{"id":3718,"date":"2014-12-22T03:26:33","date_gmt":"2014-12-22T02:26:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.anglinglines.com\/blog\/?p=3718"},"modified":"2021-12-07T14:54:41","modified_gmt":"2021-12-07T13:54:41","slug":"birds-diving-on-carp-bait-what-can-i-do","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.anglinglines.com\/blog\/birds-diving-on-carp-bait-what-can-i-do\/","title":{"rendered":"Birds diving on carp bait &#8211; what can I do?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #003366;\"><em>Question: I am fishing a 3 acre lake which I have caught plenty of fish from with a good stock of doubles and 20&#8217;s. \u00a0It is shallow with most areas being 3-4ft or less. The bottom is mainly silty with some harder areas in places. There is a large island in the middle of the lake.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #003366;\"><em>On recent sessions I have been having terrible problems with birdlife picking up the bait. It is mainly tufties. This problem even persists during darkness. I never had it quite so bad before, admittedly this is worse in winter time. Do you have any suggestions how to combat this?<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #003366;\"><em>Many Thanks, Cliff<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Hi Cliff,<\/p>\n<p>I have faced this situation myself on one or two waters.\u00a0It is always worse in the winter when there is not so much natural food about for the\u00a0tufties &amp;\u00a0coots so they are obviously looking for something else to eat. Also in the winter the water tends to be much clearer (unless it\u2019s overstocked) thus making it easier for the tufties to find your bait.<\/p>\n<p>There are a couple of things you can do which may help you:<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #808080;\"><strong>1.<\/strong> <strong>Bait up when you are not fishing and in different parts of the lake.<\/strong><\/span> The water you are fishing sounds reasonably small and so by baiting up different area\u2019s the carp will still find plenty of the bait and soon get a taste for it. I have found that the\u00a0Quest baits\u00a0are pretty instant anyway.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #808080;\"><strong>2. When you are fishing don\u2019t put out any freebies<\/strong>.<\/span> This time of year I much prefer to fish single hook baits or small stringers \/ p.v.a stockings. Try small 3 bait stringers, crushed up baits or the fast dissolving\u00a0Maximum Action\u00a0Pellets.\u00a0I will regularly recast with at least 1 rod, every hour or so until I find the carp. By not introducing any freebies the tufties will be less inclined to search for the bait.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #808080;\">3.\u00a0<strong>One dodge you can use here is to dye the baits black thus making them less visible to the tufties.<\/strong> <\/span>The carp will still find them through their terrific sense of smell.<\/p>\n<p>It can be very frustrating with the birdlife at this time of year but keep at it and the results will come.<\/p>\n<p>Cheers, Pat Gillett<br \/>\nQuest Baits<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Question: I am fishing a 3 acre lake which I have caught plenty of fish from with a good stock of doubles and 20&#8217;s. \u00a0It is shallow with most areas being 3-4ft or less. The bottom is mainly silty with some harder areas in places. There is a large island in the middle of the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16073,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[190,1044,889],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3718","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general-interest","category-pat-gillett","category-carp-tactics-and-watercraft"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglinglines.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3718","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglinglines.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglinglines.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglinglines.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglinglines.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3718"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglinglines.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3718\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27276,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglinglines.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3718\/revisions\/27276"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglinglines.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16073"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglinglines.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglinglines.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglinglines.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}