Lee Gennings - July 2007
Weed Fishing
It’s at this time of year that you’ll find most lakes choked with weed, now while it’s good for the carp as it provides safety and an endless supply of natural food it’s not very nice for the angler. It makes angling slightly more difficult and not as straight forward as you would like it to be. Angling becomes more difficult because the carp become so pre-occupied on the mass amount of naturals that angler’s baits become easily ignored, so the percentage of buying a bite becomes lower. Things such as wind direction doesn’t always play its part on the fish’s behaviour as the carp would much rather stay put in one certain weed bed and thrive on the naturals that inhabit the thick forest of weed that surrounds them. It isn’t just this that makes the angling harder, the spots your fishing will get easily covered in weed if you don’t keep them clean, and if you don’t fish sensibly when it comes to using the right tackle for the situation you have a higher chance of loosing the carp.
Caught over spot cleared by my prefered mix
Bait for Clearing
There are three main baits I use when it comes to keeping my spots clean, Hemp, Pellets and chopped boilies. The reason for this is that the baits are small and highly oily and therefore very attractive for the carp, so by this mixture falling through all the strands of weeds that lay over your spot the carp will rip up the bottom to get at it, and it is that that keeps your spots clean enough to present a bait on. My pellet mixture consists of Bait & Feed Company’s Betaine Combo, Salmon Combo and Red Devil’s. I have my hemp supplied dry and cook it my self, for those of you who don’t know how to prepare hemp, Soak it in water for 24hours (make sure its covered by a couple of inches) then bring it to the boil and boil until the seeds split. I add a little bit of salt to mine when I soak it. I use the Shellfish B5 rolled by the Bait & Feed Company and the reason I add in some of these is so that the carp can keep sampling my bait.
The right tackle resulted in this wonderful 26.8 pounder
The right Tackle
You need to use strong enough tackle for the job when it comes to fishing in weed so upping your hook sizes and making sure they are strong hooks is something that should be thought about. Also making sure you can loose your lead easily enough; I like to loose my lead on the Bolt, as then from the moment you lift into the fish your lead free making it a lot more easy playing the fish through the weed.
My prefered pellet mix and the freefall lead clip
I have recently received some of the Rig Marole Free Fall lead clips, and after loosing a fish in the weed due to the lead not releasing I changed over to the new lead clips and the next to fish were landed with ease due to the lead clip and lead coming of on the bolt, its amazing how something so small but well thought of can give the angler such a benefit when it comes to landing fish in weed!
Lee Gennings |
