The title says it all - this article is all about those absolutely crucial big carp secrets that even having the best baits, rigs and tackle cannot beat; so read on right now and find out more!
Part of the hidden factors in successful carp fishing relate to logic. If you see carp like dogs and think of them as being able to be conditioned in many of the same ways you can see that almost anything we anglers do to make carp scared of our baits makes them harder to catch. It is logical to assume that the majority of anglers are obviously making life very difficult for the carp or they would be much easier to catch! The fact is that more often than not the entire approach of the average carp angler means he is conditioning carp to become harder to catch but how does this happen?
Carp are instinctive individuals programmed to survive by associating anything with danger of threats or with opportunities for safety or extra energy in the form of energy-efficient nutrition. There is not a lot in between these 2 extremes. Once a wary carp is alerted to the possibility that a bait or situation or circumstances it experiences in the past in a swim that may be a threat then it will more than likely feed far more cautiously there - if at all!
Unfortunately, many of the rigs and standard baiting and hook bait approaches that worked even a year ago can now not be the edge they once were when originally applied to a water. Carp communicate in many ways between themselves. You might not believe this but just consider the times you see multiple carp jump out of the water literally simultaneously when nothing has shown on the water all day.
Carp communicate many things by various means, be it body postures and methods and rates of swimming, to releasing hormones just in the same way that they do and we do to attract a mate. In fact it is thought that the mode of action of hormone based stimulants used in baits operate on male fish for instance by making them more aggressive so they approach baits much more positively. Similarly, one might well also postulate that some of the success of those carp anglers using the early hair rigs using female hair benefited from female hormones naturally in the hair.
It is not news to many carp anglers nor anglers of other species either to learn that when a hook bait is rejected as suspicious, even for no apparent reason, other fish in an area are somehow able to locate that same bait and totally ignore it without any testing of it first. This means that moving hook baits maybe every 12 hours is perhaps a better idea than simply leaving them in the same spot all the time in case the bait and rig have been marked and ignored so to speak.
This type of behavior is a common phenomenon in very heavily fishing-pressured waters and has been remarked upon by anglers fishing a wide range of waters from Redmire and busy circuit waters and even to local ponds. Carp fishing for wary fish seems to be more like a chess game where you are attempting to make the fish feel as safe as possible by fishing and using tackle and baits as cunningly as possible, also while avoiding the sometimes unhelpful intrusions of competitive fellow anglers fishing activities and baiting and so on.
I used to fish a small carp water where in the summer the average angler blanked over 70 percent of the time. The hidden factor here was that because it was a small water the fish were all too aware of angling activities and knew whenever anglers where present on the banks. But the anglers themselves did not help themselves. On a small very rich water where the fish have been absolutely hammered by anglers for years, they can respond in the easiest way possible and begin avoiding familiar baits and baiting formats and avoid them altogether, choosing to feed on natural food primarily instead.
This lake was where it took me 6 weeks during June and July of the summer of 2003 to land 60 twenties and 10 thirties which was incredible catch for the time. This year that lake had produced to all the anglers fishing that lake precisely 1 thirty all year. So what on earth has happened that enabled me to achieve my catches?
Well going back to 2003 the fish were very spooky and I decided on a medium-term baiting approach with homemade baits the carp had never experienced ever before and I knew this for certain because I made them myself. Vitally I made them and presented them in ways never tried before their.
However, because the fish were so spooky, even after a full 5 days and 4 nights of consistently baiting up and seeing fish rolling over the baits I did not get a single take. Then on the fifth night one of the biggest fish in the lake took the bait at an awesome 36 plus pounds.
Even at the time this fish took the bait it was very obvious from the fish rolling activity that many of the biggest fish in the lake were over the bait and were filter-feeding on the dissolved substances coming off it, but were not willing to actually pick up whole baits. This was due to the fact they had been hooked on whole baits before and knew to avoid them. Again, this is all too familiar a feature of fisheries today.
I was shocked at the extent of the carp instinct for survival as despite baiting all week and fishing the proceeding 5 days and 4 nights not a single bite came again - that is until the fifth night; when another of the biggest fish took a hook bait and weighed in at over 36 pounds too. Sometimes it can take quite a time for carp to treat new sources of food as safe, but once they do it really reap its rewards for applying it, but it does not mean you will necessarily catch all the biggest fish straight away.
Often big fish let the small fish do bait testing. In fact if I recall correctly when pre-baiting for the biggest carp in the Essex Little Grange water, the 2 anglers only caught the smaller fish when they began fishing a new bait (called the Grange) and it was only after a few months they caught the fish they were after.
Going back to the small lake I previously mentioned catching the 36 pound carp from, I caught one of those fish twice in 2 weeks on the new boilies yet it had come out to no-one else all that year. But more interesting than that was that once I started fishing my hook baits some distance away from my regularly baited spots I was able to catch 2 of the other biggest fish in the lake; both around 38 pounds.
What this indicated to me was that in all likelihood the big wary fish were not getting hooked by the average anglers at all because they were fishing using a smaller picture to fish with based on their own ideas on tackle and baits (often influenced by fashions,) but not influenced by knowledge of exactly what the fish were doing to avoid capture.
Frankly I believe that the wary fish were picking baits up in their lips, taking them away from the baited area, dropping them and leaving them until they thought they were safe, then swallowing them. The amount of single bleeps I got on my bite alarms indicated something like this was going on where my hook baits were often getting picked up then dropped like a stone when the fish felt any resistance.
One of the obvious solutions was to fish away from the baited areas plus give the fish enough rope to hang themselves with so to speak by changing to a more refined rig. This worked like magic and the other 7 thirties plus 60 twenties came along while many anglers failed to catch at all.
But this result was just a feedback loop born of being acutely conscious of the hidden factors involving how fish were responding to any threat represented by signs of angler presence on the bank, any obvious lines in the water, crude baiting, use of familiar fishing tactics that were obviously now history, plus the disciplined regular application of a unique new bait, bait format, and baiting technique all new to the water, and so on. The average angler visiting the water thought it was just your average commercial day-ticket water, saw the photographs of fish caught in the past by many anglers and thought they could lazily empty the place with comparatively very little thought and effort.
The fact is that fishing for big wary carp and aiming to catch them very consistently is not for the faint-hearted and demands attention to detail and effort of thought many average anglers are not willing to stretch to. I notice that the biggest fish came out of Elphicks Lake in Kent recently. Again it was caught on a method that defeated its caution and that actually exploited the behaviours it and other fish had developed in order to feed on bait in safety; i.e. on the drop and mid-water binge-feeding.
The secrets of big carp fishing include studying the fish, their senses, their adapting dynamic behaviours in direct and indirect response to everything we do to catch them, and to exploit what we observe. This is how successful army commanders often beat superior forces - with superior intelligence and information.
You see lots in magazines about new tackle, rigs and baits etc, but to truly exploit such wonders, you really need to analyse what your fish in a water are actually doing, how they are doing it and why they are doing it!
The effort doing this will open many doors to your future success again and again and will leave many of your fellow anglers scratching their heads because such things in pressured modern carp fishing are hidden and not obvious! Even if you happen to have 6 grands worth of gear on the bank it will not guarantee you will catch if you do not understand your fish! (For more information see my website and biography right now!)
By Tim Richardson.
No comments:
Post a Comment