Float rigs for carp

Afternoon all

I've started getting into carp fishing a bit recently with limited success, but im enjoying the learning curve. I understand that at this time of year during the heat of the day the carp are up in the water. I know a lot of people use zigs for this situation but I was wondering if anyone float fishes for them instead? I enjoy float fishing and recently tried it for the carp with a 8mm pellet as hook bait and managed to catch a number of nice roach and a couple of carp around the 4 pound mark. Is there a way of just targeting the larger carp (closer to the 10 lb mark) on the float?

Any tips, advice or past experience woud be greatly received
Atb

Feed heavily and constantly with loose pellets via catapult.

From your description it would appear to be a generously stocked water rather than a "specialised" carp type of place.Maybe a commercial?
When they are on top within float range on this type of venue you can get them going on dog biscuits or pieces of bread.
They can be extremely wary of floating baits so a good trick is to use a float set shallow(2 feet perhaps) and use bread flake on the hook that slowly sinks amongst the free offerings. Cast often to get the slow sink effect. The flake should fall off on the retrieve and add to the free offerings.They can be real suckers for this method.
Hope this helps.

yes your right, it is a commercial. that said there are some real quality fish in there - I had a couple of smaller carp on a ledgered boilie up against an island and they were really nice dark scaly mirrors. The lake also has koi and sturgeon aswell as a few decent tench.

Thanks for your advice, I'll give the bread flake a go, i guess you can single out some of the larger fish by adjusting the size of your hookbait too.

justabitpikey said:

yes your right, it is a commercial. that said there are some real quality fish in there - I had a couple of smaller carp on a ledgered boilie up against an island and they were really nice dark scaly mirrors. The lake also has koi and sturgeon aswell as a few decent tench.

Thanks for your advice, I'll give the bread flake a go, i guess you can single out some of the larger fish by adjusting the size of your hookbait too.

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When they get going they can be greedy so and so's. I doubt the bait size would deter smaller carp. Just use a goodly size hook (10/8/6 ??) on a large lump of flake. No weight on the line of course. Don't put the rod down!!
Ps. I have seen anglers using a day old thick slice of french bread threaded with a baiting needle which looks ridiculous but the carp worry it until they get to the hook, the bang.( This is the method the Spanish use for mullet.)