Under freezing-point
When winter arrives most of the anglers put the gears aside and start planning the coming season. However some carpers do not hesitate to go and try their luck on catching some fish. Freezing weather and the bad weather can not stop these fanatic anglers. When the water’s temperature falls under 10 C and the air temperature is about 0 C, the behaviour of the carps is completely different from the regular. One sign of this is that the time of feeding shifts. They more and more eat around sunset and midnight.
Especially in calm weather. However their nightly feeding can end around one or two hours before sunset. As I have experienced the hours of day break are not so successful. With the fall of the temperature, the time of carp’s feeding are falling as well. It means that this time of the year the carps will feed for just a few hours a day.
The most difficult thing about winter carping is to find them, because they can stay at a completely different place from where they have been staying whole year. It is a fact that at wintertime they hardly move, they stay at one place. If we know this fact and if we know the water, we have the chance to catch some nice carps in the freezing winter weather.
But if we do not have info about this, we have no cause for being happy. Maybe with echo sounder we can find the better plcaes, but just where we can use a boat. Unfortunately this needs time, especially on a huge lake. It could be a good guideline if we know those places where a lot of carps have been caught during the autumn. As winter is coming we will have less and less good spots where we can catch fish. At last maybe we will have just one spot where we can be successful. On lakes not always the deepest spot is the best, we should choose the middle depths, near snags and fractures, especially where the flat bank suddenly starts to go deep. The springs and the incoming waters are good spots too, because they are warmer then the water of the lake, especially if there are a good depth as well.
After we find the good spot and we catch some carp, the fish will move away. Then we will blame the weather or our bait. I have experienced that in winter the weather does not really influebce the success of the fishing. On the good spot the carps will feed during tremendous conditions.
If we go winter carping, we should choose the smaller baits, because we will be much more successful with them. The tipical winter baits contain more milk protein, robin red, liver powder. We can use different fish flours, buti n smaller ammount then in summertime. Beside these, we should add essential oils to the mix. The winter bait is good when all the flavours can dissolve in the cold water. If we do not want to deal with mixing and rolling then we can choose the Squid-liver Cold Water boilie from the S-Carp Product range. This is a great bait which we can use in cooling and in warming water.
This time of the year we do not need to prebait a lot, we should just use a small ammount in PVA bags concentrated around the hook. This contains stick mixes, fast dissolving pellets, chopped boilies and some glug. We should take care with flavouring. This time of the year we should use alcohol based liquids and not oils. It is important to check that the mix does not dissolve the PVA! As a terminal tackle we use the so called Running rig system, which is the best to notice the smaller movements.
Beside these the humanous treatment is more important in winter. We must not keep the carp on the carp mat for long, because they can die in the cold! We should release them as soon as possible.
Winter carping needs more endurance and due feresight. The clothing needs to be laminated and warm. We can find great winter clothing for quite reasonable prices. If we want to go for a longer session, we will need a warm sleeping bag and a securely working camping gas system.
Some of my friends use vans for their winter sessions, which is very useful. I hope I could give some good ideas for those anglers who are a bit afraid of winter carping, because this type of fishing is amazing and can not be compared to anythig!
Some of my friends use vans for their winter sessions, which is very useful. I hope I could give some good ideas for those anglers who are a bit afraid of winter carping, because this type of fishing is amazing and can not be compared to anythig!
Gergely Pataki – Carplove Team
