Fishing for skimmer bream in deep rivers with Mark Pollard

February 28, 2017 Richard Grange

We’ve had a funny winter as far as fishing on rivers is concerned, with no real floods and the extra water that comes with it, combined with short spells of mild and then freezing cold weather that adds up to testing conditions for the angler and a less than enthusiastic response from the fish!
Roach in particular have some weeks been ten a penny and then absent a few days later but one fish that’s always willing to have a go, even in clear, cold water is the skimmer. On some venues they’re a bonus but on others, they are your main weight-building fish and can give you 15lb to 20lb in a match – provided you fish correctly for them of course.
Winter skimmer fishing on a river is nothing like summer when you can bosh the bait in and fish very positively with rigs and big baits. Scaling down is needed and a different approach to how you feed must be adopted but you’ll still need a fair bit of groundbait. The idea is to tempt the fish into having a go every time you feed as opposed to introducing a big bed of bait and fishing over this all-day.
The River Ouse through Ely Town Centre is stacked with skimmers and although it isn’t a match venue as such, it bears a strong resemblance to many deep, slow flowing town centre venues that are popular in winter. With over 15ft of water on the pole line and a variable flow, it certainly isn’t a river for fishing on auto pilot as can happen when going after skimmers in warmer weather!

Pole V feeder
The first thing to consider is whether to fish the pole or feeder? You’ll catch on both of course and is such deep water, it can be tempting to pick up the rod but taking on 15ft-plus isn’t as hard as it seems provided your rig is heavy enough and the groundbait mix is stiff enough to get straight to the bottom. The pole also offers far superior presentation, allowing me to cover more of the swim and inch the float through the peg gently, tempting the fish into taking the bait. In contrast, the feeder only lets you fish the hookbait in one spot and I think you miss out on a lot of baits my limiting yourself this way.

Finding the right spot
I wouldn’t bother messing about with fishing on a shelf or a slope in winter. Bream and skimmers always prefer a flat bottom in the maximum depth and at Ely, there are two shelves before you find the main depth. I then fish just past this final shelf where the flow is at its steadiest.

Floats - go as light as possible
So in deep water, you think it’d be right to fish a big float, say of around 3g but that’s actually not the case! I’m a big fan of fishing as light as I can get away with because I think this not only produces better presentation and offers less resistance to a fish when holding the rig still but you also miss fewer bites than using a heavier float. So in my Ely peg, which has a reasonable flow, that means a 2g MP Roach using an olivette and four No 11 droppers underneath strung out to cover the final few feet of the swim. If the river was flowing more slowly, I may even consider dropping down to a 1g float.

How far overdepth?
River bream fishing does involve setting the rig overdepth but not massively in winter when bites can be very shy. I’ll plumb up and then slide the float a couple of inches up the line and that’s about it. This then allows me to inch the rig through the peg without it dragging under every time. If I was wanting to go any more overdepth, then I would be essentially aiming to hold the float dead still and I think you’d be better off fishing the feeder or a pole feeder in this instance.

Canal-style hooks
There’s a bit of a nod to canal fishing with my hooks, lines and elastics and the first element is the hook, a Kamasan B511 in size 16. This is a superbly fine, light hook that’s still capable of landing a bonus perch or bream and provided that the pole elastic is soft enough, there will be no dramas from bumped fish or bent hooks! I rig up a No 6 Matrix Solid elastic through the top three of the pole and set it soft so that plenty comes out and it acts as a great shock absorber. Likewise, line is 0.14mm Matrix Power Micron to a hooklink of the same material in 0.10mm. Using a big float doesn’t mean that you have to use big hooks and thick lines too! I then have around 1.5m of line between float and pole tip to let me run the float down the peg when needed.

Cup in – don’t ball it!
Let’s look at groundbait now, perhaps the most important part of any type of skimmer fishing. Before I explain the mix, I think it is important to impress that cupping the balls of feed in rather than throwing them is vital. Throw several balls in and you cannot say with any certainty, how accurate you have been. This is fine in summer but not on a cold winter’s day. My aim is to create one spot where all of the groundbait ends up and from this I can then work around the area, either holding the rig tight on top of it or running it below or above the spot.

The magic skimmer mix
Now onto the mix. This needs to be heavy enough to go straight to the bottom in 15ft of water and I go for Dynamite Baits Frenzied Hemp Black, Silver X Roach and brown crumb in a ratio of one part Hemp Black to half a part of the other two mixes. The finished groundbait is not mega sticky to the touch but if mixed wet enough, will hold together and go straight down. To this I add a smattering of casters, dead pinkies and hemp, which skimmers love. Hookbait is simply double dead red maggot with one hooked through the flat end and the other through the pointed end.

When to top up
At the start I will pot in five balls of groundbait and from there I see how the fish respond. When the bites fade I will pop in another ball of if nothing is happening, another goes in after 20 minutes and this then sets the pattern. You can get through a lot of groundbait this way so I mix up at least three kilos for a match. What I have found in winter is that you get an initial flurry of bites from that opening hit of bait before it then goes dead. The fish are still there but they’re not feeding with any amount of positivity. You need to give them another ball to get a few of them to move back over the feed area and have a go. Typically, you can expect to catch two or three skimmers or get half a dozen indications before you need to feed again.

Work out how the fish want it
Hold the rig still or run it through? There’s no definitive answer to this and it can change from day to day. I begin by inching the rig over the groundbait area very slowly at around half the pace of the flow as this tells me immediately where the fish are in the peg – they could on top of the feed or well below it. If I catch on top of the feed then the sensible thing to do is hold the rig back on top of it but if I get a few fish below the feed area, then running will be best.

Don’t wait for the float to bury
I leave all of the float bristle on show so that I can drag a bit of line overdepth but when the water is cold, bites are never full-blooded affairs. The only indication you may get will look more like something from a little roach – they’re not though! Skimmers can be very, very shy and often with the set-up I use, the float will lift a little and then the tip sinks a fraction. Either strike at this or if holding the rig still, let the rig go slack and run for a few inches before striking as this allows the fish to get hold of the bait confidently.

Fish with Polly!
If you fancy brushing up on a bit of canal roach fishing or perhaps learning a completely new method, Mark offers fishing days on a range of venues. From group sessions to one to one coaching, birthdays or corporate days, he can offer the lot on any type of venue and any method. Bait is supplies – all you need to bring is your kit!
To book a day with Mark, give him a call on 07557 052053 or e-mail him at info@markpollardfishingdays.com and he will be in touch. Check out his website at http://www.markpollardfishingdays.com/ for more information.

Des Shipp's guide to catching F1 carp on the pole

February 16, 2017 Richard Grange

It’s all too easy to write off catching fish at short range on winter commercial fisheries as a combination of clearish water and low temperatures makes even the most optimistic of anglers resigned to catching nothing a few metres out from the bank.
But according to England star Des Shipp, you’re missing a massive trick by giving a short line the cold shoulders, especially if your venue is home to big, wily F1s that don’t get caught fishing at longer ranges on the pole or feeder.
As a match angler, Preston Innovations-backed Des knows only too well the value of feeding a fishing a swim just 5m or 6m out, even when there’s ice on the water. He’s had many matches that have sent him from zero to hero in a hectic hour’s bagging on a short pole line and the exact same principles apply to a day’s pleasure fishing that might not have yielded much fishing further out.
“Although 6m out is not a natural patrol route for F1s as such, they will still move closer to the bank as the day goes on,” Des advised. “For that reason, this short line isn’t one that you’ll empty from the word go and it may be that you only catch for 30 minutes right at the end of the day but this short period of time can produce 10 big F1s in as many chucks and turn a poor day into something that makes the grinning and bearing of winter worthwhile.”

The right distance
“The first job is to decide where to fish and my general rule is to go around a top kit of my pole plus two sections out, which is around 5m or 6m,” Des explained. “However, there needs to be the right depth here and I’d look for between 4ft and 5ft on a flat bottomed area. If the bottom is sloping at this range, that’s not ideal so I’d keep adding sections until I find a flat spot.”

Nothing but maggots
“I leave pellets and corn for fishing longer and on the short line, I use just maggots, which are brilliant for winter fishing on commercials,” he said. “It’s true that they pull in silverfish, which can be a nuisance but if the roach and skimmers are of a decent stamp, I don’t mind catching them while waiting for the F1s to have a go. I take three pints of red and white maggots plus a few fluoro pinkies.”

All in the timing
“I wouldn’t fish short for at least two hours because firstly, you won’t catch F1s at short range this quickly and secondly, I like to give my long pole or feeder line the chance to build up,” Des explained. “By working out how many bites I am getting when fishing long and how good the fishing is, I can then make the decision as to when I have a look short. By this, I mean that if I am getting lots of bites on the long pole and the fish are of a decent size, this tells me that I can expect to get bites short a lot earlier. If the fishing is hard, it might not be as solid close in.”

Have some faith!
“I’d never write off the short line as in the final hour the F1s can rock up and you can get one every drop in so early on, you may only be having a quick look short before reverting back to the long pole,” he said. “If you catch a few F1s then don’t hammer the peg by staying on it. If the bites then fade, that’s the signal to rest the short line for 15 minutes so that the fish can regain their confidence. If you only catch little fish when you change to the short line then I would also come off it quickly as there’s no point in fishing for them. You’d be better off on the long pole with pellets trying to catch an F1, carp or big skimmer.”

Feeding maggots
“Because you are fishing at short range, you can feed maggots by hand and this is good for two reasons. It makes you disciplined into feeding all of the time – using a catapult or pot takes longer and it is easy to neglect feeding short when fishing the long pole,” explained Des. “Feeding by hand takes just seconds to do and you can still fish long while doing it. I begin by feeding every four or five minutes with half a dozen maggots but will up this if there are a lot of silverfish present and I think that there’s not much ending up being left in the peg for the F1s. This is the second advantage of feeding by hand in that I can change how much and how often I feed with ease so I may go from half a dozen maggots every five minutes to 50 maggots every 15 minutes. Hookbait is double maggot (one red and one white) or a single red maggot and single fluoro pinkie.”

The rig
“I will have two rigs ready for the short line with the aim of catching just as the bait settles and then hard on the bottom,” he revealed. “The trouble with F1s is that even in winter, they will be off bottom slightly but you won’t catch them by fishing off bottom so you need a set-up that lets the bait fall slowly in the last few feet of the swim.”
“In ideal conditions, that rig uses a 4x12 F1 Maggot float shotted with a string bulk of No 10 shot in the final 2ft of the swim but I also have a positive rig with a bigger 4x14 float taking a conventional bulk and two No 10 droppers. This will come into play if the fishing is good and I am catching well.”
“Lines are 0.13mm Powwrline as main to a hooklink of 0.10mm for just F1s or 0.12mm Precision Power if there are carp about. Elastic is 9h Hollo and the hook is a size 18 PR412, upped to a size 18 PR434 if the fishing is very good but it is important to match the hook to the strength of line. By this, I mean that the 412 hook is very light and not as strong as 0.12mm line and so is more likely to break first – the 434 however, is perfect for stronger lines. The rig is then set to be fished around the body-length of the float overdepth but at times I have gone up to six inches overdepth in windy weather or on a towing lake.”

Fish past the feed
“By using 2.5ft of line between pole tip and float, I have the option to flick the rig past the feed should I be getting too many line bites or foul hooking fish by fishing over the feed,” said Des. “F1s are well-known for hanging off the back of the feed and although there may not be many there, you won’t get silly bites either.”

Catch quality fish on pellets with Des Shipp

February 10, 2017 Richard Grange

When the chips are down in the depths of winter, there’s a bait I always turn to for F1s and that’s maggots.
From Tunnel Barn Farm to Hillview Fisheries, I’ve enjoyed some great results since the turn of the year fishing and feeding maggots, even when there’s ice on the water and the added bonus is that a pint or two of reds will also catch me vital weight-building silverfish while I’m waiting for the F1s to arrive.
However, this best of both worlds isn’t always the right way to go about things, especially if the peg is full of tiny roach. The silverfish have to be of a decent-enough stamp to make fishing for them worthwhile but you have to accept that there will be days when there’s only tiny fish to be caught - in this instance, I’ll reach into the bag and break out pellets.
True, pellets are more selective and you wait a lot longer for a bite but you’ll bypass the little fish and know that when the float buries, it’ll be an F1 or a decent skimmer. However, I’ll rarely try and turn a maggot line into a pellet one – instead I will begin a new line a few metres away and feed just pellets. This always seems to work better than trying to catch off one line that’s already full of little roach and skimmers!
On a cold, misty day at Hillview Fisheries in Gloucestershire, low water temperatures combined with a never-ending stream of half ounce roach knocked the theory of catching a big bag of F1s on maggots on the head. Feeding a dozen maggots with a small pot every drop in at 13m only seemed to encourage more little fish into the swim without a sign of an F1. Not ideal but not a disaster either as I had pellets in my bait bag! Yes it was going to take longer to catch but the pay-off would be something that pulled back when I got a bite. All it needs from the angler is a bit of patience.

Feeding
With the decision made to switch to pellets, how does the feeding change? Not much to be frank and I will still begin using a small pot introducing eight or nine dampened Fin Perfect 4mm pellets every drop in. A 4mm pellet is the ideal size for winter F1s and I also have a catapult on my tray in case I need to begin firing in bait to make a bit of noise to encourage the F1s to investigate.

Band on the hook
A soft expander pellet will simply be ragged off the hook by tiny skimmers and roach so that means using a hard pellet for the hook. A hard 4mm Fine Perfect to complement the feed is just the job and I fish this in a small pellet band but rather than tying up a hair-rig with the band tied to it, I simply slip the hook through the band and then slot the pellet into place. It’s not strictly hair-rigged but I find this way of fishing quicker and get no less bites doing it.

Two rigs for one job!
The maggot rig that I have been fishing with to begin the session can also be used for pellet work with just the addition of the pellet band. The float is a 4x12 F1 Maggot from my new range, which is light enough to give the pellet a slow fall through the swim because I’m convinced that F1s and skimmers in winter sit a foot off bottom and watch it fall in the final few feet of the swim before taking it. Use a heavy float and the bait will bomb down too quickly and you’ll miss out on so many bites.
Lines for this rig are light in keeping with the conditions, so that means 0.13mm Powerline main to a hooklink of 0.10mm to 0.12mm Precision Power depending on how hard the fishing is, and a size 18 PR434 hook, which is a very light hook but still capable of landing a bonus carp when used with 9h original Hollo elastic. I set the rig to fish slightly overepth, plumbing up so just the float body is above the surface, being sure to dot the float down well and strike at every dip.

Lowering it in
Because the fish watch the bait it is important to gently lower the rig into the peg rather than being in a rush to get the float cocked and ready for action. I’ll lay the bottom half of the rig in and then lay the upper half of the rig complete with float in the opposite direction over the top. This means that there is no tight line as the rig settles and so the pellet sinks naturally giving the fish time to pick it out and take it. A strung bulk is ideal for this, situated in the bottom third of the rig.

Catch quality winter roach from a town centre canal

January 26, 2017 Richard Grange

There can be fewer more famous canal venues in the UK than the legendary ‘hotties’ section of the Sankey St Helen’s Canal running through the middle of St Helen’s.
When the water was warmed by the Pilkington Glass factory on the banks of the canal back in the 70’s through to the 90’s, the water would steam in winter and with artificially high temperatures, unusual species for a canal could be caught including carp and even the odd tropical fish dumped into the venue by owners.
That was a while ago though and the ‘hotties’ are no longer steaming – but the fish are still there and that’s the message that controlling club St Helen’s AA are trying to get across to match anglers by running regular matches where those carp still have a part to play.
Alongside the big fish, the match angler is also likely to be catching your standard canal fare of roach, perch and bream, weights being respectable over the Christmas and New Year break and into 2017. It was for that reason that club members and local matchmen Andy Burrows and England vets legend Danny Sixsmith agreed to show what the ‘hotties’ has to offer in the modern era.

“I can remember 10 years ago the canal still steaming from the ‘gusher’ pipe that went into the canal and it was one of the few canals in the UK where you could catch carp from 2oz to 20lb because they bred throughout the year thanks to the warm water,” Andy said. “A Boxing Day match was one won with 99lb of them and every match we’ve run this winter has seen carp caught. I think 10 was the most in one match and that was when there was ice on the water!”
However, you’ll need to catch the canal right to get the carp as they seem to prefer clear water. On the day of Andy and Danny’s trip, rain had coloured the water and carp seemed to be unlikely. Fortunately, there are also lots of big roach and an ever-increasing head of big skimmers to go for.

“There are two distinct areas to the Sankey – a deep part and a shallow section but it never seems to matter where you fish as the sports is equally good and there’s no boat channel either because the canal is landlocked so the depth is constant all the way across so you can often use just the one rig!” he continued. “The canal did fall out of favour a bit because of expensive car parking but now the council offer free parking on Sundays and £2 a day throughout the week so access is as good as it has ever been.”
There’s also no hassle with cyclists and runners on the towpath as paths have been built well back from the water to keep all users of the Sankey happy. All of this adds up to make the canal what Andy thinks is the best canal in the country and one that is criminally underfished.
“If roach and bream are the target, as they are today, you can forget all about faffing around with squatts and tiny hooks plus light feeding as the fish actually respond better to a lot of feed meaning that you can fish positively,” he said. “There’s no need to go right across to the far bank either thanks to that constant depth and I typically have four pole lines in a match, one starting at around 6m from where I then work my way out by two sections at a time as the day goes on, plus a swim off to one side with a view to catching bream.”
Andy’s rig for the canal does use a typical light 4x10 canal float in the shallow areas with lines of 0.13mm main to an 0.09mm hooklink and a size 18 or 20 Kamasan B512 hook finished with a 2 to 4 grade hollow elastic fished with a puller kit. This way he can catch the big roach and skimmers but also deal with a carp if he hooks them. The big fish tend to plod around in winter so there’s no need for heavy gear and this is used on all four lines.

“I kick off at 6m where I pot in a quarter of a large pot of maggots, fishing double fluoro pinkie on the hook but I’ll also feed those others swims with the same amount of maggots, the skimmer line getting a ball of sweet bream groundbait packed with dead pinkies, casters, micro pellets and chopped worm,” Andy revealed. “You can feed a lot of bait on here and it won’t be unusual to get through four pints of maggots in a match. The key is to feed to your bites so if you are catching, you can loosefeed far more and get through the bait.”
“The skimmer line is not somewhere to have an odd look at through the day though because I’ve found that the bream get onto the bait very quickly so I would spend a good bit of time fishing here but not too long. If the bream are there you should get them quickly but if not, get back on the roach.”
For carp when the water is clear, Andy still swears by maggots as you can catch the roach and skimmers while waiting for the carp. Pellets can work but are too selective.
The day that Andy and Danny picked couldn’t have been worse with howling winds limiting how far out you could sensibly fish but it didn’t affect the fishing with lots of bites from some quality roach and a few of those famed skimmers. As expected, the carp didn’t show but with 15lb of fish apiece to show for their efforts, that didn’t matter one bit.
If you thought that canal fishing was all about dodging pole-smashing bikes and catching 2lb of tiny fish, the Sankey shows that nothing could be further from the truth. Apparently, it’s even better in the summer!

Fish the Sankey
Controlled by St Helen’s AA, the Sankey can be fished on their £30 club book which also includes Carr Mill Dam. Matches run every Sunday with no peg fee taken so your £10 pools are paid out 100%. To book on, give Andy a call on 07849 608448.

Phil Ringer's guide to picking the right bait for carp this winter

January 19, 2017 Richard Grange

I’ll rarely go to a carp match in winter these days without a bulging bag of hookbaits stacked on top of my barrow and that’s because when I’m fishing for just a handful of bites, making a change and hitting upon the bait that the fish want on that given day can turn a blank day into a potential winner.
Too often I see anglers sticking to the same hookbait for the full five hours, working on the assumption that eventually, the carp will find the bait and take it and while that might work in summer, when the water is cold and clear, the chances of this happening are minimal to say the least.
The preferences of carp can change in the space of a week and by that, I mean that when bread may have won the match on one weekend, seven days later it could be a banded pellet or a yellow mini pop-up that catches. Keep on casting the same bait and you’ll simply never maximise the full potential of the peg.
I do have my winter favourites though and Wafters are king in my opinion but bread, corn, a pop-up and even a piece of meat can be the bait of the day depending on conditions and in many instances, the venue you’re fishing.
So this week I’m going to talk through the bait that goes into the van when I’m bound for Barston Lake or Boddington Reservoir, both home to big carp that aren’t the easiest to catch in winter…

Maggots
Unless I was fishing for F1s or skimmers, I rarely consider using maggots as a hookbait. They’re not much use when I’m waiting up to half an hour for a bite especially if the lake holds lots of roach as these little fish will soon chew a bunch of maggots into skins without a touch registering on the quivertip. They’re really only a last resort if I can’t get a bite on anything else – you’re better off saving them for the pole on F1s venues!

Hard pellets
If your venue sees lots of hard pellets fed by anglers fishing the pole or pellet waggler in summer and autumn then a hard 8mm pellet fished in a band could do well as the carp in these waters will accept them as part of their regular diet. They’re small fish-proof and so can be left out for a long time but their lack of colour I think works against them when you’re trying to get the hookbait to stand out.

Corn
A winter bait that’s as old as the hills and actually works better in clear water than coloured. A stack of three or four pieces of corn fished on a hair-rig is impossible for a feeding carp to miss and you can even use a piece of fake floating corn if rules allow to slightly pop the stack up off bottom. I always use plain yellow corn as I’ve never found that red or orange colours gives me that much of an advantage.

Bread
Much-used by pole anglers for dobbing on snake lakes bread also makes a superb winter bomb bait on big lakes and like corn, it is very visual to the fish. The one down side is that it won’t stay on the hook for ever and can be whittled down by little fish so if you lake is home to plenty of roach, it may not be the best bet. I fish five or six pieces of 8mm punch on a hair-rig and always go for Warburton’s thick-sliced white in the orange bag. One word of warning with bread though - it will fluff up to several times its size when soaked so ensure that you hair is long enough to leave a gap between the bait and hook when the bread is fully fluffed up.

Boilies
We’re talking standard bottom baits here in 8mm or 10mm sizes but I do think that the plain old boilie has now been overtaken by the Wafter or pop-up. That’s not so day I won’t take them with me for a change bait with orange being a particularly good colour. Ringer Baits have also developed some ‘washed out’ boilies that are faded in colour and so look like they’ve been on the lakebed for ages to a carp, thus not arousing their suspicion. Early tests with these have been promising.

Pop-up boilies
Presenting a hookbait two inches off bottom waving around offers a totally different presentation to the fish, one that can make a huge difference. An 8mm bright pink colour has been very effective in recent years but they rarely work when used with a Method feeder so I use them on the bomb when fished alongside a small PVA bag of pellets or with the pellet cone.

Wafters
Here it is – the bait that won best match bait in the recent Angling Times awards and even I couldn’t have predicted how popular these would become! A Wafter is basically a pop-up that when fished on a hair-rig becomes critically-balanced to sit just off bottom, meaning that when a fish takes the bait, it feels no resistance as it would from a bottom bait. The chocolate orange variety is bright orange and stands out a mile although on some venues the yellow versions catch well but I’d always start on a single 8mm orange bait when fishing the Method or Hybrid feeder.

Go for bream on a coloured river with Darren Cox

January 12, 2017 Richard Grange

Rain can sometimes be the match angler’s best friend when rivers are low and clear and in desperate need of freshening up but on the flip side, a downpour can wreck a well-honed match plan overnight, ruining a perfect-looking river in hours and producing blanks aplenty.
I’ve been there plenty of times, fishing matches where one fish could win and a bite, let alone something in the net is worth shouting about! However, on the right venue, heavy rain that changes the game can actually present a match-winning opportunity, especially if there are bream and barbel about.
My local Warks Avon around Stratford is a prime example of this. On a normal day I would expect to be fishing for roach and chub but when the rain comes down and the river rises and colours up, these two species vanish. They’re replaced instead by skimmers, hybrids, bream and if you’re lucky a barbel. Changing your plans and of course fishing the right areas in the first place can actually produce better fishing than if the river was in perfect nick.

You’ve got a good peg - what now?
If you are lucky enough to get on a bream peg, the job is still far from done and even before you unzip the rod bag, the first consideration is where to fish in the peg. I look straight away for any large amount of slack water, whether that is caused by a bay or water running off of a bend. The point where a river opens out from narrows is also a guaranteed bream area.
The swim I’m fishing on the Avon has just that, slack water close to the far bank created by a slight bend and I know from experience that there’s also a silt bed here. This silt will be full of natural food like bloodworm and bream won’t move far from here. To find a silty bottom, cast a feeder or bomb out and wind it slowly back across the riverbed. Resistance caused by the lead digging into the silt tells you that you have found what you’re looking for.

The feeder is king
Rod and line is the only option for tackling a slack at range and the waggler just won’t present the bait still enough so it’ll be an out and out feeder job.
My rig for a river like the Avon is nothing special, made up of the feeder running on the mainline that has a short four inch twizzled length above the hooklink, which creates a bit of a semi bolt rig effect. Mainline is reliable old 6lb Maxima, the feeder being a 30g Garbolino wire cage. Hooklink is 2.5ft or 3ft of 0.16mm Garbo Line, this length putting the bait ell downstream of the feeder which is where you often find bigger bream sat below the feed picking off particles.
That only leaves the hook to pick and I can’t fault a size 13 Kamasan B711. All of this sounds like powerful kit for bream fishing but in coloured water I honestly think that the fish are not wary of big hooks and big baits. I also don’t want to lose what I hook!

Cage or plastic feeder?
I prefer a cage feeder over a plastic model as they empty quicker but also don’t flex in flowing water as a plastic feeder can, which gives false indications on the tip. A wire cage feeder also adds more overall weight to hold bottom, doing away with the need for add-on weights. Around 30g is ample to hold bottom in a slack so long as you have the rod pointed up in the air keeping as much line as possible off the surface where the strongest flow is.

Add some fishmeal
With colour in the water, bream will feed my scent and not eyesight so a groundbait to go in the feeder needs something powerful to stop them and that means fishmeal. I’ll mix up a ‘normal’ bream blend of Sensas Lake and Feeder but also add a good helping of Bait-Tech Marine Halibut Mix. If the river was low and clear though, the Halibut would go as I’d expect to catch roach, dace, chub and perch as well as bream. Not in water the colour of tea though! This is mixed relatively dry to empty out of the feeder quickly.

Packed with goodness
Keeping with the positive theme, I try and cram each feederful with as many particles as I can if I draw on some bream. That’s simply casters, chopped worm and dead maggots that lace the groundbait because a 5lb bream can demolish a feeder of bait in one go. Imagine this happening with a dozen fish in the area and you can see how much feed needs to go in.
Too many anglers put an initial hit of feed in, catch a few and then stop getting bites. They then sit and wait, hoping that the bream have backed off and will return but on a coloured river, the reason is more likely to be that there’s no food left! You have to be attacking.

On the hook
Nothing can beat worms on a coloured river and while a dendra or lobworm tail are good, I swear by two large redworms tipped with a dead red maggot. Redworms wriggle like mad and a bream can pick them out far quicker than three dead maggots.

Keep the bait going in
I’ll cast every five minutes even if I’m not getting bites to keep the bait going in on a regular basis as you have to be positive. Clipping up and aiming to a far bank marker will put the feeder in the right place each time.
If I cast and get a knock on the tip immediately then this tells me that the fish are not backing off and that they want the feed so you need to try and read the timing of the bite, if I am left waiting five minutes for an indication then the fish could be backing off.

That’s a bite!
With the rod up in the air, a bite from a bream will either be a big drop back as they move the feeder or a couple of taps on the tip followed by a positive pull. The key is to make sure that the fish is on and that means not striking too early. Always let the bite develop fully.

Kicking off
Six feeders of bait go in at the start and I would expect indications quickly. If nothing happens after half an hour but I am getting small fish knocks then this tells me more bait needs to go in so out goes another six feederfuls. If nothing is happening at all then it will be a bit of a waiting game so you’ll need to leave the feeder out for longer and wait. Provided you have drawn a bream peg and conditions are right, there’s no reason why they won’t feed.

How to catch winter F1s on PVA bags and Band Ums with Adam Wakelin

January 5, 2017 Richard Grange

Bonus fish are always worth their weight in gold on any type of venue, even more so in winter when 5lb can cover to the top four at the end of a match but dividing your time between catching bread and butter weight-building fish and spending time in search of a bonus is a delicate tight rope to walk.
Waste too much time fishing for a carp and drawing a blank and you’ll fall behind whereas if you don’t give it enough time, you’re not doing the swim justice. This is common on venues where there are lots of skimmers but also a good head of big carp that can really knock your weight up a few notches.

All in the timing
So when do you have a go for a carp and for how long? There’s no text book written about this and each day is different. However, one thing always remains the same in that carp normally feed best in the opening and final half hour of the match so I would devote this time to fishing for lumps! After this, I will be fishing for carp and F1s much as I would if I was after big perch on a canal – having a quick look every 20 or 30 minutes. You only need the quiver to go round once and you’re in business. One or two casts in the maximum I would make each time.

Bags of promise!
I don’t even consider using a feeder or groundbait to catch carp. I’ve found that big fish much prefer to feed on ‘hard’ baits, namely pellets. Add groundbait and you only draw skimmers in, which are what you don’t want to catch. So pellets it is and although you could use a Method or pellet feeder, these would involve feeding dampened softened pellets, which is a recipe for attracting skimmers too!
That only leaves me with PVA bags to get the feed close to the hookbait. By filling Avid PVA Stocking Mesh with a mix of 4mm and 6mm Sonubaits F1 hard pellets and a few 2mm hard krill pellets, the carp and F1s are presented with a small pile or crunchy goodies right on top of the hookbait. I make my bags up the night before and load each one with enough pellets to fill up a small Cad Pot – the finished bag should be around the size of a 50p piece.

Go the distance
Only on an odd occasion will a carp or F1 venture onto my skimmer feeder line and experience tells me that the big fish much prefer to sit well out into the lake away from any commotion. That means winding up a big cast of perhaps 60m, where you can find your own water. This basically means fishing a line that those anglers around you aren’t. This way you will have any fish on the area coming to your feed and your feed alone.
The longer you can cast, the better your results will be so you may have to blast the rig a long way but in general, a 50 or 60m cast is comfortable and far enough. However, you’ll need a more specialised rod than a standard 11ft bream rod to hit the spot. That means digging the 12ft Preston Innovations Equis Feeder rod out of the holdall to really put some backbone into the chuck, especially when there’s a PVA bag attached to the rig.

Stepped up tackle
You could hook a 15lb carp on this rod so you don’t want to lose it. That is reflected in the tackle used, made up of 5lb Preston Powermax mainline with an 8lb shockleader and a 50cm hooklink of 0.17mm Powerline finished off with a size 14 PR27 eyed hook to hair-rig baits. Because I’m not using a feeder, I fish an inline Match Cube bomb of 1oz or even 1.5oz. Inside this I run an elasticated Interchange Stem to help make the rig even more self-hooking. Many fisheries won’t allow elasticated bombs or feeders but where allowed, I want to use them. If not, I simply run the bomb on the mainline.

Hookbaits
Because there’s only a small patch of bait for the carp to home in on, I like to give them a bit of a helping hand by fishing a bright hookbait. Again, hard is best to avoid trouble from skimmers and pretty much all I need is a tub of 8mm Sonubaits Band ‘Ums, which are hard dumbbell-shaped pellets in a range of colours.
As a guide, the red Krill or orange Band ‘Ums are excellent for carp and F1s when the fishing is good but if sport was slow in cold weather, I’ve caught more by changing to a white or yellow bait.

Threading the bag
If I was casting short then I wouldn’t hesitate to nick the PVA bag directly onto the hook but this is no good for a long cast, as the bag will rip off the hook. The solution is to thread it down the hooklink and onto the hook as this will hold in place perfectly. Here’s how to do it: