Steve Ringer's: 6 BIG lessons learned in 2017
1) you’ve got to have window feeders in your box
This year I have to admit I’ve spent a lot of time fishing the feeder, and perhaps the biggest lesson I have learnt while doing so is the effectiveness of the window feeder (pictured left).
This was particularly apparent during the Feedermasters final at Bough Beech. As the two days wore on, I worked out that while a cage feeder was great for drawing fish into the swim, when it came to catching them the window feeder reigned supreme.
The way to fish it seemed to be to have 4-6 quick casts on a cage feeder, leaving it out for two minutes at a time to try and pull in some fish, then switch to the window to drag them down to the bottom and catch them.
A window feeder releases very little bait when falling through the water, so once the fish are there it helps to get them down on to the bottom.
As soon as bites tailed off I simply switched back to the cage feeder to start the process again! The only downside to the above lesson is that I didn’t work it out sooner!
2) unclip and move to keep catching
This was something I picked up on during the Daiwa Cup over on the Szeged Rowing Course in Hungary.
The Daiwa Cup is a feeder-only match and I’d had a brilliant start to the day, catching carp quite steadily.
However, with two hours to go the swim totally died. I was clipped up at 16m, and as time ticked away I felt I had to try something different, so I took half-a-metre off the clip, clipped back up, and cast out again.
This meant I was now fishing off the back of my bait and it was a move that worked a treat.
After not having had a bite for 30 minutes I promptly got one within 30 seconds!
I continued to use the little edge for the rest of the match – nicking two carp, then moving another 50cm out.
I think that as the carp became spooky they were simply backing off, so by keeping on the move I was able to pick them off.
I was fortunate enough to catch sufficiently well to win the match and the impressive trophies that came with it!
I’m convinced that if I’d had stayed put on the original line I’d have struggled for a bite for the rest of the match.
3) feed then cast, not the other way around
I picked up this brilliant little trick for bomb and pellet fishing from Paul Holland while we were filming the Fishing Gurus TV series earlier this year.
It’s actually something very simple yet at the same time something I had never done, and as soon as I saw Paul doing it, it made perfect sense to me.
He was feeding first, then casting into the feed circles on the surface – right on top of the loosefeed.
This way he knew that every time he cast out he was fishing right in amid his feed.
This is something I now always do and I’m totally convinced I catch a lot more fish as a result.
If you think about it, it’s a bit like pole fishing. You pot your bait in and then put your hookbait in the middle of the loosefeed. Feeding first allows me to replicate this while I’m fishing the lead.
4) sometimes you have to go find the fish!
It was the first round of the winter league at Guru Makins and I was on Thames Pool, peg 17. Two hours in I had just one carp to show for my efforts and I honestly felt the swim was pretty much empty, so I decided to revaluate my approach.
The only fish I could see moving were past the angler on my right, with nothing moving to the left.
Luckily, the angler on my left was fishing short and down the edge, so if the fish moved they could do so freely along the far bank.
With that in mind I decided to start a new swim across towards the boundary of my peg, as far to the right as I was allowed to go.
To say this worked a treat would be an understatement – I caught straight away in the new swim and went on to win the lake and the zone with 99lb of carp.
Interestingly, I caught only one fish in front of me and to the left, which just goes to show that the fish didn’t move all day.
Had I not gone as close to them as I dared I’d have ended up with very little in the net.
5) bream love a hybrid feeder attack
Ferry Meadows can be very weedy in places, but this trick got me out of jail during the Feeder Masters Super league.
Peg 4 on Overton certainly held bream – the problem was fishing for them! A conventional cage feeder was impossible. It picked up loads of weed on the retrieve, and at the same time I was never sure my hookbait was not covered in the stuff.
The answer was to go against the norm and fish a large Hybrid feeder with the hookbait buried – this way I knew that I would always be fishing effectively.
A Hybrid feeder is a lot more streamlined, so I picked up far less weed, and it made playing fish a lot easier.
I finished second in the match with just over 40lb of skimmers and bream. Had I fished the open end in a conventional manner I have no doubt I’d have caught less than half of what I ended up with.
6) chop up some worms and never give up!
Perhaps the most important lesson I learned in 2017 was to go down fighting! It was Round 3 of the FeederMasters Super League at Carr Mill Dam and with 90 minutes to go our Ringer Baits team was up against it.
Rob Wootton was doing well but brother Phil, dad Geoff and I were all well down our sections.
Not having had a bite for an hour, and with nothing to lose, I put in eight big feeders full of finely chopped worm to try and draw some fish into the swim.
I was then genuinely amazed to get a skimmer first cast after the bombardment! I quickly sent the message out for Geoff and Phil to do the same.
As a result I managed to make a bit of a comeback from probably 12th to seventh in section. Phil nicked a second and Geoff finished with a ninth.
Boosted by Rob’s second place, these scores were enough to win us the team event on the day, when with 90 minutes to go it had looked all over for us.
I think the message here is that all too often we sit there catching very little, having accepted our fate, and are even preparing our excuses for after the match along the lines of how ‘the fish just weren’t there’!
Looking back, there were fish present in my swim – I just had to make them have it rather than wait for them to do so on their own!
