Have you Included the Kitchen Sink?

I think it would be fair to say that the vast majority of us always take far too much fishing tackle, bait and fishing essentials with us as we head out onto the bank. 

This became very obvious to me recently when my very well engineered barrow decided enough was enough and snapped as I was pushing the barrow back to the car after a long session and dumping all my gear all over the floor much to the amusement of my fishing buddy.  As I struggled with all of my tackle and the mangled remnants of my beloved barrow I realised that I was actually taking excessive amounts of  tackle and fishing accessories with me most of which just never got used.

When I got home I decided to see exactly how much kit I actually took with me and I have to say I was very surprised at what I found. I was carrying and pushing over 260lbs of tackle and a large amount of it was taken along for the ride never being used.  All of this tackle is carefully loaded into my car  then at the venue unloaded and loaded up onto my barrow and then pushed  to the swim and then unloaded and setup in our chosen spot.

This first journey was normally enough to tire me out leaving me unwilling to up sticks and move if the carp started to show across the lake. Things needed to change  and change quickly to reduce the unnecessary tackle and lighten my load leaving me more able and willing to up sticks and move should the need arise.

No need for a spod rod with these!

Let’s start with the tackle in my rod holdall. I would carry three Chub carp rods all with Shimano big pit reels; reviewing the venues I fish and most of them are ‘two rod only’ waters so the third rod is just extra weight. The Chub spod and marker rods were also dumped as I know most of the spots and marks I want to fish to. I am also happy to use just a bear lead on my line to feel around looking for clear spots and counting the lead down to get a fair understanding of the depth as I cast. 

Once I have found my marks and marked my lines up and clipped the line in the spool line clips I can spod with either a small Korda Skyliner attached to my main line on one of my carp rods or I can replace my 3ozs lead with a smaller 1.5oz lead and tie up a large PVA bag of pellets or boilies and simply use a large hook on the quick link and now you can cast the bait out to your spot.

I have now managed to achieve a substantial weight saving by getting rid of three carp rods and reels, a large rod holdall and several spods and markers floats. We are now starting to make some good weight savings.

Next on the slimming program was my habit of taking far too much bait with me only to use a few boilies and just a small amount of pellets bringing the rest back home again. Typically I would have five kilo bags and four half kilo bags of boilies, multiple pots of dumbbell bottom baits and at least twenty pots of pop ups along with paste, glugs and dips. When I checked the boilie bag it weighed in at 15kgs and the pellet buckets 7.5kgs each.

I have been using smaller 10mm baits often topped with a small piece of plastic corn. This is all held in place with a small PVA bag of pellets or paste. My small bait strategy coupled with  small PVA bags means I don’t need to carry tons of bait to the bank with me. So maybe one kilo bag of boilies a few pop ups and some plastic baits would work well offering me another huge weight saving of nearly 20kgs.

My beloved Chub Tackle box was next to face the axe, it weighs 28kgs most of which is the lead bag which itself must weigh 18kgs or more. I have been carrying around about 130 leads of varying sizes from 2ozs up to 5ozs. If I had a really bad day fishing open water with no snags or weed I felt bad if I lost one lead, admittedly if I was fish lead clip systems on weedy or snaggy waters I would expect to lose a few, but to carry so many was madness.

You can dispense with the lead bag and only take four leads in future.

I still take the large bag with me, however I only take about four leads to the bank, meaning I can now simply leave the bag in the boot of my car so I know I have got them just in case, but I am not carrying them around for no good reason. 

Ok, now if I have to dump the Chub tackle box I will need a rucksack to keep the remaining items together and easy to carry.

Moving on to the PVA. I use PVA all of the time; there are not many rigs I cast out that have not got PVA on them somewhere, so you would not be surprised to find PVA stocking tubes and PVA solid bags in abundance in the tackle box. I can’t get through the amount of PVA I have with me during a normal session so I now take the PVA with me, but leave what I won’t use for the session in the boot of the car  

We are well on our way now  but there are more savings to be had. My hook length and terminal tackle looks like a well stocked tackle shop with every hook shape and size, links, swivels, clips, monos, flouros and all the braided hook lengths you could ever need. So this had to be trimmed down to the bare essentials, A couple of hook patterns I have confidence in that will be suitable for the type of venue I will be fishing at, and a couple of Skinned braided hook lengths again chosen in advance to suit the venue.

The old kit of bits on the left and the new kit of bits on the right.

The choices are based upon the colour of the water and lake bed, be that black (silt), muddy brown or weedy green and the breaking strain required to tackle the venue conditions, 15lbs open water and 25lbs weedy or snaggy waters. Again this choice can be made prior to getting to the bank side.

Being comfortable when you are fishing is very important if you are not comfortable you are not relaxed and you struggle to concentrate and focus on your fishing. You really need a chair to ensure good bank side comfort, but you don’t need the biggest, heaviest chair. I have got two great chairs from Chub, the right hand chair is not only comfortable, but is also very light compared to its bigger brother. 

Stoves and Drinks.

My stove bag and a gallon of water weighs 11kgs; it is important to have plenty of fluids with you when you fish so you can have hot drinks in the colder months and cool drinks in the hotter months. However, you don’t always need the extra weight of a stove bag and its contents, you can take hot water in a thermos flask to make hot drinks and bottled water to drink in the hotter times. This will free up a good 8kgs.

Now we have fine tuned our tackle to just the bits we need for our session you’ll be amazed at how much weight you have shaved off. My initial total tackle weight including the barrow was over 120kgs. With my new lightweight approach the equipment you see me carrying is now just 23kgs, a massive saving!

This new approach has enabled me to up sticks and move to showing fish at the drop of a hat  and my fishing is a lot less tiring now meaning I can focus and concentrate on the water for longer without falling asleep in the chair as I wait for the next bite.

I hope this article will inspire you to look at your own fishing and maybe try a new lighter, leaner fishing style that helps you bag a few more carp.

Tight Lines
Ian Gemson
Smart Carping Limited