Many reading this will have foreign trips booked or looking to book a week or more for the coming months or in some cases with the more popular foreign waters years in advance.
We get asked on a regular basis for advice on waters overseas and tactics to employ. What i’ve learnt personally from fishing waters overseas over the last 40 years, is don’t overthink your fishing approach before you get there.
It’s great making plans, but leave the tactics until you get there. Just like in the U.K., pressured carp act differently at certain times of the year. We hear it on a regular basis of anglers intending to take big piles of bait and fill it in and wait for the action to start. Sadly that approach is now something of the past on the many big carp waters across Europe. Many of these waters having anglers fishing the more popular swims at least 9 months of the year, in some cases 12 months of the year. So angling pressure plays a massive part on these waters.
So advice wise, what to expect from your chosen trip in my opinion is base your week on what’s happened the weeks before your arrival. Enquire with the bailiff what’s happened in the swim of your choice the previous couple of weeks, how successful were the anglers previously and more importantly how much bait have they used. The last thing you want to do is pile a load of bait on top of an already big pile of bait.
For example, I remember a trip to France with friends for a social on a water we had fished previously. There was one swim I had earmarked as wanting to fish on my return if I was lucky enough in the draw. A swim that was central in the lake and a passing point for carp entering a large bay. Unfortunately my name didn’t come out in the draw early and missed out on the chosen swim to a friend. The swim I chose when my name came out was a swim that hadn’t been fished the previous week due to a couple of anglers not turning up. A swim with access to a couple of big sets of pads and open water.
Having arrived late the night before, we had a walk around the lake as the anglers from the previous week were packing up. We stopped at each angler for a quick chat and offered help carrying tackle to vehicles where needed. On arrival at the swim I would have liked to fish but missed out, my friend was quick to ask how the angler had got on, after receiving the news the angler had caught 2 the first night and then chose to commit 100kg of bait to the one good spot, and not received a single sign of carp after, I was pleased the draw hadn’t been kind to me. Looking at the empty bags of bait, a low cost U.K. bait brand I was even more pleased I hadn’t been lucky in the draw. On getting round to my choice of swim that hadn’t seen any angling pressure, I was pleased to see signs of carp in the pads, a clear sign carp had been escaping angling pressure.
What the remaining walk around the lake did was cement my chain of thought after speaking with each angler, all committed piles of bait and seen their action taper off and most catching nothing for the remainder of the week. What’s to learn from this, angling pressure on carp that see lots of anglers year round is that number one factor in success or failure. Excessive baiting can and will spook carp away into quieter areas of the lake just like fishing pressured waters in the U.K.
By the time we arrived back at the vans, my mind was made up, take my time setting up, get a shower to freshen up after the long drive before setting up with a clear head. It was obvious the carp in this lake associated heavy baiting with danger. What would my tactics be, the plan I came up with was a U.K. style, bait up lightly with 30 to 50 baits over each rod, repeat after every take and if no action add the same twice a day as I know there were big bream in this lake well into double figures that would clear spots if no carp present.
This way I wasn’t committing bait so could move spots easily if fish were showing somewhere else in my area and my tactics being ambush approach.
The week passed and I had steady action throughout the week, averaging 3 and 4 carp per day whilst sadly friends struggled. The anglers the previous week had all clubbed together and purchased a huge pile of low cost bait in the hope of a fantastic week. What they got was the worst week of the year on the fishery after piling in almost 1,000kg of bait between 8 anglers, sadly my friends who dropped on the swims where the bait had gone in all struggled.
Another lake I fished more recently, a friend had bought an all singing, all dancing bait boat with a winch camera, I was intrigued to see how good the camera would be, so as we do as anglers I was on hand to help on its maiden journey. The swim chosen by my friend being one of the most popular on the chosen venue, why most popular, this being the closest to the car park with no barrowing of tackle needed.
What was found over the next 30 minutes was what I had suspected for sometime. The camera being an amazing bit of kit but something I wouldn’t want to use in my angling. Too much information for me and would give me far too much to think about. What was found was bait on all the known spots from previous weeks, some looking like fresh bait from the previous anglers along with bait that looked to have been there weeks. A clear sign that the amount of bait used by anglers simply doesn’t get eaten contrary to belief. So my tactics when fishing the more popular European venues that see lots of angling pressure have totally changed from 30 years ago where baiting heavily with a quality bait was a massive advantage, now with bait festering away in these lakes a bait lighter approach until the carp are actively feeding has been my chosen approach.
My advice would be to think twice about bailiff’s known hot spots, bailiff’s want customers to catch but anglers arriving to fish the same spots week after week will definitely highlight danger to carp. My advice would be to fish over a light scattering of bait the first night of your session, try to keep awake as long as possible which isn’t always easy after a long journey and listen where the carp are showing. The baiting lightly approach gives carp and nuisance fish the chance to clear any bait up from the previous anglers whilst giving you time to work out a game plan.
Tight Lines
Rich Hughes
