The cold winter has come a knocking. With heavy snow, ice and temperatures that make you question your sanity when out on the bank, the carp are also affected and consequently change their feeding patterns. Fish will evaluate the amount of energy required to move to a bait, over the amount of energy it will obtain from a bait as their metabolism slows down and they go into a more dormant winter mode. It is of course neccesary to change your tactics accordingly in order to still catch in these tough conditions.

One way to approach carping in winter is to fish single hookbaits (flouro white is my favorite color as the light conditions are low) either alone, over a handfull of free offerings or with a small pva stick mix. The advantages of this approach are that you can recast regularly (2-3 hours is my pereferd time period) without moving away from a baited area, you might land on an area where fish are held/shoaled up and you will not be overfeeding the fish at a time when they are eating less. Location is unarguably the most important aspect of carp fishing regardless of season and temperature, and in winter this is a crucial element in saving those blanks.

I can remember two January sessions in England where a friend and I fished the Monument and the single pop up approach worked well to save a blank. I was fishing maggots using a pva bag of live and dead maggots in a corner swim where i knew fish held up in a crater two feet lower than the rest of the lake. I had caught two fish and the rest of the lake was blanking. With two hours of a 36 hour session left I told my mate to ditch the pva bag as with it he could not cast to the centre of the lake where the fish held up with it on. He reluctantly did this and fired a single flouro bait out into the middle of the lake. Half an hour later he landed one of the lakes rare commons and a lake record common pb at the time. Like many anglers he was reluctant to do this, believing that the free baits in the bag would add to the attraction around his hookbait and draw fish in. However, firstly he was 40 yards away from where the fish were held up, and secondly, surely one glugged hookbait smells stronger than ten unglugged baits! The following year and January rolled around again. The same thing happened, he slung out another single in the 34th hour and saved another blank, amazingly with another pb lake record common (unbelievable considering there were only about 4 commons in there and 200+ mirrors).

 

There are many ways to increase you chances of catching when using single hookbaits, including glugging before casting, putting pop ups into the glug so they harden and take on the flavour (beware this can reduce the pop up time of the bait), glugging cork/foam and inserting that into a bait. However, my winter tip regarding glugging your hookbaits is to pour a very small amount of the glug into your pop up tub (about a cm’s worth) and then shake the tub for a minute so every bait is slightly coated with the glug. Leave the pop ups to sit in the tub and over the next few days the glug will dry and create a gloopy skin of attractant on the bait. This approach will release attractants slowly, and will allow your pop ups to remain in the water for longer than if you drown them in glug.

 

 

.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I am more than happy to fish a single bait like this on its own and recast every few hours, or to spread a handful of baits over the top also. Just be careful not to overfeed the carp in this weather. Once the bait has gone in you cant take it out, so fish for one bite at a time. One bite in winter is a result!

 

 

 

 

Be safe, warm and lucky this winter!

Craig “Brit” Parkes