What on earth do you do?!

[carp_mad_man]

Hi all.

I am planning on a 24hr trip to a water I have fished before, but not for carp. I know that there are rediculous numbers of tench and bream in there, but how do you get past them. To lay down some more information on this lake; Boilies are banned, nuts too, there are only about 50 carp - to cerca 25lb - in a 1.5 acre lake and the bream get to about 6Lb. I dont mind catching decent sized tech, but night fishing for carp and catching bream throughout the night???..... no, no. I would just like to see how you have/would fish a lake like this for carp.
Thanks, CMM.

[murv]

I only have very limited experience of Carp fishing without boilies, and haven't in fact fished for Carp for some Years but one thing I used to use with a fair bit of success was large cubes of fried Spam.
You have to keep a keen eye on the frying pan, too hot and it'll burn, not hot enough and it won't toughen up but a few minutes of hot frying makes the meat tough enough to withstand most unwanted attention.
My personal preference is to add some garlic in there as well but I have no idea if it actually helps or not.

[Alan Tyler]

Drink Java, stay awake and fish surface baits?

Bearing in mind how many waters have carp to well over 25lb. and how rare decent tench waters are, I'd turn the problem around...

[dangermouse]

How about par boiled potatoes? The basis for the original boilies and it shouldn`t be too hard to add a flavour to them. For an alternative some large chunks of par boiled sweet potato, I`ve had carp on that before.

[carp_mad_man]

Alan, at my local club complex, the whole 25Lb carp thing is very very rare. Put it this way....the tench can be caught on a bare hook if you like, and the bream would swim into your net! A decent sized carp from this water is rather prized and thats what im going for.

[cg74]

Originally Posted by Alan Tyler

Drink Java, stay awake and fish surface baits?

Bearing in mind how many waters have carp to well over 25lb. and how rare decent tench waters are, I'd turn the problem around...

Very helpful Alan, but a bit strange though coming from someone that only lives 20-25 miles from the country's premier tench waters; Tring reservoirs, amongst others.
Besides from my experience, most 'good' carp fisheries, produce the biggest tench and big bream.

CMM, use a 21mm halibut pellet as hookbait, feed mixed size and type of pellets using large PVA bags, include pellets from 6mm to 14/16mm.
Also take onboard Alan's suggestion of surface fishing, though I'd only do so in daylight.

[carp_mad_man]

For anyone's information too, i am not a fan of using 22mm baits and not much else. I WILL be using pellet and particle, but does anyone know any baits/additives that bream dont like. I also forgot to mention that there are tonnes of eel too - so meat options are not gonna be my thing, thanks for the sugestion though.

[cg74]

Originally Posted by carp_mad_man

Alan, at my local club complex, the whole 25Lb carp thing is very very rare. Put it this way....the tench can be caught on a bare hook if you like, and the bream would swim into your net! A decent sized carp from this water is rather prized and thats what im going for.

CMM, you have no need to justify yourself.

---------- Post added at 19:36 ---------- Previous post was at 19:16 ----------

Originally Posted by carp_mad_man

For anyone's information too, i am not a fan of using 22mm baits and not much else. I WILL be using pellet and particle, but does anyone know any baits/additives that bream dont like. I also forgot to mention that there are tonnes of eel too - so meat options are not gonna be my thing, thanks for the sugestion though.

The whole point of such a large hookbait, is the bream can't fit in their gobs. If you rule out big baits, really that only leaves you hard baits but nuts aren't allowed and though strictly speaking a tigernut isn't actually a nut, most fisheries that ban nuts include tigers as well.

The only other approach I can think of is maize over a bed of hemp, though this will attract tench (hemp being one of the best tench baits), bream don't tend to feed for long on beds of hemp. I'd definitely NOT include pellets, as bream are drawn to the hemp but like I said, they don't like feeding on it, so by adding pellets you're going to encourage them to stay and feed for longer.
That is why I suggested feeding pellets via PVA, as any carp in the area will home-in on the scent trail but if bream turn up, there is very little to hold them in your swim.

[carp_mad_man]

Thank you ever so much CG74! Big help, seriously. I will be fishing particles, but tecently i have bought 12.5kg of parti mix from CCMoore, will this have the same effect on the bream? I have also bought some 12mm halibut pellets, hoping that it'll keep the skimmers away but sustain the tench and carp until they reach my 16mm halibut hookbait OR something bright and bouyant.... Do chods actually prevent captures of bream?

[cg74]

Originally Posted by carp_mad_man

Thank you ever so much CG74! Big help, seriously. I will be fishing particles, but tecently i have bought 12.5kg of parti mix from CCMoore, will this have the same effect on the bream? I have also bought some 12mm halibut pellets, hoping that it'll keep the skimmers away but sustain the tench and carp until they reach my 16mm halibut hookbait OR something bright and bouyant.... Do chods actually prevent captures of bream?

Basically the key ways to successful (relatively speaking) bream avoidance are:

-Big baits, so big they can't fit the bait in their mouths.
-Use hard baits, ones that don't soften when submerged for several hours.
-Avoid big beds of bait, as bream being shoal fish will sit over the bait hoovering it up for hours.
-The only rigs that curtail their activities are zig-rigs and surface fishing. Chod-rigs most definitely won't prevent hooking beam, in fact if used correctly they should increase the number of bream hook ups!

I don't know about CC Moore's parti mix as I've never used it, what's in it?

If you're determined to fish using a particle approach; why not fish that way using 16mm hookbaits and if the snotty ones do become a pain in the arse.
Take one rod off that area and try the PVA method I've written about in another likely spot.
Maybe even take both rods off the baited area for a couple hours, either fishing them elsewhere or leaving them out for a rest.