Stalking Carp part 3 by Mathew Woods

Sometimes stalking can be a case of baiting and waiting. It is often advisable to bait up a few likely looking spots and cruise between them looking for signs of interested carp, although you can leave your rig in amongst one of these 'traps' and wait patiently for a carps imminent arrival.

Baits that are excellent for these situations are particles and pellets. A pellet mix works wonders, especially when a combination of sizes and textures are used, although I favour a simple mix of hemp and corn.

A simple, cheap, yet amazingly effective way of catching big carp.

Chopped or crushed tiger nuts are also amazingly effective, as are 'soups' of sloppy groundbait and seed mixes. Partiblend has accounted for more than its fair share of margin caught carp, and the size of the variables in the mix are probably the reason why. Small baits are often looked at by carp with much enthusiasm, as they resemble the size of natural food they come across.

Two other fantastic baits are the great floating baits, bread and chum mixers.

For some reason each of these baits is taken readily be carp, as if they grew up eating them as treats in their natural environment. I often think that bread takes the form and yeasty smell from some form of shrimpy or mussel flesh, and that some sort of chemical reaction with the water is what makes it so deadly.

Although the new artificial bread looks really good, I am a little sceptical at the moment, although I am sure I will have those worries taken away. Hopefully by my own experiments.

Dog biscuits are also good, but floater fishing is a different ball game to stalking, as the carp make themselves utterly obvious when fishing the surface, but when stalking, it's a different ball game down on the lake bed.

In these situations rigs can be very important, as you want to be subtle in your presentation, but not so subtle that any fish hooked will snap off.

I favour a long length of leadcore, about 6-12 feet, attatched to a long length of snakebite, which is combi rigged by peeling back a little of the coating to tie the hook with. Small hooks and long hairs are also tactics I employ, as I want the fish to feel as confident as possible when feeding.

I will go as small as a size 10 hook, and opt for owner gorilla's or ESP raptors, as these hooks are extremely strong in small sizes.

As for leads, well this is up to you. I have recently been playing around with drilled stones, to make inline leads, but I believe the Pallatrax boys have brought out an entirely more refined product with the same principle. I do like inlines for margin carpings, although most leads are up to the job. I've varied from big 6oz ball leads to 1oz flatties, I think that your knowledge of the particular fish you're fishing for should indicate what sort of lead arrangement to use. I apologise for being that brief, but there is no universal truth in that situation.

A great rig, for those wishing to fish single pop-up boilies, is the hinge rig. We all know it well but I think many people fish it the wrong way. It's a difficult rig to tie, and my teeth are slowly being pulled forwards by wrenching at the line to bed down blood knots. Here is the set-up I prefer, which involves a really small pop-up section, something that I believe acts as a bristle that the carp find difficult to eject.

All the best and tight lines
Mathew Woods.