Good Evening.

Since Sunday’s stunning common, there has been more action, but unfortunately it seems the lake’s population of catfish have moved onto my spot. This is probably down to the amount of small species the Halibut Pellet has attracted, but it does not have to be seen as a negative. I have fish out there, and as the catfish in this lake are not of a size to threaten the carp, I don’t think the carp will get pushed out of the way. I now just need to use a bait that the cats won’t eat or try to pick up before the carp have a chance to find it, so it has to be the humble tiger nut. That’s exactly what I have done.

Three cats have so far been banked and they took a liking to my pink Squid and Octopus pop-ups, and my orange Tutti Frutti pop-ups. I have also had the rock lead ejected a few times as the aquatic feline species attacks my bait without getting hooked. This has been rather annoying, especially when fishing at such ranges, and it was definitely time to come up with another game plan. The biggest cat has been about 10kg and they don’t really go much bigger in here. They are what you might call an irritating nuisance!

I suppose I could move all of my rods to a brand new area but it seems a shame to have to move after finding some fish. Today I went and fed some more bait, but I put this several metres behind my line of markers to keep the fish activity to the other side of my actual drop positions. I still want to draw in fish of all species as I think the continued activity will keep the carp coming back. I have now dropped three rods all sporting three corked tiger nuts from the Frenzied range, and I have sprinkled tiger nuts of various sizes around each drop position. One thing I did was to make up some tiger nut stringers after first drying out some nuts in the sun. I then looped this over a PVA nugget wrapped around the hook, and tied it off with an additional nugget at the end of the stringer. This extra nugget conveniently pops up to the surface so accurate baiting up can be carried out.

I have a little writing to finish in the next couple of days so I am hoping the switch to tigers will allow me to get on with it, apart from, hopefully, only being interrupted for a carp or two. I am about to start my last ‘No Fixed Abode’ feature, for International Carper, as after two years of contribution, I feel I now need a break from that magazine; plus I have run out of material for the time being. I need a fresh country, some new water, and a new scene. I may return to International Carper – that will remain to be seen. My writing for European magazines, and the blog, will continue in earnest, as they are both things that I still really enjoy doing.

That’s all for tonight.

Cheers

Jake and the dogs.

Tags: carp, Catfish, frenzied range, International Carper, jake langley-hobbs, tiger nuts

This entry was posted on July 13, 2010 at 8:43 pm and is filed under The Italian Job!. 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.