unhittable bites

[nicky]

took my son to a commercial today not my usual haunt but thought with the weather maybe the best chance of a bite.

I fished the waggler in about 6-8 foot of water with an insert waggler, i started off with the bait just touching bottom and fished shirt button style with number 10's, first one about 4" from the hook and every other one about 6" apart for the bottom two thirds of the rig.

Must have had hundred bites and missed every one, went over depth 4-6 ", changed the shotting pattern but to no avail just couldnt connect.

Changed float to the most sensitive one i own a drennan dayglow i think they called pretty much the same as a stillwater blue.

Tried standing up and striking.

Tried maggot, maggot and chopped worm, bread punch positive bites on all but for the life of me could connect with the a single bite.

Was going to try coming up in the water but got wet with the cold rain and gave up about 1.30.

What would you have tried in this situation i ended up totally frustrated.

 

[alan whittington]

Nicky,there's no definite answer to your problem,because the answer could be different on each session,but try this,in the depths you mention,i would fish an insert waggler with at least 15mm of the insert showing,i would fish an 15 inch hooklink and would fish at least 20 inches overdepth,my starting point shotting wise,would be 2-3 no'4's or 6's bulked at approx a third of the depth up from the hook,then 2 no'10's or 8's evenly spaced between the bulk and the top of your hooklink,this is a basic startpoint and movement of the small shot and increasing the depth being fished may help,one further possibility is that the bites you were getting were liners,with carp,or other decent fish moving over your feed and dragging yor float under,i hope this helps a little.

 

[binka]

Daft question but did you try changing up to a bigger hook size?

That's an amazing number of bites to be missing and not connect with anything, even if you were getting line bites I would have thought you would have foul hooked the odd fish working on that number.

Is hemp fed much at this commercial?

Might be worth bulking the shot if so but still think it's unlikely at this time of year and because you were using no. 10's.

My only other suspicion is that you were plagued by tiny fish in which case a big bait on a big hook might be the way to get through them to the better fish.

Banded or hair rigged baits... might give you an edge if the fish are feeling the hook very early on?

Edited to add: Just read Alan's reply whilst typing mine and that's a good point about leaving more of the float tip showing, I had a similar situation back in the summer whilst caster fishing for roach and eventually settled into a rythem with more float tip showing, you could almost count down to the bite and I was hitting them on every third go at the bait which produced a much more positive bite as the bait reached a certain depth of water and the extra tip distinguished the snatches from the positive bites.

 

[nicky]

i did foul hook one carp in the pectoral fin so could have been some line bites going on but i dont think they all were, as bites slowed up at one point so i switched to bread punch and started getting bites again as soon as the bait reached bottom which would suggest that they took a liking to the bread.

i was fishing size 16 which is quite big for me i usually opt for 18 or 20 when maggot fishing but as i was using a section of worm and a maggot on a lot of casts this seemed right as the hook wasnt too visible due to the worm section hiding alot of it, i usually find with worm they tend to hang on a bit longer.

Alan why do you suggest using fairly heavy bulk shot at a third depth i usually only try this if i want to get to the bottom quickly to avoid smaller fish but i werent getting any bites on the drop i was counting down and it was taking about 16 sec for the tip to completely settle only then was i getting bites.



Does the extra shot near the hook give them more to hang themselves on?

I did borrow my my sons feeder rod which had braid on and 4lb hooklink will he was having a kip and caught a skimmer and roach from my baited area so there were obviously fish feeding and if i hadnt been so stubborn probably should have set another feeder rod up to capitalise on this but i was determined if i could catch them on the feeder i should be able to catch them on the float.

You gotta love fishing sometimes dont you ;-)

---------- Post added at 23:08 ---------- Previous post was at 23:06 ----------

just read again yea i see what your saying about hemp they could have been taking the shots, im not sure as i dont fish it often and have never fished this particular pond but i doubt it most people seem to use pellet, meat, maggot, bread and dog biscuits.

Yea it is an awful lot of bites to miss i am a bit out of practise i used to predominantly fish the float but have drifted away from it this last year but still i would have expected to hit some bites even if they were fast

 

[alan whittington]

To me Nicky the bulk gives stability to the rig,catches any undertow(which often goes in different directions to the wind),at this time of the year fish are often on the 'deck',also when im fishing 'commies',im not fishing for littluns so to speak,so its all candy'.

 

[andreagrispi]

I would have fished a good 18 inch to 2 foot over depth, it's surprising what confident takes you get, even with small fish. The fall back can be throat hooking - although care taken with the disgorger will result in minimal aggravation to the fish.

 

[barbelboi]

To get anywhere the amount of ‘bites’ that you indicate Nicky there must have been quite a few fish in the swim. By using their pectoral fins to keep position the turbulence will often move the baited hook away from their mouths. The fish could sometimes attempt to follow the moving bait and cause movement to the float – also liners as the bait is moving about among the fish. Have you thought of trying to anchor the bait to the bottom using the lift method, or similar so that it’s stationary?
Jerry