the bottom. If you do that, the depth of water you choose to fish in will, in my opinion be far more crucial than it was back in the summer.

For example if carp are sitting at say five feet below the surface in any depth of water, a bait fished on the bottom in the same depth of water will most probably provide the best chance of a bite or two.

On one of the waters I’m going to tackle this winter, during October last year many of the fish started to shoal up in one particular deep area, by November I think most if not all the carp were sat at about five feet below the surface in an overall depth of about sixteen feet. The lake seemed to switch off until mid to late February with very few fish being caught. I’m already watching that area carefully and thinking of ways of combating the problem, I’m hoping that reasonable quantities of a well proven winter bait applied on a regular bases will solve that problem but only time will tell.

All Nash Bait boilies will work very effectively throughout the winter but there are still some baits around from other sources that don’t so some anglers will have been thinking of making a change through the autumn. Deciding when to make the change can be difficult. Some popular baits will for sure loose some or all of their effectiveness as temperatures drop, for example this will happen with oily pellets and poorly formulated boilies when the water temperature drops below 10 degrees centigrade or possibly even sooner. Using a 50/50 mix of a summer and winter boilie during early autumn is a well proven tactic that allows the new bait to become established, I can think of a number of very successful anglers who do this very effectively.

Thankfully, all Nash boilies are well proven ‘all seasons’ carp catchers so for me the problem doesn’t exist but even so, using boilie mixtures is still a favourite tactic. Nash Top Rod boilies are available in both frozen and shelf life options and around this time of year I switch predominantly to shelf lifes.

Which Nash boilie should I choose? This is a question I’m being asked a great deal at the moment, but rather than choose one I recommend that you use several different ones mixed together. I like to use a mix of Top Rod frozen and shelf lifes with a few brightly coloured Classic boilies added too. On those tricky days when the fish are proving difficult to tempt, putting out a mixture of different baits and experimenting with different hook bait options allows me to really angle for those fish. This often provides a bite when a more one dimensional approach will fail.

Many anglers seem to think that shelf lifes are inferior to frozen boilies which is a big mistake, I admit there are some horrible shelf life baits available from some sources, personally I wouldn’t feed these to any fish. But Nash shelf lifes have a high food value particularly well suited to the carp’s winter dietary requirements and they don’t contain chemical preservatives or other nasties so there are no quality issues to worry about. The baits are coloured and contain slightly higher levels of flavours, Palatants and other tweaks that provide a cold water edge, in essence, winter carp just prefer them. I know some will be shaking their heads but over many years of testing both myself and Nash Bait’s Gary Bayes who has probably forgotten more about bait than I’ll ever know have reached similar conclusions.

Boilie paste is the other item I wouldn’t go fishing without from now on, un-boiled paste emits massive water born food signals and will often be picked up by carp that have previously ignored all other baits.

In reverse to the boilies, I use our shelf life paste in the summer, it’s a bait bucket essential and a permanent addition with no worries of it going off. It does work well in the winter but I’ve found that the frozen paste is more water soluble which definitely provides an edge in cold water, in fact the colder it gets the more attractive it seems to be.

Not much will be changing here, I use a size 8 Fang X hook for all my bottom bait fishing throughout the twelve months of the year, usually matched to a 14mm balanced snowman hook bait. The home made hook baits are specially made so that the hook sits flat on the lakebed and the double bait just hovers above it. This hides the hook and also makes an easy mouthful to suck in. I carry a range of different coloured top baits to experiment with when the fish are proving hard to tempt.

Diffusion rig components virtually vanish against any lakebed colour or shade and provide another important edge at any time of the year so there’s no need for changes there. But as the weed dies away and lead release is less important I’ll be swopping back to a free running lead to maximise bite indication.

I’m really looking forward to this winter. There’s something special about sticking your head out of a sleeping bag early morning after a cold and frosty over nighter. I get a real buzz from camping out in a bleak wintery landscape, I also really enjoy short day sessions, but I always travel ultra light for these and when the tea supplies run low so does the enthusiasm and I often end up going home. So my one other crucial purchase this week will be a much bigger flask!