With winter fast approaching most anglers will be packing away their tackle and spending the next three or four months dreaming of warmer weather and the opportunity to catch carp again. If you are one of these anglers then you are missing out on some truly outstanding sport and while the conditions are much tougher the rewards are there to be had if you plan effectively and fish well. There is a common misconception amongst many US Carp anglers that the carp will not feed in cold conditions (20 degrees and lower) however, I can attest from my own experience that this is definitely not the case and you can catch carp in almost any conditions if you apply some basic tenants. I personally have caught carp with several feet of snow on the banks, with the lake or river frozen (having to break the ice before fishing) and I even know of anglers’ ice fishing with success. The only real conditions I avoid are immediately after a snow melt, when the cold snow melting into the river seems to shut everything down for a few days. Apart from that I will continue to fish throughout the depths of winter no matter the conditions. Some of my favorite sessions have been during extreme conditions, when everything is covered in snow and the world is peaceful as no one else is ‘mad enough’ to be out!

The most important factor to me at any time of year is location, but this is even more exaggerated in the winter, as the fish do not move around much. Depending on your geographical location this may or may not be a factor. In the North East the temperatures drop significantly and as such many of the lakes and small rivers freeze over for several months, so targeting these waters is simply not possible. If you are in a warmer part of the country you most likely will not have much of a winter, but some of the same principles still apply. Generally, I will be fishing much shorter sessions (usually in the day) of four to eight hours and as such I will be looking for a water that has a good stock of fish with the chance of lots of action. I will also be looking for a water that does not freeze, so areas where warm water discharges come into the lake or river or areas of faster moving water are ideal. The reason I want to target a water with a good stock of fish is that I am looking for plenty of action as it is much easier to fish in cold conditions when you are active. This may mean sacrificing in terms of size, but I would rather fish for lots of 5 to 20lb fish than just a few bigger fish. If you have an area where you have both numbers and size, then even better.

Once I have identified a good area to fish the next factor is to find where the fish are sitting and ‘wintering’. This may be different to where they are feeding, but it is a good starting point. For example, several years ago I fished a lake where all of my captures came 30 minutes or so before dark in 18 inches of water. The fish were sitting at the bottom of an island marginal slope in 7 feet of water, but then coming up the slope to feed for a very short period of time each day. I can’t stress how important it is to find where the fish are ‘sitting’ as many times the fish will not move around much to feed and a matter of feet may be the difference between action and a blank! While the fish usually like to sit in deeper areas of water, this is not always the case. Personally, I will be looking for an area where the water is a few feet deeper than the average depths. I do not like water deeper than 20 feet as the temperature will be much lower at these depths and the oxygen levels will also be lower. Depths from 6 to 15 feet are ideal.

Having found an area to fish and hopefully identified where I think the fish are sitting I will then start to apply a bait. Ideally, I will have started to fish the area in the late fall and already introduced some bait into the target swim. It does not have to be a great quantity of bait, but in my own experience the baiting approach will determine how active the fish remain throughout the winter. If you only fish single hook baits or with very little free offerings you will still catch fish if you are in the right area. However, if you give the fish a fair amount of ‘free’ food they are more likely to stay more active. This has proven the case on my own waters over the last few winters. As an example, here is my typical approach on a winter session:

• Arrive at the water and introduce either 20 – 30 boilies or a scoop of particles

• Set up and fish either single hook-baits or a small method mix (using a Gardner Bait Bomb)

• Recast every 20 minutes or so, searching the area for either takes or line bites

• Once the fish are located, concentrate on the area with the method mix

• Introduce a handful of bait after every 2 or 3 fish

• MOST IMPORTANTLY, introduce plenty of bait when leaving, to give the fish a free feed and keep them active and searching for food. I usually give them around half a kilo of bait at the end of each session.

This approach has proved successful over the last couple of winters with many sessions producing a dozen or more carp. It is even more effective if you can introduce free bait to the fish two or three times per week. This may be more realistic if you are fishing the area in conjunction with other anglers as you can keep more bait going in which will up the catch rates for all of you.

Next up is what bait to use. Not all baits are good winter choices and understanding what makes a good winter bait is important for long term success. In the next part of the article I will discuss some good winter choices for bait and also how refining your rigs and end tackle can pay dividends.