Small water Tactics
Posted by Keith on May 7, 2010 under Carp and Coarse Fishing, Help and Tips | 
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Q. How do I go about approaching my new water? It’s a small and shallow pool with a relatively low stock of fish.
Nigel Gleddon from Weymouth.
A. Thanks for your question Nigel. I’m currently fishing a similar kind of water in Devon. Here’s a few pointers to hopefully aim you in the right direction.
Choice of water is very important as the last thing you want to be doing throughout a hard winter is sitting blanking! Fortunately fishing small, shallow waters is invariably the quickest route to a bend in the rod. The reason for this is that being shallow they will clearly warm up much quicker during daylight hours than a lake of much greater depth.
Location is paramount. A fish gives itself away by jumping clear of the water here.
For example, the water I am fishing currently is between 12″ and 4 feet in depth with quite a thick layer of silt formed on the bottom. Silt as most of you know forms due to rotting vegetation, leaves, bait and the obvious fish waste! This layer of silt will warm up with the water and hold temperature for longer periods. This makes silty areas often one of the best places to target during colder months. On some venues the fish also seem to feed far more comfortably on the silt than on clear open areas…..probably down to feeling safer there. What you have to remember about fish is that they are cold blooded creatures that are unlike us unable to maintain there own body temperature. This means that when the water temperature drops away; so does the fishes will to move around expending energy.
Small venues that get regularly fished during the winter, should continue to fish well. Keeping a regular flow of bait entering the water will certainly do your approach no harm at all. I have done this myself over the past few seasons and really reaped the rewards. The particular venue I am fishing at the moment see’s an average 6-8 anglers a week, the majority over the course of the weekend.
This leaves me the week days to target my quarry. Of course we’re not all that lucky to have week days to go fishing! Time on the bank is obviously important for success and the more time you have, the more you will almost certainly catch.
Aerial maps can be really invaluable.
Before we hit the bank side though, it’s important to gain as much information about our choice of venue, target fish, busiest times, current baits used and particular lake topography. Most of you will be now saying ‘How the heck do I get all that before I see the place?’ Well, it’s not that hard to be fair. With the massive popularity of that ‘internety typey thingy’ you should be able to get most of it from there. Most lakes have been talked about at some point and if you do a search on one of the many Search Engines, it’s pretty likely you’ll find some info about the place.
Another useful tool is Google Earth, Google Maps etc. It’s possible to view most of the planet from one of these cool online tools. I’ve managed to view just about all of my venue choices in the last few years, gaining valuable info on shallows, bars, deep spots etc. Very useful! My next tip would be a good few hours spent at the venue prior to fishing and on as quieter day as possible. Take a marker float rod with you and have a good plumb around. Locate gravel, silt areas, weed etc. Make some notes with a pen and paper. Even go as far as to make a drawn map with depths etc on it.
Keep an eye on the weather, feeding times and the moon strike.
I try to make friends with as many of the regulars as possible as this often becomes another invaluable tool for keeping an ear on what’s happening whilst your not there! Especially if you live 100+miles away from the venue as I do!
Ok, so we’ve discussed a few obvious points. Lets get down to the technical stuff.
On arrival I try to keep my self as low key and inconspicuous as possible. Opening and closing car doors many times certainly won’t help your cause! Try and keep all your movements down to a minimum. Unpack carefully and sit well back from the edge of the water.
If you can see the fish, they can certainly see you….vibration really does carry through the ground too. A few years ago I was fishing on a small island made from boggy meadow land.
The water froze over night and when I arose in the morning it was quite amazing to see the vibrations on the iced over water just from gentle bank side movements. Banging bank sticks and pegs in is also a big no no.
Single hook baits can often out fish beds of bait...
I have gone to some real extremes in the past on very clear water venues…..putting large camouflage sheets over my bivvy front and wearing plenty of camou clothing to hide my presence from the weary carp.
My first application of bait would be to apply a gently gently approach and add more bait as and when I felt that what I had added originally had been eaten. I would choose small mesh PVA bags of broken boilies or pellets presented over a boilie hook bait.
Try to present your baits at a different combination of depths and swims. This will help in gauging the likely depth that the fish wish to feed at. I like to keep a log of all my captures, their weight, bait taken on, time of day, weather, water temp and moon strike. All this helps after a short period of time, to get an idea of the best times to fish, thus optimizing your time on and off the bank.
Learning the make up of the bottom of the pool will really make a dramatic difference to your catch rates too. I won’t go to much into this as I have covered Rig Camouflaging in an earlier article where I caught a 30lb 5oz mirror to order for the cameras.
Small PVA bags are my choice when hitting a new venue for the first few visits
Suffice to say that it makes a huge difference. I again proved this a few weeks ago when I bagged the biggest fish in my syndicate venue. A stunning mirror called ‘Scaley Tail’ down a bit in weight but at 29lb 2oz I was still well over the moon with the capture.
This fish in particular avoids the bank side much more than other more ‘mug’ fish. Whether this is down to it’s cleverness or the fact that many of these larger specimens tend to have a few body guards swimming around with them that clean around the areas checking for rigs before the big boys come in for a carefree and safe munch.
To catch this particular fish took a little bit of background work and some clever tricks to disguise my rig materials on the bottom of the lake. After chatting with many of the regulars I was able to gain invaluable information as to where the fish often gets caught from and on whether it has any preferences for certain baits? After sussing it out a bit more and having a lead around one of the likely feeding spots, it was determined that I’d need to get a bit clever with my approach.
One of my main target fish.....'Scaley Tail' at 29lb 2oz
The bottom make up was a combination of soft silt and covered in a stringy, green, soft weed. I had a good root through the tackle box and dug out some Nash Missing Link hook length material in camou green colour 15lb breaking strain. I stripped about 8 inches of the plastic coating away and started to pierce small sections of the removed plastic onto a size 8 Nash Fang Twister hook. After a fiddly 20 minutes or so I had a hook that looked about as realistically weed like as I could get without dragging it through the stuff! I then wrapped the hook length material onto the hook and formed a knotless knot around the coating.
This made the hook quite light weight and really well balanced with a critically bouyant/balanced bait that just settled on top of the lake bed weed. I opted to fish a light 1oz lead on a lead clip thus enabling the lead to be dropped if it snagged. A fluorocarbon main line fished slack with a small helping of single boilies trickled in over the hook bait finished off my approach.
My Missing Link Camouflaged DIY hook!
It didn’t take too long before I nailed a few fish. I kept topping up the swim with a small handful more of boilies and in that session I bagged my target fish too.
So, to wind up……Keep a low profile. Keep vibrations and noise to an absolute minimum. Sit well back from the edge. Try to gain as much info as you can before you arrive. Apply a little and often approach….remember you can put it in but not take it out.
Tight lines
Keith
When you arrive at your chosen fishery, have a good mooch around the margins and see if you can gauge what sort of bottom you may be about to place your baits on to. I even go so far as to put my arm in and reach down to grab the bottom. I try to pull up some of the bottom and have a good look at it’s texture, colour and food content.