You wondering what it is?
You can have a whole host of the time proven baits out there with the best gear, but does it honestly catch you more fish? Does the bait give you the right spot at the right time for the only big fish in the lake? NO. Does a bait find a clear spot on the lake bed which is blind to the eye? NO. You do, your capabilities do this for you and your confidence lets you leave it there for a few days.
Im not saying that you can go and buy any bait and any tackle and expect to catch carp if your confident. What i am saying is thinking positively will 100% catch you more fish than thinking negatively.
So, by now your probably thinking that who goes fishing and doesn't think positively and that your not going to chuck a bait in if your not at least thinking 'this should give me a bite'.
How do you manufacture your own confidence if you going through a dry spell?
So, this is where planning comes into it. A lot of the last few years has been spent on hard day ticket waters. I don't like to follow the pack and i dont particularly enjoy fishing for smaller carp anymore, its nothing personal to anybody but i like to keep my targets at a single fish or a group of large fish. While doing this planning and confidence really come into their own.
Obviously to plan a campaign on a water you need to know what resides in there, fish stock, weed, size all - the boring stuff but most of all you need to think like a carp. I don't care what anyone says; Fish are frequently doing a similar run. Fish are caught in the same spot year after year and getting to know these sort of facts is critical for self confidence let alone for planning a campaign.
So you've found a couple of spots, but your still blanking and you feel like a right useless twat. Whats the situation? Why is this so bad? You have just learned what times and areas are non productive. No matter what don't just stand still and let the time pass. You have to make the most of the time your out there and if you want the big girls then you seriously need to pull your finger out. A lot of people say i'm just lucky with the fish that i have caught but i've put so much work into every water ive fished i reckon i know 99% of the bottom on most of my waters. Its not luck at all, its planning and preparation.
So what next?
This is something i used to do DAILY. I used to do a certain circuit every 2 hours if i hadn't had a sign.
The following swims are marked out in swims. The far two are where i constantly had seen fish, but more often than not they used to bath in the sun and often were not interested in feeding - this isnt to say i never caught from here!
Dont get me wrong, i only fished like this when it was difficult - but it brought results!
The swims were fished every day by me, all three. I used to give it 1 or 2 hours on each and if i hadn't a sign i used to feed and move. Not a massive amount of bait, possible 2 kilo with the stick. Just something to keep them in the area. The smaller section was probably my most productive area on the lake, responsible for 17 carp. 5 x 30's 2 x 40's and 5 x upper 20's with the rest being made up buy smaller carp. The baiting campaign, planning and the over all method of how i targeted this water gave me a lot of confidence. I knew that at some point i would get on the fish.
I'm guess people are thinking 'well im not a full time fisherman etc etc and all the negativity jargon that 50% of people come out with. Neither was i - Evening and mornings...
The point i'm trying to make is dont just turn up with the new bait someone has just invented in there shed and is going to be a masterpiece (Dont even get me started on that) and expect to bag up. Some venues take some real effort to drain results from. Look back at my time at clumber, take a guess how many fish i caught roughly from 280 sessions......89 fish. I did blank, but i turned it around and got it back in my favour. People always say you learn something everytime you go fishing, but this doesnt mean when you blank you need to change any of your tackle - has it ever come into your head that it might just be the wrong time of the day?
The bottom line is:
