ASK THE EXPERTS
Dear Team,
In what circumstances would the team decide against baiting up or using a marker float?
Gary Legge
Gary,
The answer to this question is dependent on the situation that you are faced with. The best way to answer this question would be if I gave examples of a few different scenarios. If I had found numbers of fish in a swim and had the chance of a bite straight off, and the session was relatively short, I would initially take the ‘softly-softly’ approach. This basically means avoiding the use of the marker float but casting singles or PVA bags at the fish. I know that a lot of venues are very weedy, especially during the summer months, and it can be a real pain trying to find spots on which it is possible to present a bait. If the swim looks mega-weedy then I would solid bag straight into it, or, as a last resort, put a light lead on and have a maximum of two casts to see if I could get myself a telltale ‘donk’ on the rod tip that would indicate a clearer area. As mentioned, I would use the same drills when it came to baiting up; I wouldn’t bait up heavily initially as this can also be the kiss of death if fish are resident because on some waters carp don’t respond too well to spods raining down on top of them. However this really does depend on your venue as on some of the busier waters such as Horseshoe, spodding can actually pull the fish into your swim.
Using the ‘softly-softly’ approach during a recent BCAC qualifier got us through to the final.
Conversely, a scenario where I would bait up and use a marker float would be if I knew I was going to be in the swim for a few days and I knew that I had the potential of the fish moving into my ‘patch’ in the next few days. I would explore the area with the marker religiously until I had found the spots that I best thought would produce bites. The same goes with baiting. I’m not shy when it comes to baiting and I wouldn’t have a problem feeding them for a few hours if I knew that a hit was on the cards.
Spods are great for putting out quantities of bait, but be warned, on some waters they can do more harm than good and act as carp scarers.
Overall, the times I wouldn’t bait up or use a marker would be as follows: on ultra-short sessions; if I knew the fish were there in numbers and there was a risk of spooking them; if I knew that an angler had just vacated the swim and potentially old bait could be littered around the swim.
Roman
