hi welcome to the north west carp and anglers diary fishing blog it's autumn
it might look green behind me but the leaves are starting to turn the
temperatures are dropping and we'll soon be into winter so I thought this would
be a good time to talk about winter carp rigs and tactics okay before I get into
looking at my rigs and my tactics for catching winter carp I've got two pieces
of advice for the winter Carper one is make sure you've got the right clothes
stay warm and if you're not enjoying yourself go home the second piece of
advice is choose runs water don't bang your head against a brick wall in
winter time pick a lake that's well stocked with plenty of fish so that you've got a
chance of a bite okay so with those two pieces of advice out of the way what
about rigs and tactics for winter well obviously things slow down in winter
what I tend to do is I use single hook baits and PVA bags but I have a little
bit of a twist on the PVA bags so let's take a look at those now and you can see
how I managed to trip the fish up and get the runs
okay so winter carp waters I tend to fish runs waters because I've got a good
chance of catching a fish now the thing with runs waters is they're always well
pressured in the winter so there's always going to be a lot of anglers on
there and the fish know they're being fished for they stay active
but getting them out is a different thing altogether on a typical weekend on
one of my lakes I might be fishing amongst 10 or 12 bivvies and you know on
a Saturday afternoon someone's gonna nick a bite may be
one or two people and the rest will blank they're the kind of odds I'm up
against so to try and stack the odds in my favor
I've got a couple of little sneaky rigs to use that get me bites in the winter
so these rigs still do work and they work very very well so let's take a look
at them okay so my first carp rig actually starts with the tactic of
chopped boilies these are boilie chops okay they're quartered the boilies so
just chop them with a knife into quarters and they're gonna go in a PVA
bag and once the bags in and on the bottom you can imagine a little patch of
bait like this is what they're gonna see now also in the bag I'm going to put a
couple of whole boilies okay and the whole boilies are really the source of
danger because people who've used this tactic a lot you know they stick chops or
pellets or whatever in the bag and it's always the boilie that hooks the
fish it's a round bait fifteen or sixteen millimeter it's got eggs in you
know you can have anybody's bait they've all got the same things in and they've all got
eggs in common and most of the ingredients in them are pretty much the
same anyway it's going to be fish meal in there or a bird food but you know
a lot of them send off roughly the same kind of food signals and it's the round, the
fact that it's round is what the carp recognizes as danger and
I worked this out by fishing a water called Capesthorne hall now that's a very very
pressured north west water and the fish in there they've got degrees in avoiding
rigs what I found when I watched them close up is you could feed them boilies
and they'd ignore them but if you fed them chops they'd be straight down on them
straightaway so any fish that's been under pressure and I do fish pressured
waters in winter they're gonna feed on the chops first so that's the tactic I use
and the rig I use has a chopped quarter boilie on the hook so let's take a look
at that now okay this is my carp rig for winter that's a quarter boilie it's just
a knotless knot hair rig on there whipped down the shank that's a size 12 korda kurve
hook and the hook link is 25 pound ESP sink link that's about five inches five
or six inches it's tied off there with a quick clip so you can clip it on and off
the swivel and that's basically it okay so you can imagine that quarter
boilie in amongst a load of chops with some whole boilies in there as well so
to give a kind of source of danger now if the fish comes in and they're wary
of round baits and pressured fish are wary of round baits they'll pick off the
chops first and that's when you nail them and I've been using this rig in
winter for a good many years now and have had some cracking and results on it as
a general rule I go to one my winter waters I might find ten or twelve
bivvies on there but there's a good head of fish of those ten or twelve people
one or two on a weekend will catch and using this rig I'm quite often one of
the ones more often than not to be honest it's an absolute belting rig and
one that you should really give a chance to a quarter boilie I just called it
basically the quarter boilie rig really just a standard carp rig but it's
the way you use it the tactics you use with it
okay so that is an absolute belter in winter
one of my best edges right now we've had a look at this one let's take a look at
the other one to use okay so this is the second rig use in winter that is a
boilie it's a 10 mil pop-up okay again the size 12 korda kurv now that might
seem like a small hook but it's probably the equivalent of a size 10 so I have
scaled down a lot and that's one of the messages i'm trying get across in this
video scale down everything for winter so 10mm pop up size twelve korda
kurv the hook links the same 25-pound breaking
strain ESP sink link and again it's tied off at a clip there so I can clip it
on and off at the lead and I can either stick a bit of putty on there and fish it as a
pop-up actually put it on the link and fish it as a pop-up at any depth
I want or I can put a split shot on the hair underneath the boilie so that it
balances out and that's what I like to do I'll stick a split shot there size
six is roughly about the right size for the 10 ml bait and it will sink very
very slowly under the weight of the hook and with that I'll fish it with the PVA
bag of two boilies two standard sized boilies I'll wrap a bit of dissolving
foam around the shank to make sure that that all stays right and I'll cast that
out with a PVA bag on it and that's the second rig I use for winter it's
really good these two presentations the quarter boilie with a small hook in
amongst a PVA bag of chops with a couple of whole baits as a focal point of
danger has brought me an awful lot of fish in winter as has the 10 mil even as
a pop-up or with a split shot on the hair as a slow sinker the 10 mil on a
KD rig both have been absolutely brilliant for me in winter months if
your fishing a hard pressured water with a lot of fish in where there's
still a lot of anglers fishing and a lot of lines in the water these two rigs
will do the business for you they're just subtle enough to be different from
the normal 15 or 16 mil boilies that everybody uses and it enough to trip the fish up's
well there we go a small common winter rig
this one's come to a little 10 millimeter pop up on the KD rig that you
saw before well I hope you've enjoyed this look at my carp rigs for winter
those two rigs are probably two of my best edges they've caught me an awful
lot of fish they are subtly different they're scaled down small hooks small
baits and you know they're just a kind of thing you need for nicking a bite
in winter and believe me I've nicked an awful lot of bites with those rigs so if
you're on a runs water in winter as I usually fish and you're struggling give
those two presentations a try the 10 mil bait on a kd-rig with a very very
small hook and the quarter boilie chopped in a PVA bag with chops and a
couple of whole baits to focus the danger for the fish they'll pick at the chops and
the chops got the hook in it it's a really really subtle trap brilliant well
worth using right that's it for now I'll be back with another video soon so until
then take care of yourself and good luck with you're winter fishing