Commercial Fishing Tips | Use the right pole elastic and land every fish!
Shock-absorbing elastic is a must for polefishing because the right elastic will mean you end up with far more fish in the net.
But there are so many elastics on the market that making the right choice can be difficult. This week Preston Innovations and England man Des Shipp helps you choose the right elastic on commercial fisheries… every time.
No8:
This is the softest elastic I would use on a commercial and would be my first choice when I know there is a variety of fish sizes in the lake, ranging from roach, small perch and skimmers, to F1s and carp of a few pounds.
The beauty of this elastic is that I know I won’t bump small silvers on the strike, while I still have a good chance of landing bigger fish with a little time and patience.
No10:
F1s are a popular target on commercials and my first-choice elastic for these fish, which can weigh 4lb-plus, is No10 hollow. This species fights all the way to the net and they also love heading for any underwater snags when first hooked, so you need an elastic with a bit of power, but that’s still soft enough to avoid bumping them on the strike.
No12:
When there’s a good chance of landing a carp or two along with F1s, then I’ll go one step further and use a No 12 hollow elastic.
This elastic is great for open-water carp in winter when they don’t fight as hard as they do in summer and you need to fish relatively fine tackle for them. A strong elastic might result in bumped fish at this time of year.
No14:
This is my favourite elastic for catching carp that weigh more than 5lb and also for fishing against bankside vegetation.
I won’t use it so much at this time of year when most carp tend to be out in open water, but like all hollow elastics, it will stretch a long way while still boasting lots of power.
Commercial Fishing Tips | Pellets for winter silvers with Cam Hughes
SILVER fish can be life-savers on winter commercials, given the sheer number and different sizes of roach and skimmers out there to catch.
Silvers grow big in commercials as they eat pellets intended for carp, but if you use maggots, pinkies and worms it can be a job getting through to the better fish when their smaller brethren always get to the hookbait first.
Feeding more bait is not always the answer, as it runs the risk of killing the swim entirely or, worse still, pulling in a few carp if the weather is mild – the last fish you want to be playing on light tackle.
The solution lies in using pellets. When skimmers and bream are the target, I can be confident that every time the float goes under, it’ll be a decent fish. Provided I don’t go mad with the feed, there’s a minimal chance of a carp crashing the party. Pellets also seem to put off the little fish.
You see, skimmers see pellets all year round and accept them as part of their natural diet. I find that I also get a far more instant response to pellets as opposed to maggots and groundbait, so it’s the ideal bait to a session and get a quick burst of fish before things quieten down.
Don’t attract carp!
The more bait you put in, the more chance there is of attracting carp, even in the cold, so go steady!
I’ll fish two pole lines, one fed negatively and the other more positively, to see how much feed the skimmers will take and if the positive swim pulls in more carp.
My positive line sees a third of a big pole cup of micros go in, while the negative swim is fed only with a small pot on the pole to tap in little helpings of pellets.
I try to leave the positive swim for as long as possible to let the fish settle, but also just in case they don’t want more feed going in over their heads, as may happen if I fished here too early and had to feed more bait.
Start negatively
I kick off on the negative line and feel my way in, only feeding another little pot of micros after 10 minutes if I’ve not had a sign.
If I catch a fish, then I’ll feed again to see if any more are about, but those bites will tell you how to feed from here on.
If the plan of ‘catch and feed’ is working, then carry on, but if things die down you have to try and do something.
This could be changing to that positive swim – going on the waggler, for example – or feeding more heavily on the negative line to see if this is actually what the skimmers wanted in the first
Admittedly, this final option would be my last resort, since after an hour on the negative swim I would expect fish to have settled on the positive line and to be able to catch here.
The distance to fish
As the water begins to clear, the further away from the bank you can fish, the better, and that makes 14.5m my main fishing distance on the pole.
This also gives me the advantage of leaving enough space between this line and the bank to put in a short pole swim with casters for roach and perch, for example.
However, I won’t just stick to this one line as often the bigger skimmers will back off the feed.
Adding just half a section of pole and going past it can bring you a run of fish in no time.
If the swim goes quiet, I add a half extension and go out to what will be 15m and hope to catch here.
This won’t work every time you do it, and you should only spend 10 minutes maximum here, whether you catch or not, before reverting back to the main 14.5m swim.
Tommy Pickering's greatest tips revealed!
When it comes to boosting your catches in early-spring, there’s no one more qualified to help than Tommy Pickering. The former world champion andcurrent Preston Innovations England feeder team boss is one of the world’s best all-round anglers, and this week he reveals a boxful of tips that will bring more fish your net.
Bait
LIght Groundbait
A light-coloured groundbait mix will always outscore a darker version when roach are the main target. The species tends to feed more confidently over a light blend, and a very fine product that has minimal feed content should be used to prevent overfeeding the shoal. Sonubaits Super Crumb Lake ticks all the boxes.
Pinkies for big fish
Worms, casters and maggots may seem like three deadly baits for skimmers, but pinkies go top of my list when fishing for the species on natural venues. Mix plenty of them into your groundbait, use two or three on the hook and you’ll find you are picking out much bigger stamp fish than other anglers around you.
Try a binding agent
If you are struggling to get your pellets to cling to the Method feeder then add a binding agent. Dampen your 2mm pellets as usual and then add one spoonful of Sonubaits Stiki Pellet to a pint of bait. This will make sure the pellets stick when casting and as the feeder falls, but also ensure they start to break down slowly once the feeder hits the deck.
Which goes first?
Add groundbait to the water when making paste but add water to the groundbait when making groundbait. This subtle change is may seem unimportant but it is essential, and will make sure your bait takes on the consistency that you require for the job
How to hook casters
There are two different ways to hook a caster, and how the day is going will dictate the best way to do it. The first is to bury as much of the hook inside the shell as possible. This produces more action when silvers are cagey. When they drop their guard, have the hookpoint fully exposed so you reduce the number of missed bites
Vary your pellets
Pellets are the staple diet of most commercial fish but the fish can wise up to them at times. In order to give yourself an edge, feed standard coarse pellets but use a flavoured or coloured pellet over the top to fool bites from wary specimens.
Cylinders V Cubes
Punched cylinders of meat are stacks better than cubes when fishing on the feeder. This is because the shape of cubed meat leads to twists occurring in the hooklength when you reel in.
Try pop-up boilies
The bomb and popped-up bread can be fantastic for carp and F1s on commercials right now but don’t neglect boilies. An 8mm or 10mm pop-up can be a better option if you are getting lots of little plucks that you can’t hit – small silverfish are often the culprits. Pop-ups are also better when you are waiting long periods, as you can be a lot more confident that the hookbait is still on the hair and hasn’t disintegrated.
Floats
Which float stem
The type of stem that your stick float has should be dictated by the conditions you are fishing in. Cane is best when trying to catch silvers on the drop, alloy versions are more stable in unpredictable, boiling swims and plastic-stemmed floats stand upright as soon as they hit the water. They are therefore real winners in turbulent and pacey swims.
Quick Change Swivel
Always use a snap link swivel with any kind of waggler. This will enable you to quickly change the size or pattern of the float at any stage of the day.
Overcast and windback
Sink the line when using the waggler so that the float stays in the same place for longer. In order to achieve this, cast five yards beyond your target zone, before winding the float back to your spot with the rod tip underwater. A small amount of line may still be floating and this can be sunk by sharply flicking the rod tip upwards.
Dot it right down
Never have any more than half the float bristle showing when pole fishing. When fishing for shy-biting species such as F1s, dot it down so only a few millimetres are showing. This can be done by adding tiny shot such as No12 Stotz to your rig in order to fine-tune it.
Accuracy every time and how to keep a short line
Pick a far-bank marker in order to fish in exactly the same spot all day. Line your swim up with an object that won’t move and make sure you are facing it when the rig goes in. Place your elbow on the same spot to get the same distance every time.
If you want to hit every carp and F1 bite on commercials you must keep a short line between pole-tip and float. Use a 6ins length in still conditions, 9ins if there is a ripple, and a foot if it is a bit windy.
Tackle
How long a rod?
Too many people don’t pay attention to the length of feeder rod they are using, but your choice will dictate how accurate your casting is. For fishing 30 yards out on a standard commercial, opt for a 10ft version, stepping up to a 12ft or 13ft rod when chucking beyond 50 yards on bigger waters.
Make yourself comfortable
Being comfortable when fishing from a box is incredibly important, or your mind will soon drift off the job. Make sure your side tray is as high as it can be so that you can reach bait with ease. Rig roosts and keepnets should also be easily accessible without having to over extend.
Positioning a pot
The positioning of your pole pot on the top kit will dictate how successful you are. Make sure it is only a few inches from the pole so that any loosefeed you drop in goes directly over the top of your hookbait.
Fail-safe shotting
Shotting patterns are rarely given the attention they deserve, and if you are after a mixed bag on commercials then one patterns always works well. Place a bulk of shot around 18ins to 2ft away from the hook and have three smaller dropper shot spread evenly between that and the hooklength loop. This will slow the fall of your hookbait and make it look natural as it nears the bottom.
Keep a short hair
The difference between an effective hair rig and one that doesn’t lead to many fish in the net is literally a few millimetres. The shorter the hair rig, the better and I find that hair rigs where there is only a tiny gap between the bait and the hook are most effective.
Control your area
On a busy commercial, think carefully about where you are going to fish. If all the anglers opposite are casting to the middle then the fish will probably avoid this commotion and go elsewhere. Look to fish in your own patch of water – even if that means coming shorter – and you’ll find more feeding fish.
Try a heavy plummet
We all know that plumbing the depth is important, but using the correct plummet is a must. If it is too light, you won’t be able to work out the contours of the bottom whereas a 20g-30g version will give you the precision that is required when using the pole.
Sensibly strong rigs
If a fishery states that the carp run up to 15lb, don’t set up a rig to catch only fish of that size. Using heavy lines and hooks you’ll miss out on bites from smaller fish, so compromise.
Feeder
longer hooklengths
On rivers I find an 18ins to 2ft hooklength best in coloured water. When bream fishing in normal conditions I will step up to 3ft, and 5ft for barbel, as they tend to sit well away from the feeder on big rivers like the Trent.
Don’t move a feeder
Once you have cast a feeder out don’t move it out of place. With a Method or pellet feeder you will only empty the frame and move your hookbait out of the pile of freebies. This will ultimately make the whole rig ineffective. When you cast out, make sure the feeder hits the water with the mainline still slack, so you can put a bend in the tip without moving the feeder.
Give it a chance
If your feeder is in the right place, leave it in the water for a long period of time. At this time of year you may only be fishing for 10 fish so don’t be afraid of leaving it be for up to 20 minutes.
Why plastic is best
I prefer a plastic open-end feeder to wire. This is because I am much more confident that all the bait stays in it until it gets to the bottom, and it also retrieves easier and doesn’t vibrate as much in the water.
Depth-Finder
To find the depth on bomb or feeder cast out a 1oz bomb. Once it hits the water start counting. A bomb of this size falls at a rate of a foot every half second, so you can work it out from there.
Fishing a light bomb
When fishing the bomb, the lightest lead you can get away with should be used at this time of year. Any excess commotion will spook any fish you have landed on and when fishing on commercials, a 3/8oz to ½oz bomb is about right.
Match feed to venue
Feeder groundbait when targeting bream depends on the water I am on. If it is a commercial that sees a lot of pellets than I will use a fishmeal-based product such as Sonubaits Bream Feeder, but if I am on a natural water I’ll turn to a cereal recipe such as Sonubaits Super Crumb Bream.
Half- Filled feeder
Half-filling a Banjo feeder is a fantastic way of getting extra bites in the cold. The reduced amount of food around the feeder forces the fish into taking the hookbait and it is often the bigger specimens that fall for this trick.
Fishing for skimmer bream in deep rivers with Mark Pollard
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.