How to catch commercial carp shallow
Summer is all but here, and that means shallow fishing becomes a key part of every angler’s armoury.
Even on the narrowest of snake lakes, catching up in the water proves itself to be a winner time and time again.
Wirral fishery owner Steve Openshaw has a record as good as any when it comes to this style of fishing, mainly at Partridge Lakes for F1s.
The Lingmere boss, who recently qualified for the Fish O’Mania Final, does a few things different to the norm when it comes to bagging up shallow on casters…
Multiple rigs
“Several top kits are set up to search the depths and these fall into two categories – positive and negative.
“I’ll begin fishing shallow down the middle and try to identify what depth the fish are feeding at. This could be 3ft, 2ft or even a foot deep, but using one rig and sliding the float about wastes time, in my opinion.
“By having a top kit ready to go at a certain depth I simply pick it up and I’m ready to go. To kick off the session I use the negative rig, which features strung-out
No11 shot for a slow fall of the bait. This way I can see where I am getting bites or indications and make changes accordingly.
“When the fish arrive in numbers and I’m getting bites quickly, I swap over to the positive rig that has a bulk of shot as opposed to strung.
“Hookbait is a single caster nicked on to the hook – I’ve not got the patience to fiddle around with bait bands!”
Search the depths
“I won’t begin a session fishing shallow. It takes a good 45 minutes to an hour for fish to find the feed and come shallow. Rarely do you see them swirl, and you could be forgiven for thinking there wasn’t a carp or an F1 in the peg when the truth is they’re most likely to be sat a foot under the surface.
“I begin fishing at 2ft deep and look for indications and bites. If nothing happens it’s likely to be too early to catch here, so I’ll go back to fishing elsewhere in the peg. Knocks on the float or bites mean there are some fish to play with – my job is to find them.
“The first change I make is to go shallower at a foot deep. If this draws a blank I’ll change to the 3ft rig, as the fish may be deeper.
“Basically, if I’m getting indications but not hooking fish I need to change to a different depth until I do hook them!”
Distance to fish
“Most snake lakes are around 14m wide with 5ft to 7ft of water down the middle, so it makes sense to fish this deeper area as there’s more water to draw fish up from.
“This should be around five or six joints of pole out, which not only makes catching quicker but also the feeding. You can fire casters with a good degree of accuracy to this range.
“I’d also have this shallow line set off at an angle down the peg, depending on what the wind is doing. I like to have the swim downwind as this improves presentation and accuracy of feeding.”
Tackle to use
“The negative rig uses an RW F1 Slim float in 4x8 or 4x10 sizes with 0.14mm mainline, a 0.12mm hooklink and a size 18 Guru LWG hook. For the bagging rig lines and hooks are the same, but the float is a 4x8 MAP SF2. I use Orange F1 Hydro for both.
“I slip a piece of float silicone on to the bristle of the bagging rig float. This stops the float eye pulling out when I’m catching well, and prevents tangles.
“I use a very short line between the float and pole so I can hit more bites.”