The End of 2025
Hi there, I hope to relate a few tips and tweaks that you may find of some use in your personal fishing in these blogs i think that’s always more interesting than the old “ oh look what I’ve caught” “ type of thing. Of course I’ll mention some captures where relevant but that will be to emphasise a point here and there. I’ve said it many times before but how do we know how often to re-cast and precisely when? It’s a lot of guess work isn’t it to be truthful.
Most anglers cast out an hour or two before dark ready for the night, or at around 10 or 11 am in the morning after the perceived morning feeding spell has passed. I think that’s fairly typical of many carp anglers thinking. Having used the method and solid bags a lot in my personal angling it is inevitable that you tend to re-cast more frequently as both tend to be attacked by not just carp but by unwanted silver fish, so rendering the presentation less effective obviously if it’s been stripped. Therefore necessitating frequent re casts to in effect re-set the trap again.
This re-casting often would get vastly better returns and got me thinking why not time how often i recast and make detailed notes of what works best and at what time of year etc. So i bought 3 alarm clocks from the Pound shopI set one on a 30 minute alarm, one on 2 hours and one on 4 hours So on my left rod id re cast a solid every 30 minsMiddle rod 2 hours and right rod every 4 hours as an example. Very quickly it became apparent that the rod re cast every 30 mins was far more productive and was a big eye opener.
So then i felt i was learning something by doing tests.I then on more difficult waters would re cast one rod regular, one every 8 hours and the other once when i arrived and that would stay until i ether caught or packed upThe interesting thing is on some waters where you would try to re cast as little as possible the regular casting would work and on others it was the rod that gad been in longest that would go after over 40 hours in place.But only by doing timed tests did i find out this information so worth a go eh.Ill give a little example of this i was making a film with John Flewin from Trakker very early Spring on a Shropshire syndicate lake that i had fished a fair bit in previous years, and i had found from doing timed tests previously it was a water where the carp needed to both have time to find the bait but also time for the bait to weather and nag the fish, their behaviour told me it was a water where frequently re cast rods was not the one.
So because of my prior knowledge i said to John these rods are going out and staying out until we leave or they go.John was dubious about my decision and on edge especially as we were filming and needed a result.I stuck to my guns and 46 hours in on a 48 hour session i had one of the lakes ancient old warriors that in its time had been one of the biggest inhabitants in the water, job done.
