Having landed his target fish from a couple of waters already this year Jake Anderson shares some of his thoughts on how to successfully approach a new venue…
Targeting a water for the first time can be daunting, especially if you’ve ‘stepped up’ to a syndicate you’ve been trying to get into for ages or a water that you class as a challenge. There are so many points to consider that it can all get a bit overwhelming and your confidence quickly wains.
I was the same when I moved from the club waters I knew onto more challenging syndicates a few years ago, but having jumped onto quite a few different waters in the past few years, thanks to landing my targets relatively quickly and moving on, I now love the challenge of a new venue.
There is no substitute for knowing the venue and its inhabitants. You can usually find details and records for waters that hold big target fish that will start to give you an idea of when and where the bigger fish usually get caught. You can get an idea of what times of year the venue fishes best and use all of this to your advantage in making the most of your time on the bank.
Walk the banks of the lake, watch the water and check all the likely ‘haunts’ such as snags and weed beds and you will quickly build a pictures of where the carp are spending most of their time. If you can do this before your first session then great, but otherwise treat your first session on a venue as a reccy. You may not catch and there will likely be plenty of guess work in where and how you fish, but use that time to watch the water, speak to the other anglers and gather as much info as you can, which you can use to tailor your tactics from the second session onwards.
Make the effort to get into the ‘spirit’ of a new water. If you can get to know the regulars and other groups that fish there, and make the effort to befriend them, then you will be fed plenty of information about the water and captures even when you’re not at the lake.
Talking about info gathering, when it comes to bait and tactics I usually do my own thing regardless of what the ‘norm’ is. My first aim on a new water, if I am planning to fish there regularly, is to try and get some spots going. I’m a huge fan of margin spots, because they are often overlooked, which means you can be left to do your own thing. Furthermore, I will usually try to clear my own spots rather than fishing on obvious ones that might be well known.
First I start by introducing a mixture of prepared particles, quality pellets and quality boilies, with a higher ratio of particles and pellets to boilies. The aim is to attract any fish in the lake (yes, even the bream!) so that they can regularly feed and held clean the spots. The feeding disturbance will also start to get the carp interested. Over successive baitings I will increase the ratio of boilies and decrease the smaller baits to try to ensure that there is more and more bait for the carp, once they start to get used to finding bait on that spot.
I’ve written in Carp-Talk before that my preference is for a large hook bait, so I won’t go into the whys and wherefores again here, but in general a large boilie hook bait is fished over the top.
I’ll try to get spots going at both ends of a lake, and usually in the les popular swims, so that I have a better chance of getting back into the swim each trip, and so that I have a pre-baited spot at the more favourable end of the lake depending on the weather conditions.
Finally, don’t be afraid to make a change. If you’re plugging away with a spot or area fruitlessly and you know the carp can be found elsewhere, then don’t stick to the spots like glue just because you’ve been baiting them… you are allowed to move! However, if you get the first bit right and pick a couple of sensible areas, 9 times out of 10 the carp will show up on your baited spots, and relatively quickly too.