| 10 Hot Tips For Winter |
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1. Firstly, keep warm. This may seem like an obvious statement but if you aren’t warm you can’t give your fishing 100% so make sure you wrap up accordingly.
2. Bait wise my No.1 carp bait on commercial waters is corn, particularly when the water has gone clear as I’m sure one of the reasons for its effectiveness is its high visibility.
3. Feeding… you can’t take it out once you have put it in. Always start off cautiously and you can then always step it up, but fill it in at the start and there’s no going back.
4. Although corn is my No.1 bait for carp, I like to feed a few casters as well as this has the result of getting a few roach in the swim which in turn will often attract the interest of carp. There’s nothing worse for attraction than a fishless peg.
5. Elastic wise, drop down from your summer choices of 14 and 16 and go for a 10 or 12. Yes, it might take longer to get fish in but in winter every bite needs to count and hook pulls are not wanted.
6. Plumb your peg very carefully and look for any deviations on the bottom. A spot that’s only six inches deeper than the rest can be a holding spot in winter.
7. When pole fishing, fish as long as possible. The water has generally gone clear in winter and the fish will have backed off away from the margins so as a rule I’d start one section back from the full distance of my pole. I don’t start at maximum length as the fish will often back off and having a section in reserve means I can follow them out.
8. Everyone thinks that in winter the fish are on the bottom but anyone who owns a pond will tell you that unless the fish are actually feeding, then they will spend most of there time up in the water. So, if you are faced with a wide expanse of open water, search the layers with a waggler. There’s no need to feed but keep altering the depth until you find the fish.
9. If fishing the pole, keep the bait moving by lifting and dropping it. You need to entice a fish into taking the bait and often need to try and make something happen.
10. Line and hook sizes are very important. Gone are the 0.18mm and 0.20mm lines of warmer times, and they need to be replaced with 0.14mm and 0.12mm diameters. Hookwise, a size 18 or a 20, even when fishing baits like corn, will bring extra bites.
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