Angling's 7 Deadly Sins — Angling Times

The dividing line between success and failure on the bank can be incredibly small. To ensure your net is soaking wet rather than bone dry at the end of the session, here are some costly mistakes to avoid...

Being too noisy

If you want to keep the fish in your swim, the very first piece of the puzzle comes by keeping your bankside disturbance to an absolute minimum.

Heavy footsteps, hammering in banksticks and shouting to your mate down the bank will send the fish scurrying into the next postcode, never mind the next peg.

Keeping quiet, not casting too often (unnecessarily) and staying off the skyline will all dramatically boost your chances of catching.

And if you’re on a ‘social session’ with friends, don’t be the one tricked into having the lunchtime get-together in your swim – it could turn what’s usually a flyer into an absolute duffer!

**Keep the noise down and try to be as stealthy as possible on the bank**

Lazily picking the easy swims

Be honest, how many times have you fished the swims closest to the car park? Although these can occasionally be reliable areas, the chances are that the fish will be wary of them, as they are often the first spots taken by anglers.

Finding where the fish are holed up is the single biggest factor when it comes to success. After all, you can only catch what’s in front of you. With many venues under a lot of pressure these days, more often than not the fish won’t come to you, so you’ll have to go to them. Look for bubbles, swirls and tail patterns on the surface, showing fish, fins poking through the surface scum at the windward end of the lake, diving ducks coming back to the surface looking spooked – these will all massively boost your chances.

The fish often give us all the signs we need, we just have to spend time at the start spotting them… then acting on them.

**The fish will often let you know where’s best to fish**

Going too far

Casting is one of the most enjoyable aspects of angling. But we can all be guilty of getting a bit carried away occasionally and launching our rigs way out into the middle of the pond. The funny thing is, the majority of the time, especially as we move into the warmer months, the fish will be right under your feet. Always try to catch the fish as close to the bank as possible, because this makes the whole process of working a swim to its maximum potential much easier. If you start close and work your way out, you’ll capitalise on every possible bite. Also, if conditions change – say a strong wind picks up – you won’t suddenly be dropping short of your loosefeed. You can always give it the ‘biggun’ on the cast later in the session if you haven’t had any action.

Piling in too much bait

With no shortage of videos or magazine articles showing anglers piling in the bait, it’s easy to think that when you turn up and deposit 10kg on to a spot, or ball in 20 balls of groundbait, the fish will come flocking from all corners and start feeding ravenously. However, 99 per cent of the time this simply isn’t the case. On short day trips you are far better off feeling your way into the session. A small pouchful of feed on each cast will slowly build the swim. This continual feeding activity will keep fish investigating the spot on a far more regular basis, and competing for feed, rather than picking slowly at the 10-course banquet on the bottom.

**In most circumstances, little and often feeding is best**

Using unbalanced tackle

We’ve all been there. Sometimes your kit simply isn’t up to the job. Whether it’s using a rod that is too stiff for your target species, or a line that snaps quicker than Gordon Ramsay’s patience, you need to balance your kit to the angling situation being faced.

Sometimes, you might think, ‘well if I fish heavier, I might land that accidental monster’, which of course is true, but you can guarantee it will be costing you countless bites from your desired species. Using balanced kit will not only boost your catch rate, it will make the experience way more enjoyable too. It’s far more satisfying to land a big roach on a finely balanced float set-up, with a light mainline, than to winch one in on a carp rod!

**Balanced tackle makes fishing more enjoyable and you will catch more!**

Cluttered boxes

Nothing’s more visually satisfying than a well organised tackle box, and believe it or not it’ll make you fish better as well. Having all your bits in one place will help you react to the tactical challenges being faced far quicker and easier.

There’s no fun to be had in scrambling around at the bottom of a mouldy bag looking for a feeder, disgorger or hook packet, only to be impaled by a discarded rig amid a bird’s nest of clutter from previous sessions. Keep your kit well ordered, and you’ll reap the rewards!

**A messy tackle box can make fishing far more challenging**

Lack of patience

In today’s ‘instant win’ society, patience is a dying art, but in angling it’s a core skill. Seeing a fish on the surface and crashing a bait straight on its head is often a shortcut to failure.

Steady feeding increases the fish’s confidence and the likelihood of it falling into your trap. This could take minutes or hours. The same applies to bites. We’ve all had the classic missed chub bite on the rivers, or the premature strike at a liner from carp in the margins on our local commercial. Learning when to hit bites and when to sit tight and let them develop comes with practice. Sometimes it’s best to sit on your hands until that bite is truly unmissable!

**Sometimes it takes time to catch a fish**