Dear Mike ‘Spug’ Redfern,
I normally fish for 24 hours at a time, but I am planning to fish for a week-long session soon. Please could you give me some tips in the way of preparation, e.g. would you have a different bait strategy?
Many thanks,
Joanne Lee, Hertfordshire.

Hi Joanne, and thanks for the question. As we are now into January, there are a few things to bear in mind to make a week-long winter session a lot more bearable. I am going to make the assumption that you will be fishing a fairly well-stocked water with two rods – somewhere, for instance, like Catch 22 fishery, or Linear Fisheries in Oxford.

One of the first things that helped our winter fishing was being prepared; we planned it out in the autumn and after a few disasters decided that the following are the ingredients to successful winter fishing:

Bankside Etiquette
It is very important that you keep warm and dry (and, in my case, well fed!) and the most important piece of kit is definitely a twin skin bivvy. They keep you well insulated and don’t tend to suffer from condensation as badly as single skins or brollies; obviously good waterproof clothing is essential as well.

A decent torch and a radio will probably also help you through the long nights. I mean, with almost 14-15 hours of darkness, it’s a long time to be sitting there. Obviously, food and drink-wise you want plenty of hot drinks, soups and decent meals; all of these will help your stay to be a lot more bearable. It may sound odd pointing this out, but believe me, I have seen plenty of people go home early because they hadn’t prepared enough.

Now the Fishing!
As we all know carp do not feed as much during the winter months, and January/February always seem particularly slow, so in this instance and for a week-long period I would be extremely cautious about piling in loads of boilies and bait. What I have found works very well is for one rod to spod out some hemp, a few 10ml boilies, and some dead maggots over a snooker table-sized area. This always attracts the roach, bream, etc., and it seems that their activity, especially over the course of a week, will arouse the carp’s curiosity, and hopefully you will get one or two. I don’t put much in, in any one go, perhaps 10 spodfuls, but I like to keep topping it up every day or so. As a hookbait I would use dead maggots or 10mm boilie on a Size 8-10 hook with a 12lb mono hooklink.

On the other rod I would probably rove about using a little fruity boilie in conjunction with a stick mix. What I mean by rove about is to literally cast this setup all round the swim, moving it every couple of hours. I like this style of fishing and it keeps my options open. If I see a jumping fish, or signs of carp, then straightaway I reel that rod in and cast at what I have seen. Location is obviously more important in winter, so keep those eyes peeled at all times!
I hope all this helps, and good luck!

Spug.