Trev wrote:

Just wondering if you could help me on my local lake.  When we have put a bed of pellets down the fish are bubbling like crazy and no matter what we put in front of them they will not take.  We have tried 8mm pellets, boilies, pepperami… even sweetcorn; but the fish just won’t take the hook baits

Please could you give me some ideas as to the problem as I’m sure you may have come across this problem yourself.

Many thanks, Trev

Hi Trev,

Not an easy question to answer without being there, but I’ll have a go. Firstly I’d want to make sure it is in fact the carp that are bubbling, as in the past I have wasted time fishing for bubblers only to find out they were bream or tench.

Ok assuming though they are carp, at this time of the year food is very abundant to the fish, so it is a fair bet they are feeding on naturals and even if you are putting pellets out they will not be getting on the bait in any way.

In these circumstances you have a couple of options, you could try putting quite a big bed of bait into the swim to try and compete with the natural food, something cheap like hemp, maple peas or partiblend. These small particles can be introduced in large quantities and get the fish turned onto them. This was a technique I used many years ago and caught a lot of fish. In fact Rod Hutchinson was one of the first anglers so advocate large beds of small particles. You can fish either particle on the hook or preferably boilie.

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