Your observation skills may be good, or they may be bad but they can be very much a part of your carp fishing success. You learn so much by watching fish respond to your presence at the bankside. What they do when you cast out or bait up is also very interesting and almost as important as what happens when you pack up and vacate your swim, only to sneak stealthily back to observe fish over your baited area!

Is it such a mystery why so many carp get hooked either within minutes of first casting out or in the last moments of a hard session when perhaps all your non-essential tackle like bivvy, alarms and bank sticks are already packed up and your rods are on the ground? Do you get the feeling that the carp appear to be playing some kind of game with you where they are simply waiting for the right moment to eat your bait safely just when you are least ready? This is of course not a logical thinking type of process they are using, but responses in line with conditioned behaviours born of fears with angling associations and use of their natural survival instincts.

When it comes to fishing for big carp or achieving very consistent success it takes a degree of understanding of your fish. Carp fishing is not a sport like golf or football where even though there are variables, ultimately it is an inanimate object that you are aiming to control. Fish however are alive and this offers anglers countless other levels of variables that ball-related sports simply lack.

You can study a team or course or a pitch, the lie and angle of the grass and strength and direction of the wind perhaps, but of course carp fishing is played in an aquatic environment that much of the time is not possible to truly accurately analyse. Experience counts for so much, but so do all kinds of incredibly specific fishing skills that anyone can develop to a heightened degree more than average. It did not take me more than a few months to realise that free bait was one of the most in powerful methods of controlling carp behaviour in fishing, and this realisation came in the Seventies before things like the hair rig and boilie and bolt rigs where even used by the average carp angler.

I read in a carp magazine today that the gap between the understanding of so-called general course anglers and carp anglers in terms of baits and techniques is even wider than ever, but I perceive the opposite to be true!

Like the majority of carp anglers of my generation now approaching their fifties or older, most of us did a long apprenticeship of general course fishing. Other fishing such as sea, estuarine and game types of fishing, plus match fishing may all have been part of the background along the way, and some of these may be pursued right up to today. I feel those anglers who very proudly state that they are carp anglers and state they never ever fish for anything else are simply like ostriches with their heads in the sand afraid to learn what gems they are missing in their ignorance.

Thinking about is logically, just how do you know what other activities will teach you and new avenues of thought, techniques and further breakthroughs you will very likely discover or even master by studying something else?! I have done all kinds of fishing over the years in part because of the diversity of the challenges faced, the changes of environments and fishing skills required, plus the completely different fishing approaches and environments you can experience not sitting behind bite alarms, but working actively on your fishing and really investigating your environment.

Now this may sound rich coming from a person who is planning to go and fish a probably packed-out commercial fishery tomorrow. However, I have done my time on many carp waters in numerous syndicates where it was not uncommon to have only a handful of anglers fishing a water, and fishing less popular very difficult day ticket waters where you could fish for 3 or 4 days and not see another angler at all.

In fact I very much prefer to fish in isolation away from other anglers and social fishing is not normally my main prerogative as I would go to a club or pub or some other activity instead. Of course fishing with friends has always been important to me but if I really want to catch fish perhaps when fishing a pressured water then often social fishing can be a real disadvantage and being off your rods is simply not an option as any sensible angler knows.

When I say off your rods in this case I mean the act of actually reeling in and leaving the swim. On some waters doing this at the wrong time can ruin your chances and perhaps waste a session spent working hard building up a feeding scenario or in exploiting some natural phenomenon that is only very brief such as a hatch, a change in wind direction, a sudden drop in pressure or rise in temperature, or absence of competing anglers perhaps!

I guess I am one of those people who really appreciates being besides a water fishing in peace and quiet. I spend many years in self-employment working in isolated natural environments but I am not saying this suits everyone of course! However these days fishing away from the crowds is just not always an option and you have to go with the flow, and make the most of the available fishing that you can as is the case for the vast majority of carp anglers.

But I do differ from the stereotypical carp angler in that I decided when I was 21 while recovering from a near fatal illness that I would recover and make fishing my main focus in life and design and live my life with this aim. For this reason I have fished more hours on banks of rivers and lakes and estuaries, ponds, reservoirs, on beaches, dykes, streams, cuts, and other places, than anyone I have ever met. The last 4 years have been different because I have fished infrequently because other goals have materialised which have become very important personally, but the cumulative effects of experiences over thousands of hours of fishing and observing fish and different interrelated situations remain.

Now getting back to this fishing a commercial water has got me thinking a great deal because I mostly hate the thought of just being at such commercialised places where often the interests of the fish are pretty low down the list compared to other considerations although this is not so in many cases of course!

One thing that struck me when fishing in February at Elphicks North Lake in Kent was how all the natural bankside vegetation had been razed to the ground leaving the banks about as barren and unsheltered and unnatural as could possibly imagined. This removal of the vegetation was apparently something to do with protecting the interests of the carp in regards to water quality if I recall correctly; probably something like avoiding leaves etc falling into the lake and eventually leading to a lowering of available oxygen and acidification of the water that obviously could easily affect the health of carp in such an artificially stocked water.

Personally I would rather see the yearly natural growth of bankside vegetation development noting new species taking advantage of the unique habitat as an oasis of food and resources and a suitable place to thrive away from controlling environments of farms, controlled parks and urbanisation etc. Getting in tune with a water is so important in carp fishing in my view. This tuning in and deeper appreciation of the terrestrial and aquatic environments and how all the variable constant changes are interrelated really is part of the attraction for me because you begin to feel as one with the environment you are in and not as a separate entity just visiting.

When I visit the commercial complex of lakes tomorrow I will be giving myself as much opportunity to tune into each lake as possible before making any choices of which one to fish or which swim and spots in swims to investigate. I realise it is not often the case that one can take a good number of hours to study waters before fishing and that often it really is a matter of a mad dash and beating the crowd just to get any swim at all if you are not to be disappointed. However, in this case I am testing some new baiting combination designed just for this period when water temperatures are still approaching 15 degrees and when the carp are still in consistent autumn feeding mode and so more care is being taken. This is true also because I may be fishing lakes I am totally new to.

My choice of which lake to fish or swim or spots in swims to fish will obviously be decided very much with regards to the activities and presence of fellow anglers in mind. For example the impacts of their lines, their fishing styles and methods, their free baits and actual bankside activities etc. this will not be figured out by what gear they are using, but probably mostly by simply observing how much they are part of the environment or not and how much they may appear to be aware of their surroundings and what looks like is happening underwater.

On pressured waters fish will very frequently prefer to avoid angling pressure. It is often the traditional angling lore that many fish will follow the wind - but fish are contrary creatures! After all, if this lore was always true all the time then all the fish in a lake would be caught by just a couple of anglers in a couple of swims in many cases; but most very experienced pressured fish wise up do they not!

At the end of the day I shall be setting up using a mixture of observations and gut instinct. In part the goal is not fish hooked but to observe how the bait impacts on the fish hopefully even more favourably for me in comparison to the baiting and fishing tactics and thinking of fellow anglers. This will also provide invaluable feedback in what is a realistic fishing situation for most carp anglers today which I can pass on.

The fact that carp angling is so popular today is because many variables can be taken care of and controlled to much more of a measured degree, and the leverage of free baits is one of particular interest to me. As is my habit my approach will not be normal and I will be endeavouring to approach the actual fishing and baiting up in as unconventionally as possible. I am fishing for 72 hours so this will give the baits at least 2 chances to pass through the fish to feel their benefits if you consider an average internal passage times of 36 hours or less for my baits.

I will be using binoculars to really study the baited areas for any clues to wary feeding activity including single bubbles, fish rolling underwater, the sudden appearance of a leave or twig not apparent on a spot before, flat spots in the water, and so on. Many anglers use finely tuned bite indicators and their indicators to help determine fish movements, feeding and locations etc and this is part of my approach. Natural bait presentation is not simply about things like negating the weight of your hook or whatever in regards to rigs, but in how you bait up in specific terms.

Think about how fly hatches for example occur. Consider the way blooms of things like bloodworm and abundances of snails or mussels or aquatic weeds may impact carp and very importantly, how carp actually feed naturally on such items. Natural carp food items will often be drawn to baits for many reasons. How can this help you and also how can you replicate such situations so more natural bating situations can be provided that make for more confident feeding on your hook baits and free baits?

I honestly do not think the average commercial water angler will be too interested in such things and will probably grumble as usual when someone else catches fish but whenever someone else catches a fish it is literally always a moment to remember and learn from - and if you have been awake and aware, then you will probably have already figured out many of the factors and actions that the angler took that made the capture possible.

Now for a little bait tip. Although I will not be using particles tomorrow, if you fancy using something different, why not prepare some maple peas as hook baits and fish them actually on you hook link as opposed to on a hair rig. Rig up you hook with foam so it sits just off the bottom and enters the mouth of the fish first. Have you ever made a paste or even boilies using cooked maple peas, crushed hemp and crushed chick peas with chick pea flour and maybe some blood and haemoglobin powders and powdered eggs, ground almonds, a little mustard, lemon grass and ginger perhaps?

Why not ring the changes and try it; it is simple thought but this is just one idea that experienced fish will not had the pleasure of dealing with every day for the last 365 days of the year! (If you do decide to be different and try it you can let me know what happened!)

Before action is thought; before thought is observation. If stillness comes before observation you will probably notice that bit more. I like quiet carp fishing and it can be done even on noisy busy waters when you truly tune in; the rewards can often be worth the effort and so often the key to success is in observance of the small seemingly minor insignificant details and creating something new! (For much more more information on making homemade baits and boosting and adapting readymade baits of all kinds see my unique bait secrets ebooks and articles at Baitbigfish right now!)

By Tim Richardson.

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