Good Morning.

After another night has passed me by without a carp, I have decided to try a new approach. I am going to put this into place over the next few hours and it will involve using the turbulence created by the boats as they pass through my swim. The boat traffic is signficantly less at the weekend, which means I have a chance to try and perfect my method before the regular boat traffic returns on Monday.

There is a clear channel in this river that the boats use. It is slightly deeper than the rest of the river and when these huge barges pass through, they obviously must stir up the bottom. I am going to fish with two rods only from now on and will have the other two ready as spares. The plan will be to cast into the channel after a boat has passed through, with a stringer attached to my hookbait. I will also flick out a small handful of boilies with my Eazi-stik. If anything, if I can get the carp to feed competitively, then this will ensure the best chance of quick takes. I am not sure how strong the flow will be in this part of the river, so I might have to play around with my lead sizes a little, to get enough weight to keep everything in place.

If a boat passes through with my rods in position I have no doubt that two very fast runs will develop from the surge of the boat. They create a massive surge of water, that not only pushes the river ahead of them, it actually draws water away from the edges. The plan I will adopt is to reel in the two rods before the new boat arrives (as I can see/hear them in the distance), and then ‘recast’ the two spare rods, I have already made up, back into the channel immediately afterwards. The two other rods are then quickly re-made up and are ready and waiting to go for when the next boat pushes through. This will involve lots of work I guess and will keep me busy and vigilent and I do think it might even be possible to nail a fish in the daytime. The boats do come through at night too, so I will hopefully have very tired eyes in the morning. If the plan starts to work the fact I will only be fishing with two rods at a time will become plainly obvious, as dealing with four rods each time, would become rather tricky, and the time spent making them all back up would waste valuable time.

I am now going to set everything up, make some adjustments and find some good spots in the channel. I will clip up all the rods to the same distance as it then means I won’t get myself in a muddle as to where each rod is going when I need to recast. If anyone reading this has done something similar then please drop me a comment as I would like to know if you found the method successful. I have often had takes on rivers in the past when a boat has gone through, but it is not something I have considered doing on this stretch, as the last time I fished here, the takes all came in the margins away from the boat channel. One thing is for sure, the boats, however large they are, must be seen as an advantage, and carp being the scavengers they are, obviously benefit from them stirring up the riverbed. Everything is worth a shot, as they say, and it is now time to put the plan into operation.

Be back later with some additional pictures.

To finish this short post…Have you subscribed to my blog yet? I have now ‘finally’ got round to adding an RSS Subscribe button. This will automatically feed a few lines of my latest post to your PC notifying you that I have updated the blog. Simply click on the RSS Feed icon on the right hand side and then click on Subscribe to this feed.

Catch you later.

Jake and the dogs.

Welcome back!!

Since writing the earlier part of TWP I have been incredibly busy getting everything in place. The first thing I changed was my lead release system. I was using the popular inline release method involving pushing the end of the swivel inside the plastic insert inside an inline lead. The tail rubber which slides up and down your leader is then slid down over the stem. If a fish is hooked the lead ejects every time. The problem with this method is the lead can come off on the cast if it is a long chuck. My cast to the boat channel is a fair old chuck, especially with a 26mm boilie and a one or two bait stringer attached. I have now switched to the Korda Hybrid leadclip and I am using this with a traditional swivel type lead. The weight of the lead is about 5 ounces incidentally. I can now give the cast some welly without fear of my lead flying off!

I have moved my rods so they are now sat side by side. With only two rods to work with there is less chance of the lines getting crossed should I hook a carp. It also means getting in and out of the boat to go and play a fish is slightly less complicated. I have made up a few spare rigs and they are ready to go, should I need a replacement. My stringers as I have already mentioned are now just a one or two bait size. My other two rods are leant against a tree with baits on the hair ready to go should I need them.

I have had two beeps already whilst I write this short update. I have regularly introduced a very small amount of bait into the channel with my throwing stick and I am ensuring I do this after every boat passes through. I am focusing on one area and both rods are being fished to this part, spaced about twenty yards apart. Not only is it exciting trying something different, it is a new style I have adopted for myself, and one I hope works.

I will be back at some point over the weekend to report on my progress. Have a good Saturday night folks and have a drink on me!

Cheers for now!

Hello Again!!

There was a lack of boats during the night, but the first one passed through this morning shortly after 8am. I wound the rods in and then recast my ready to go spares. I flicked in approximately 50 boilies and got the kettle on. I recently purchased a new piece of equipment. I bought one for the Turtle at Gigantica too, and I have to say it is making life much easier with the throwing stick these days. It is an apron or boilie bumbag (whatever you want to call it), and it certainly helps and means you no longer have pockets full of boilies that you always seem to find a few days later. I top mine up with a couple of handfuls after each use so it is always ready to go.

I first saw Mr Fairbrass using one and at first thought: “Thats rather posh!” But eventually I realised the benefits and finally got round to buying mine. It holds about 2 kilos of boilies and means there is less bending down and stopping, which means you can throw out baits with more rhythm.

A hearty breakfast was certainly the order of the day and after my favourite concoction consisting of bacon lardons, onions, potatoes, mushrooms, eggs and cheese, all cooked together in a frying pan; it was back down to business. Hitting the actual boat channel is proving rather difficult with Mr Braid, so I decided to switch to Miss Mono on all my spools. I did the switch this afternoon and I am using a 10m 30lb shockleader to enable me to give it more stick on the cast.One important thing to ensure you do every cast is to place the shockleader knot at the base of your spool. This just makes the cast smoother as your leader won’t catch on the knot.

I would say it is an 80 yard chuck to the channel and with a stringer, a 26mm bait and a 5oz lead, which all adds up to a significant load to haul across the river. Some people may prefer to give it the big one with braid, but I much prefer mono for greater distances. On the river there are certainly advantages with mono too. It tends to gather less debris and sits better in the flow. If boats pass through it acts more like a spring and will not move your lead. Braid on the other hand drags in the flow, debris clings to it, and as there is no stretch, it will certainly move your end tackle should a big barge move through. As an experiment I left my rods out when a boat passed through earlier, and afterwards both lines were snagged behind the boulders, that separate the channel from the rest of the river. It was a simple task of going out in the boat to free them, but this is a typical drawback of braid.

I am now waiting for darkness to fall. I am full of anticipation. I now feel everything is slowly slotting into place and I think I am fishing the river to my best potential now. It almost feels like I am match fishing in a way. I have the two rods made up ready to go. I am constantly working hard every time a boat passes through, and it is certainly making the time pass by quicker! I have adopted a system that I reckon could work quite well. I just need a carp to show for my efforts now and I will then have the proof!

One last thing!!  I now also have a Twitter account. Twitter is a relatively new concept and it enables the account holder to write very short statements or sentences known as Tweets. It is very quick for me to add a Tweet and it is another way for some of you to follow my antics as they unfold. I will still write the blog every day, but Twitter means I can keep you updated as and when certain events happen, in particular when a carp is caught!! If you want to follow me on Twitter click on the My Twitter button and you can be kept up to date by an RSS Feed, you can even keep up to date with My Twitter on your mobile phone, or you can simply read My Twitter comments on the blog as per normal. Most importantly Twitter will notify you when I have posted a new blog!!

Be back tomorrow.

Jake and the dogs!!

Tags: boilies, carp, Eazi-stik, jake langley-hobbs, Korda

This entry was posted on October 24, 2009 at 1:24 pm and is filed under River Adventures. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.