NOVEMBER 2010
'Winter is Coming!' by Colin Walford
In many anglers opinions, these next few months are without doubt, the best months for catching those carp that have been playing hard to get over the summer months! Now, quite obviously, bait will play a major role at this time of year. The fish are usually well up for a bit more food and most anglers increase the amount of food bait they are introducing to their lake.
Quite often, multiple catches are made as the fish start to respond to the increase in their food supply as they look to fatten up for the coming winter months. I will certainly already have started to put more bait into the lake by the time you get to read this. But as the title suggests, there is something else I will be doing too.
Again, many of you will look to change your bait for something that will be easier for the carp’s digestive system to cope with during the colder months, and these next few months are when I would be looking to introduce the fish to a new food source that will sustain them and hopefully see you catching your fair share during the colder period.
Over the last few weeks, I've been whacking in lots of Garlic and Black Pepper in various sizes, but since the end of October, I've also been adding small quantities of the new SS Range that John is releasing for winter use, and throughout the next 4 or 5 weeks I will start introducing a little bit more of the winter bait, and decreasing the summer fishmeal bait, until by the end of the forth/fifth week, all I’m introducing to the lake is the SS Range. This is just the way I like to do things, but you may want to go about it in a different way and spread it over a couple of months (ie starting earlier, say mid September). The choice is yours!
The SS Range is ideal for winter as it contains a good helping of milk protein, so pilling in loads of it, probably wont help your cause purely down to the fact that it will fill the fish up a little bit quicker because they have a little bit more goodness to take from a winter bait than a summer one, I would recommend that you go easy on the quantity of bait you introduce to your water. You want the bait to work all through the cold period, right through till the end of the season.
Once I have established the bait, and the water gets very cold, quite often you will see me fishing just a lone pop up, probably glugged, purely down to the fact that the bait has already gone in and the fish won’t want to eat as much.
Just to follow on from Dan’s great piece from last month; don’t forget to introduce the bait to those neglected swims that haven’t seen too many anglers in them through out the summer. These areas may be just starting to come in their own, and with a little bit of good carp food going into the, they just may give you a great start to your winter campaign! Cheers & Tight Lines
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