| STUART DENNIS | |
Stuart is one of those anglers who is not happy to just sit there and follow the herd; he likes to think laterally, out of the box, and come up with his own ideas. In this occasional series we’ll follow his adventures and his thoughts as he tackles the carp in his new syndicate water. |
| THE SYNDICATE – SESSION 4 I arrived at lake at 6pm, it looked like it was going to fish its tits off; everything looked the part. I hadn’t even cast out and I’d had six runs. I banked a common at 42.6, four mirrors that weighed in access of 35lb each and as the buzzer beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeped once more, I reached out of the bivvy and turned off the alarm, the alarm on the mobile phone that is, that spat out the immortal “get up fatty, you’ve blanked and you gotta start heading towards work pal!”
It happens to us all from time to time and even the most thinking of thinking anglers can’t always work out why it is we blank, but there you go! Session 4 and all seemed well. I pulled up in the car park to find just one car situated on the gravel. Love it, the lake almost to myself. The temperature was spot on 30 degrees at 6pm and hardly any wind. I dropped my kit at the first swim so I could take a stroll around the venue as there was no way I was going to walk round then return to the motor to pick it up again, not in this heat anyway. After a gruelling hundred yard crawl in the blistering sun I spotted two carp cruising very slowly along the surface. A wonderful opportunity to get the little monsters feeding off the top, however rules are rules and no surface fishing is permitted. I walked on further and found a swim bubbling away so decided this will do me for the evening. It’s a nice feeling to sit alongside the rods on a piping hot night and take in all the surroundings of a beautiful venue, but to sit there without a take, other than a frustrating line bite, is worse than placing me in a sweet shop with no pocket money! This has got to be one of the worst scenarios a thinking angler can come across. The venue is screaming carp, the cruising is non-stop but the little beggars just aren’t feeding. It’s times like this that can lead you off down all sorts of paths and potentially can end up being quite detrimental to your confidence. Sitting there having the best rigs possible and carrying the best baits available knowing your traps have been critically set to encourage even the most wily of creatures and still having nothing to show for it takes the confidence levels to task. The mind starts sweeping and you start challenging every possible scenario and presentation you’ve ever come across. In normal circumstance this is a great process. Fish different rigs, fish higher up in the water, try small baits, big baits, double baits, and different baits. Tie smaller hooks, longer hairs, different hooklength materials, longer hooklength materials, shorter hooklength materials, and on and on and on……but sometimes, just sometimes, no matter how you ring the changes, no matter how you finesse your tactics, sometimes, just sometimes IT AINT GONNA MAKE THE SLIGHTEST BIT OF BLOODY DIFFERENCE! No matter what I played with or how I changed the appearance of my traps, the fish were right in front of me and they weren’t going to get their heads down on my bait and that was that! I was lucky enough (on this occasion) to have a recognisable amount of confidence to know this time it’s not down to me. My rigs were spot on and that I was sure of, however the heat had certainly kicked any chance of me catching right into touch. The end of this session was the same as the beginning in that when it came to catching carp it was a non-event. Moving swiftly on I thought it only fair to continue writing this series with truths and the truth was I blanked. As was recently discussed on FM the weekly and monthly carp magazines show massive fish catches and barrel belly 30’s and 40’s caught all over the place, but very rarely is anyone writing about the blanks. This being said I’d like to look at the technical stand point and ask what did I learn? (Apart from giving fishing a miss until the weather turns of course). My rigs have come on in leaps and bounds and with the few final adjustments my critically balanced baits looked awesome with the bottom of the hook touching the deck and the baits up above. I’d had a few issues on retrieving the rigs in the form of occasional tangles so I wanted to focus on laying the traps with the hookbaits as far away from the lead as possible. Not an easy task when using supple braid as hooklength. I have no issues knowing my baits will be pushed away from the lead if I’m using mono or flouro hooklengths but with my steer back towards using braid I needed to think about how best to execute a plan to spread the presentation apart. I’d like to share with you how I am now achieving additional confidence in my rigs in sitting out their for hours on end awaiting the carp to feed and of course how I am going about keeping my hook and bait as far away from the lead as possible. As stated in previous sessions, I am fishing a venue that does not allow particles and encourages the boilie. I’ve played with maggot and vitalin groundbaits and balling them out to no avail to date so I have looked further into the boilie freebie offerings. One thing that is for sure is that the fish I’ve been catching have been at a range of 70 yards and beyond and if anyone’s used a throwing stick or a catapult then getting loose baits right on top of your hookbait is of a varying success at best. It amazes me how inaccurate the eye really is in that you think you’re casting right tight to a hot spot only to find out you’re possibly ten feet or so out. If that’s the case with a cast then heaven only knows how sporadic the loose baits via a throwing stick will be. This being said I’ve opted back to using stringers for my current sessions, knowing that once the rig is cast out the supporting freebies will be in very close vicinity. I’m not one for using large boilies even in the hot weather so armed with 15mil baits I tend to find my stringers can fly a pretty distance when casting. What I am doing differently though is the following: I’m using the boilie funnel PVA mesh which serves my purpose very well, I place 10 x 15mil boilies within the mesh and then tie a knot (without cutting the mesh). I then place a further 10 boilies in and tie a knot this time cutting the mesh. (see picture)
I then thread a fox clip or a snood (personal choice) through the axle of the PVA and attach the fox clip to the lead eye on my safety clip. This leaves the two arms swinging freely. I then take the hook end of my hooklength and pass the hook through the ends of the swinging arms which fastens the lot together. This is then cast to my chosen spot and ensures that the hook bait is kept well clear of the lead until the PVA melts. You can of course execute this process with one stringer funnel but for me I want twice the bait out there. The end result being that my rigs are safely placed in position amongst 20 tightly spread small freebies without any major interference on the cast and, more importantly, my hookbait is pushed away from my lead. |
