Summer fishing on many commercials means catching fish up in the water and the humble caster is perhaps the top all round bait for the job. Triana North star Bryan Hawkes is a lover of fishing the shell ‘up in the air’ and Fishingforfun.co.uk joined him at Lodge Farm Fishery for some insights. Lodge Farm Fishery lies on the border between Nottinghamshire and South Yorkshire and consists of five lakes offering a variety of fishing from silver fish to big carp and tench. Match weights to over a hundred pounds of carp have been caught from both the Long Island and Lily pools while the other three pools have produced mixed bags of between sixty and seventy pounds.
We joined Bryan on the Signal Pool which is approximately 40 metres wide, 20 pegs long and is predominantly a small carp and skimmer bream fishery. There aren’t many open matches on the fishery but it is fished by clubs most weekends with winning weights averaging between 30 and 40lb although the match record was broken recently with a weight of 66lb of small carp on luncheon meat fished up in the water.
Like many long, narrow pools it can be affected by the wind with the carp often following it to whichever end the wind is blowing into. This means that setting your stall out entirely for the carp can be a risky strategy. By opting for an all round bait like caster you are keeping your options open and if the carp aren’t having it in your peg you can still catch plenty of skimmers and at 8 to 12oz apiece a good weight of them can be amassed.
I’m going to set up three top threes, two for fishing shallow with number 6 elastic through the top 2 and one for fishing full depth at 5 metres with a medium yellow Triana hollow elastic. It is important when fishing shallow not to fish with too heavy or too tight elastic as you will bounce out of a lot of fish and as most of the fish here are between 8oz and a pound and a half I don’t need to go too heavy.
I use a short strong butt extension in my pole because when you are wedging the pole between your elbow and thigh to both fish and feed you are putting a lot of strain on those end few inches and the stronger butt extension prevents any chance of any cracks or splits. I also use a plug in the end of the pole to prevent any damage when shipping back.
Floats and Rigs I’m going to set up two rigs for fishing shallow, the first consists of a 4×8 Bazzerla PB2 float set at 2 feet deep with a few size 12 shot spread out, while the second is simplicity itself and consists of just 2 feet of line tied directly to the hook, no float and no shot.
I’ll start on the 2 ft rig with the float to see how the fish are biting and what type of fish I’m catching but if they start coming well and are taking it positively I’ll change to the no float rig which, to the purist may seem a bit strange, but can be extremely effective. It is a completely tangle free rig which, if the fish are feeding positively enough to be hooking themselves against the pole top, means you waste no time at all striking and missing false bites and only ever come back with a fish on. As I said not a method to suit all but very effective in the right conditions.
My final rig is a 0.5g float with a bulk and 3 number 12 droppers set at full depth for my 5 metre pellet line. I’ll feed this as a back up line that I can use to rest my shallow line if they get a bit iffy or as a get out of jail line if they won’t feed shallow.
Hooks and Line Obviously as a match angler fishing for Triana I use Triana hooks and line but believe me with items of tackle as important as hooks and line if they weren’t any good I wouldn’t use them.
The important thing about hooks and line for fishing shallow is that they must be light enough to allow the hook bait to behave as closely as possible to the loose feed while being strong enough to land the hooked fish quickly to enable you to build a winning weight. Clearly a 24 to a 0.06 hook length would give the best presentation but you’d be playing your fish for ever while a 16 to a 0.18 would allow you to land fish in no time but you wouldn’t get enough bites so you have to find the right balance considering the bait you are using and the size of the fish you expect to catch.
My choice of line for the majority of my commercial fishing is Potenza which is very strong for the diameter and knots very well. Because the fish aren’t very big here I’m going to use a 0.12 diameter direct to the hook. I could probably get away with a 0.10 but I find when bagging up the stronger line stands up to the strain better and you don’t have to change rigs as often.
Feed and feeding
The key to catching fish up in the water successfully is feeding. Whatever bait you are using you must feed small amounts of it into the swim regularly to encourage the fish to come up in the water and compete for the bait, and when I say regularly I mean anything up to four times a minute to start with to get them there.
What you are aiming for is a situation where you have a shoal of fish just under the surface that when they hear the loose feed hit the water all rush to get a sample before the others do. They don’t have time to inspect the bait and snatch at everything, including your hook bait as soon as it lands which is why when you are fishing with maggots you can catch on chewed up skins and to really prove the point why a team mate of mine was once able to catch 40lb of stockie carp in an hour with just a BB shot on the hook when he was feeding pellets.
I’ve brought 2 pints of casters which when fed 10 to 12 at a time will give plenty for a five hour session. A caster though is a fairly fragile hook bait that won’t last long on the hook so once the fish are feeding I change to a caster sized piece of worm that is much more robust and will catch several fish before it needs changing. I’ve also brought a few maggots as well for the same reason.
For my back up pellet line I’ve bought some pellets from the on site café as they are the only ones allowed on the fishery which I’m going to dampen in lake water while I’m getting ready and then break them up a bit by pushing them through a maggot riddle before feeding them. It is a good way of getting pellet particles and flavour into the peg without feeding whole pellets.
Theory into practice Well that’s the theory of how it all should work out of the way now is the time to actually get started and make it work in practice. I’m going to start by feeding a couple of cups of the riddled pellets onto my 5 metre line to get a bed down. I’ll loose feed the odd handful throughout the session to keep it topped up but with any luck I won’t have to use that line at all because I’ll be catching so well shallow.
My plan for the shallow line is simply to get as many pouches of casters in as I can at the start to draw the fish up in the water to feed. So as soon as I’ve got my rig in the water I fill the pouch with a dozen casters and fire them in before lifting the rig with my knee and laying it in again amongst the feed before filling the pouch again and repeating the process. I can feed up to five times a minute this way.
It is important to be holding the pole right to be able to do this effectively though. You must have your box set at the right level so that you can rest the pole across your thighs and knees and trap it with your elbow. You can then strike by simply lifting your knee freeing up both hands to get on with the serious business of feeding. Keep the pouch in your right hand, fill it with your left then gripping the handle with your left hand extend towards your feed area and release the pouch with your right hand. It takes a bit of practice but is a technique well worth learning for all types of long pole fishing.
It’s taken about five minutes to get my first fish, a skimmer of about half a pound, but I can see the fish are arriving in larger numbers the more I’m feeding by the increase in the number of bites I’m getting and the fact that there is the odd swirl at the feed. I don’t think it’ll be too long before I’m really bagging.
It has been all skimmers so far but they are a good stamp and I reckon that as we come to the end of the first hour I might have 7 or 8 pounds of them. I can see the odd better fish swirling now so it wouldn’t surprise me if a carp showed up soon. What I have noticed though is that as more and more fish have come into the swim I’m striking and missing a lot of bites. I think a lot of them are liners though, fish swimming into the line or float as they fish compete for the feed. What with the missed bites and a couple of fish coming off as I’ve been about to net them I’ve trashed a couple of rigs, a common problem when fishing strung out rigs shallow. It might be time to try the no float rig.
After a couple of ‘rattles’ on the pole tip it has just slapped into the water as my first carp of the day yanked a yard or two of elastic out. That’s the beauty of the no float rig, you don’t strike at any of the knocks and simply wait for them to hook themselves, no time wasting and nothing to tangle.
Although it’s not my favourite method it has certainly done the job today and upped my catch rate. After the first hour of just skimmers I spent the rest of the session catching both small carp and skimmers, mostly on the no float rig but also on the float shallow rig and a few late on on the pellet on the bottom at 5 metres.
I’ve finished with about 40lb of fish of which 95% of them have come in the top 18 inches of water. In the summer months the top two feet are often much more productive than anywhere else so get your catapult elastic stretching and give it a try on your local fishery. You won’t regret it.
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