Thanks for your long answer.

This is exactly the reason I like to read a lot about carpfishing. Every once in a while I read a different way of approuching. It maybe usefull in the future for my fishing. I never had that much of trust in pop ups. I use them on the river as a snowman to keep away the breams. I only use green,blue and sometimes white. The other colour are turning to grey under water very soon. (just a tip of a friend who does diving for a hobby)
Using different kind of boilies at the same time may also work at pressured waters just because no one is doing it.

Good luck with your trip.

Excuses for my bad english

grtz

Leon

One thing you have to bear in mind with my fishing is as follows: I am quite often fishing a new lake with limited time…okay it may be a month… Therefore I don’t generally have time to get the fish onto my bait as opposed to over a long period of time where they start to find it regularly and then see it as a safe/natural food source. I am always looking for quick results and I find a bright pop up in amongst my feed, a sure bet to get a take if the fish are feeding on my bait. I do use the same bottom bait from time to time, and of course a snowman. I don’t have any problems about feeding my areas with two or three different boilies and fishing amongst them with a bright yellow pop up for example. I did this at the Orient and it worked fine because the fish were obviously hungry and were not going to turn their noses up at one boilie and not the other. I think when you are fishing a public water for example that does not receive the same kind of pressure as say a very busy commercial water, you can get away with a lot more for example. Fish may not be so line shy and they are generally quite catchable if you can find them.

On the other end of the scale if I was fishing a lake long term then I certainly would try to introduce a very high quality bait to get the carp on that food source, especially if there was a lot of natural food in the water. You have to or the fish aren’t getting the same kind of nutritional benefit that they get from the naturals. I would fish with pop ups of the same mix or bottom baits to try and catch them, but I would never rule out the bright pop up either. The carp normally only take the pop up out of curiousity and if you get them in feeding mode usually let their guard down a little.

You would not think you would catch carp on yellow foam hanging three feet below the surface, but this method(zigging) is deadly and the carp are taking it because they think it’s a bug or something similar, or maybe they too aren’t sure, so they mouth it to see. Then you have got them!!

Every situation is different on each lake I fish I guess and I always try each because one will normally work at some point.

I hope this answers your question. Have confidence in your method and you can’t go far wrong.

Tight lines

Jake

One other thing to mention is I am fishing very close in this week to snags and I like to use a more forgiving rod so I can bully the fish out of the snags if need be.

Hope that clears that up for you.

Jake

Still enjoying the blog every day. Good luck in Italy.

A while ago you wrote that you don’t mind fishing with other baits than the ones you are feeding with. It’s a different tactic than I am used to. When I trie to fish a water I try to get the fish confident with my bait, so that even I change the spot, the fish will recognice my bait as safe bait, so they take it with confidence. I use a snowman only when big amounts of bait are thrown into the water (late autum) so the hookbait will be token earlier. Your cathes prove your tactic works. I am just curious how you think about mine.

thnx

Leon