Paste Fishing With Rob Hitchens

Despite the fact that paste accounts for hundreds of ton up bags of carp, many anglers are scared to try it, thinking it too finicky and frustrating a method to waste time on. We asked paste maestro Rob Hitchens to show us how it should be done, on a venue where he once won 40 matches on the trot with the method, Hayfield Lakes.

Ironically, before the feature began, Rob slipped on a piece of wood, and fell head over heels into the lake. Emerging sodden from the murky depths, he recalled, “I got drenched the last time I fished here as well- when I won the Fishomania!”

As the owner of Yorkshire Baits, Rob obviously uses their products himself, as he has been heavily influential in creating them. For our feature, Rob decided to fish peg 46 on Danni’s lake. He used a bag of the cat meat flavoured ground bait which he mixed into quite a firm paste.

“I don’t entertain all this nonsense about using super soft paste. It just makes life a lot more complicated, as you have to ship out so much more carefully, and when it’s on the bottom the hook pulls out in no time. I honestly believe I will catch more on a firmer paste.”With Rob’s record with the bait, who would disagree?

Rigs

Having sorted out his paste mixture, Rob moved on to rigs. Again, simplicity was at the heart of Rob’s approach, with 0.17 Powerline tied direct to a size 10 Preston PR27 hook. In terms of shotting, a simple bulk of No8′s 18 inches above his hook was his choice , taking his one gram Preston Durafloat down to a point where the body was submerged, but the full length of the bristle remained above the water.

“It’s very important to shot your rig like this for a number of reasons. Firstly, leaving 18 inches between your shot and hook means carp can feed on the bottom comfortably without brushing against your shot and causing liners, which may happen if you had, say a bulk and two droppers.

Secondly, you must shot your float down so that the full length of the bristle is showing. The weight of the paste should then be used to take bristle down to around one inch. I know a lot of people favour having no shot down the line and using the weight of the paste alone to cock the float. I think this is wrong however, as the float is constantly working to pull the hook out of the paste. All this does is waste your time, as you are constantly shipping back to re bait when with a properly shotted float you would still be in the water and fishing.”

He opted to fish black Hydrolastic through two sections of his pole, though he also had red hydro set up in case the stamp of fish really improved, and he was bagging.

Plumbing Up

With his tackle sorted, Rob showed me how he would go about plumbing his swim. “I like to fish paste on a bit of a slope, so that I can drag it up the incline to set the float properly. There is no point going too far out, just a nice comfortable distance to make shipping in and out easy. The lake bed in front of Rob was a steady slope that carried on right past the end of his pole, so he decided to fish at six metres where he had around 10ft of water.

With his pole line sorted, Rob began setting up his feeder tackle. He used a 12ft Spro medium heavy feeder rod, with a Spro reel and 6lb maxima mainline. He attached a free running cage feeder on the line, connecting his hook length with a Korum leger stop. This again was 0.17 Powerline, though he opted for a smaller size 14 PR27 hook, with a Korum paste coil to present the paste below the hook. “I find a smaller hook achieves better penetration when hair rigging” said Rob.

For his groundbait, Rob mixed up the remainder of the bag of Cat Meat Groundbait that he had used to make his paste, including generous helpings of hemp and cat meat pellets in the mixture as well.

The Session

With his preparation completed, it was time for Rob to begin fishing, and he set about feeding his short line. He put in three big pole pots full of hemp and pellet, spreading the bait over a yard square of water “Its important to get some bait on the deck to draw a few fish into the peg” he said.

Then it was straight out on the paste feeder, and Rob was into fish straight away, taking a brown goldfish as soon as his bait hit the bottom. It was a fish a chuck from that point forward, with liners as soon as his feeder hit the water, the fish banging into it all the time. He even caught one fish on the drop! “The main thing with paste feeder fishing is not to strike at bites, just wait for the rod to be pulled off the rest. Even what look like bites are invariably liners” he explained.

Although it was a bite a chuck on the paste feeder, the stamp of fish was small probably only averaging 1lb. With around half an hour of the session gone, Rob decided to leave the feeder and have a look on his pole line.

On the Pole Line

He shipped his pole out further than the point at which he had plumbed up, and waited for it to settle. Obviously the weight of the paste pulled the float straight under.

He then lifted the float up, and held it just out of the water, so that the paste was coming up the shelf. He then lowered it down again, so that approximately one inch of his bristle was above the surface of the water. This allowed Rob to read bites perfectly.

“What I am looking for, is fast movements on the float. Any slow pulls to one side, or even when the float goes down slowly are invariably liners. A bite will be a lightning fast downward motion. This only occurs when a fish sucks the bait off the bottom and into its mouth. As I say, such bites can often be like lightening, so you have to be like a coiled spring when fishing this method.

Although today I have forgotten to bring one, normally for this style of fishing I like to use a pole support, such as the PUPPS system, as this enables me to have hands free to feed, while still being able to hit a bite at any time.”

From the moment Rob’s float hit the water, there was loads of movement on it. It was constantly bobbing, moving to one side and lifting, as fish nosed the bait or banged into the line. He read the float perfectly however, waiting until a quicker movement prompted him to strike, and I would say 70% of the times he struck, there was a fish on.

Playing The Fish

The way he played the fish was relatively straight forward; he simply shipped back to his top kit, and played the fish from there. Odd times, fish would take off dramatically to one side, if this happened Rob would simply wait until they came back before breaking down.

After around an hour of fishing his pole line, bites seemed to get cagey, and he judged it was time to top up. He put another two big pots of hemp and pellet over the line, and dropped straight back in to find that the fish had returned instantly, taking his biggest fish of the day, a ghost carp of around 12lb immediately after refeeding. It really was a bite a chuck, as long as Rob kept the bait going in the fish kept coming.

It was awesome to watch the way Rob was operating, the smoothness and efficiency, with which he shipped out his paste, lowered the bait in so the float settled perfectly, and seconds later lifted into a fish. I could see how he earned the title ‘bagging machine’.

Rob fished for just over four hours, and with me constantly interrupting to take photos, and even having a brief spell with his gear myself, he wasn’t exactly at maximum efficiency. He still managed to put an estimated 150lb in the bag however. It took three of us to lift his net up the bank, there were a lot of 5- 10lb fish, which proves the better stamp of carp which are often attracted to feed on the paste. Just imagine what sort of weight he could have had if he’d been able to focus for a full six hours!