Dear Mark Pitchers

I am planning a prebaiting campaign on a new water this spring. The water is around 35 acres and holds about 150 carp between 10-30lb, with depths ranging from 2-7ft. The lake has a few sand bars and large weedbeds on the marginal shelves. Can you give me any tips on how many, and what types of areas I should be prebaiting in order to maximise my chances of success this spring?

Many thanks
K. Allen

Dear Mr Allen

Prebaiting is something that features heavily in my own angling approach, and I would say on a large water such as your chosen venue, adopting this tactic can undoubtedly give you a big advantage this coming spring.

Providing you are using a good quality food bait, prebaiting will not only help establish your bait as a highly valued food source, but will also create areas in which the carp feel more confident about visiting/feeding. It’s difficult to say precisely how many areas you should be baiting, but it goes without saying that unless you are guaranteed to be fishing the same swim each time then you really need to be baiting multiple locations.

On a large lake this may initially mean introducing bait to three or four (or even more) swims, but as your time on the water progresses, and as you develop more of an understanding of the carp’s behaviour and feeding habits, you may then be able to eliminate certain areas, or establish new potential locations. Baiting up this many areas on a larger water can prove costly if using boilies alone, especially if there are nuisance species present, but incorporating pellets, particles and Vitalin can all help to keep the cost down.

When it comes to trying to determine which features/spots are best to introduce the bait, then it’s a similar process to that of an angling situation, where you would look to pinpoint spots where the carp prefer to frequent and hopefully feed. Again, time spent on the venue observing the carp’s activity will soon identify any preferred feeding areas.

From your description of the venue, one of the more obvious areas where I would start applying bait would be the weedbeds growing on the margin shelves, as these will almost certainly be visited by the carp on a regular basis. Other anglers often overlook these marginal areas, and by baiting these close-range spots you should be able to observe the carp’s reaction to the bait, as well as gauging how much they are eating, or how frequently they are visiting the baited area.

In the warmer months, when the carp are feeding more aggressively, it may be worth dropping some particle or pellet-type baits actually in the weed, as a group of carp rooting around will soon create some clearer areas in which to present a bait, and, in essence, create your own hot spot.

One final point: whenever possible, try to carry out the prebaiting out of view of other anglers. The last thing you want is for someone else to reap the rewards following all your hard work! On busy venues it may even be worth baiting up during the hours of darkness, or if this isn’t possible, I know of anglers who have put other anglers off the scent by baiting up dummy areas by catapulting out balls of molehill soil or gravel – sneaky, sneaky!

Hope that helps, and good luck with your campaign.

Mark Pitchers