Good Evening.

The wind has really picked up today and it has changed direction. The other day it was an Easterly and now it has swung to a Westerly, sorry a strong Westerly! It started very early this morning and has carried on throughout the day building in strength. The Easterly bought lots of fish into the bay, which we observed, and it might be true that the Westerly wind might take them away, but I am not too fussed about that possibility. We fished down in the windy bay for a few days when the wind was blowing hard into it, and not many fish were observed. I have given up chasing fish on the wind!!

It was time to get Kelly fired up!!

I woke up this morning with a renewed fire! If these Salagou carp want to play hardball, then I will have to up the ante a little. I started the day off with a few strong coffees and got my thinking cap on. Lee on the other side of the bay has yet to catch in his new swim, and Dean managed to catch a mirror yesterday; the weight was around 4lb. Dean is a funny chap and has bought with him an array of inflatable items. In fact Lee and I wondered if he was planning on building a water park at Salagou. His collection consists of a paddling pool, which he is using as a carp cradle, and also two lilos. One is a very fetching purple colour, adorned with a palm tree, and the word ‘Benedorm’; and the other is the traditional canvas, red/blue, double bed variety! When he has put the water slide in I shall let you all know! Lee and I also suspect that he may have ‘another’ dodgy inflatable item tucked away in his bivvy, which he saves for night time use only! (That bit was a joke!!)

This 28mm Fruit pop-up has been mauled!!

Anyway, with my thinking cap on, I started thinking about my bait. The hook bait in particular. It has to be said that I am struggling and I need to try some different options. Now I am not saying that Salagou is an easy water. I know people who have been coming here for many years and they have had fantastic weeks and then they have had poor weeks. I guess it all boils down to timing, and maybe we have hit it at the wrong time. It is strange though because the fish have obviously finished spawning, or must be nearly there, so the fish should be hungry and feeding like mad.

One of the other problems at Salagou is the crays. Along with the normal type of crayfish found in most French waters there are the red signal variety in this lake and they are big and vicious. They will easily pull a boilie off your hair, and they will even take the boilie stops off to make their life easier. The first task I undertook today was to mesh up plenty more hook baits. I have been meshing up baits already, but normally just the bottom baits. Now it was time to mesh up the pop-ups too! White and Orange 20mm V-pops and Liver Bigballs and the 28mm Flying Liver hook baits.

Let's mesh all my hook baits!!

Hook bait is an Imperial Bait's white V-pop

First cut the mesh to size.

You need sufficient to wrap around the bait.

Just like that!!

I use dental floss to tie the mesh tight to the hook bait.

Tied up very tightly.

Trim away excess mesh and dental floss ends.

Carefully blob/melt the trimmed end and flatten it with the side of the lighter..careful you don't burn yourself!!

The finished hookbaits are boosted in the Imperial Bait's amino dips.

Once I had finished these I then put them in the Imperial Bait’s amino dips to boost them. I then started to think about colour and that I should be experimenting more with the options I have available. I have some fake yellow pop-up corn in my tackle box, and also some new flourescent hair stops from ACE. I am going to try and create some different colour combinations and see if I can get any takes this way.

Let's get colourful!!

Loving the new ACE hairstops!

Will it make the difference?

Colour can sometimes make all the difference and curiousity is sometimes the downfall of the carp, and at the end of the day, the basic aim is just to get the hookbait into the carp’s mouth. Most of us know that you don’t need to use the same hookbait as the boilies you are feeding with. For example, many people use small bright yellow pineapple flavoured pop-ups as a hook bait when fishing, yet you can bet they won’t be using pineapple flavoured boilies as their loose feed. Carp are scavengers and once their feeding receptors are triggered they will search long and hard for every last morsel of food, gulping in mouthfuls of lake bed and expelling what they don’t want to eat. They might not want to eat the bright pop-up before them but they may still mouth it to check.

Today I remembered to eat!

And I even had time for a haircut...although Salagou is making me grey!!

The positions where I have placed my rods are fine in my opinion. I know from past experience that weed beds are good features as are the bottoms of slopes where food collects. There are two Dutch guys round the corner from myself and they have had about  10 takes on tiger nuts and landed about 3 carp. If I had some tiger nuts I might put them on one rod, but as I fish with Imperial Bait’s I need to try and catch with Imperial Bait’s! The rest as they say is up to me! I have been working my four spots consistently throughout the day, introducing 10-15 boilies every four hours just to keep a trickle of bait going in.

The wind is now dropping ever so slightly, so I am going to reel in my rods and get the new colour combo’s on for the night. Come back tomorrow to find out if we have caught!

Cheers.

Jake Langley-Hobbs & two Doberman dogs!
Team Imperial Fishing-We love to fish!!…..
www.carp-gps.com