Angling Lines Blog

Oakview regulars give you all the insider tips on how to bag up at this prolific French carp lake.

The component parts of Chas’s safe carp rig

A disturbing aspect of owning Vaux French carp lake is that I find numbers of my carp each year dragging leaders and leads because the tackle used by some anglers does not allow the leads to drop off the clips.  The reasons can be;

• leaders cannot pass freely through the tail rubbers to safety clips
• that rubbers are pushed onto clips too tightly
• that the wrong tail rubbers to safety clips are used
• tail rubbers are superglued on
• leads are tied to clips because anglers don’t want to lose their leads
• the use of leaders incorporating tungsten putty.

Any of these causes means that the carp cannot get rid of any of the component parts.

Often simply cutting the tail rubbers to an angle allows leaders to pass freely through them.

Here’s the component parts needed to make safe end tackle set-ups;

You can read the full article here

Readers question;

Hello Roy,

I am fishing with a party of 10 on Roseau Large Lake from the 12th until the 18th of May, in a pre swim draw I have been given peg 5 (both pegs 4 & 6 are occupied). Is there any advice you could give me in relation to this peg, bait, baiting patterns, nuisance fish etc.

Any information you could give would be helpful and give me a little heads up. In advance, many thanks.

Kind regards, Mark

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Hi Mark,

Thank you for your email.

Roseau in May can be a very prolific time if you get the baiting application and rig presentation correct. Roseau, as a whole is pretty much featureless, anglers baits is the attraction.

Paul Martin with a May 2011 Roseau cracker!

Peg 5 can be a good interception swim as the fish pass from the shallower end of the lake to the deeper parts being 6,7 and 8. My advice to you is at the start of your session is to fish PVA bags of dry particles and crushed boilie until after dinner and place some bait out for the evening, I would start with around 10 spods and top up after each fish, lost fish or aborted take, the fish move in, eat what’s there and move very quickly off the area. You will find this pattern throughout the week and it’s down to yourself to make notes of bite times and work your bait application around these times.

When I fish the lake for an afternoon/overnighter I always fish bags and then spod for the evening, if I receive a take I’m already clipped up to the area for topping up at night, this will certainly land you more fish throughout the week even if after baiting you don’t receive anymore fish during that night you will most certainly have food for the morning spell.

Another piece of advice is to rest the swim, the fish at Roseau are highly pressured and will move into an area where its free of lines, not many anglers do this but allowing the fish to move in and feed on an area free of lines can keep them coming back to that area again and again.

Nuisance species in the lake are bream and sturgeon, to avoid Bream use 20mm baits or snowman rigs. Sturgeon can be tricky at times but my advice is to NOT use pellet or fish the margin with any volume of bait, if your going to have a “margin rod” then fish for a bite at a time.

Baits, 2010 and 2011 saw Quest baits Special Crab outfish all other baits, I don’t see it changing, however I will be introducing Quest Baits Ghurker Spice this season and I believe it will be a hit with the fish, I can update you of this during the season if you wish?

I hope this helps, if you have anymore question please don’t hesitate in contacting me.

Kind regards, Roy

Carp don’t feed in the Winter – do they? Paul Cooper shares some winter carp fishing tips to help you catch a few more Winter carp;

Winter carping at Vaux by Chas Cook

Catching carp in winter has a reputation for being difficult but I believe I’ve developed methods at Vaux which turn the odds in my favour.  Let me give you an example;

On Thursday, 24th November a good helping of mixed giant maize and wheat, cooked and prepared in bulk, were fed to the carp at Vaux over a deep spot in the middle of the lake where they are always fed in winter.

Prior to this and up to 2nd December, this carp feeding spot could not be seen as it is in deep water and there had only been a small amount of carp faeces showing in the lake.  Carp faeces indicate what they have been feeding on;  these sausage shapes, bound by a glutinous substance so that they float, are easily recognisable.

Heavy rain overnight on 1st/2nd December brought a good change of water into the lake from the river, which always stimulates the carp to feed whatever the time of the year it happens.  On 2nd December I could see an excessive amount of carp faeces in the lake and at about 11.30am carp started showing over the previous week’s baiting, rolling and jumping out of the water.

At about midday the air temperature was 15° and the water temperature 9°, so having seen this carp activity, I immediately had three rods out on the deep spot. continue reading…