Spodding Your Swim

Spodding Your Swim

Spodding is the most efficient way of delivering particle feeds at long distance. Aerodynamic spods will fly 100 yards and it’s possible to lay down large, tightly grouped beds of feed in minutes.

Spods come in various sizes and a fully loaded, larger model weighs several ounces when filled with broken boilies, hemp, pellets and other goodies.

That demands a spod rod with a minimum test curve of 4 lb. Standard carp fishing rods are not built for repeated casting with heavy spods and it’s unwise to risk overloading them.

Casting gloves or fingerstalls will prevent deep cuts caused by line. Shockleaders are also a must for buffeting the extreme pressures.

For shorter distances up to 60 yards you can use lightweight mini spods, which only weigh around 3 oz when fully loaded with bait.

These can be used with your standard carp rod of around 2.5 lb test curve or more, but it’s still a good idea to reel on 30 feet of shockleader to prevent crack-offs.

Tight baiting is easily achieved using a marker float. It only takes a few dummy casts with a spod to hit the right spot, and then you simply put the line in the line clip, reel in, load the spod with feed and aim for the marker float. The clipped line ensures that the spod will fall on the same spot every time.

Spodding can be quite addictive, especially when you get into a rhythm.

Remember, it’s easy to introduce too much feed into the swim – and you can’t remove it once delivered!

1 - Centrifugal force keeps feed in a spod until splashdown. Then the cork or polystyrene nose-cone makes it invert and spill the contents. Different coloured cones are needed for changing light conditions. Casting to a marker float is the most accurate method.

2 - Gardner pocket rockets are safe to use with a standard 2.5 lb test curve carp rod, but stout shockleaders will prevent any line breakages caused by repeated casting. A lack of holes improves performance with wet, sticky particle mixes.

3 - A loaded spod will weigh several ounces but dedicated spod rods have sufficient backbone to cope with repeated long chucks. Shockleaders are needed to prevent crack-offs and leather fingerstalls or a glove will protect your index finger.

4 - A loaded spod will comfortably cast 100 yards in experienced hands. Holes in the body allow passage of water when the empty spod is being retrieved. Different coloured nose cones ensure successfully inverted spods are easily seen.

Foam Tip - Spods have a tendency to ditch some feed during casting, potentially spreading feed and fish across a wide area. A quick dunk in the lake before casting helps prevent losses. But the best solution is to place two dissolvable foam nuggets on top of the feed as a plug. They’ll dissolve immediately on splashdown.

 

 

 

Effective Winter Baits

Effective Winter Baits

 

Tempting lethargic fish to feed in winter can be particularly tricky as most species’ metabolism slows right down in colder water.

They need far less food than they require during the rest of the year when they are much more active, so to cajole them into feeding you need to alter your feeding approach as well as selecting the right bait.

Here's some great baits that have a top reputation of catching even the most stubborn of fish in tough winter conditions.

 

 

 

Bread

 
Bread is a top winter bait especially on the rivers where chub and roach both adore flake, crust or punch. Although mashed bread is widely used as groundbait when bread fishing, for winter use a finely liquidised white, sliced loaf which produces smaller particle sizes and is less likely to fill up a feeding fish; remove crusts from the slices for an even finer mix if the going is really tough. A PVA stick of compressed crumb is a little used but brilliantly effective winter carp tactic – use in conjunction with a single grain of white, rubber corn
 
 



Maggots

One of the very best coldwater carp catchers. A mesh PVA bag of maggots, in conjunction with a bunch of grubs on a hair-rigged maggot clip, is one of the most reliable of winter carp tactics. Maggots are easily digested, colourful and loved by carp. Cast regularly and tightly to build an area and don’t forget to include a couple of rubber grubs on the rig to balance the weight of the hook.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Spices

Spicy flavours have long had an association with winter fishing and with the proliferation of Asian stores there is a bewildering range of brilliant additives with which to spice up your baits. A sprinkling of turmeric on maggots, a shake of garam masala in groundbait, chilli-laced hemp, coriander flavoured corn, meat dusted with garlic salt and pastes made with belachan paste are just some of the spicy options – which are only limited by your imagination.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Paste

 

Hi-attract paste hook baits are only one part of the winter paste story as the versatility of the bait lends itself to a number of different applications. Most notably it can be used as a ‘plug’ for watch-style leads or as a wrap around for any bomb or hook bait; it can even be ‘blobbed’ onto PVA stringers. The paste used in this way gives a longer-term leakage of flavour-charged particles into the swim and acts as a great fish-puller, especially in the rivers. To give a more rapid breakdown for non-hook bait applications mix pastes with water rather than eggs.

 

 

 

 

Corn

For coldwater commercial carping there are few baits to beat a simple grain or two of sweetcorn. Corn is easily digested, highly visible – even in coloured water – and, unlike maggots, resistant to the attentions of small silvers. A couple of grains hair-rigged through the middle sit perfectly on an 18 but, if the going is really tough, a single grain presented lengthwise on a size 20 should do the trick.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Peperami

The spicy meat snack checks all of the boxes when it comes to winter fishing, despite the fact it is on the oily side. Highly attractive to carp, chub and barbel it can be whittled down to tiny chunks for use with scaled down line and small hooks, yet it still packs a serious punch in terms of attraction once the outer skin is sliced off. Try a thin slice as a topper for half a 10 mm pop-up boilie for excellent winter carp results.

 

 

 

Summer Bait Tip: Marmite Floaters for Carp Fishing

Summer Bait Tip: Marmite Floaters for Carp Fishing 

 

Struggling with carp mouthing floaters but not taking them keenly enough to get a hook into one?

A while ago when I was doing a lot of surface fishing I discovered that a pot of Marmite could help make the difference and pull a positive take or two out the bag on days when the carp were being really difficult.

 

Add Marmite!

After mounting a dog biscuit or pellet, simply push it into the Marmite and roll it around to create a sticky yeasty ball. Too many times for it to be coincidence a carp would absolutely nail the Marmite hooker as soon as it went out, instead of playing daft games like they had previously.

Cheap and deadly, and it works with bottom baits too. Just be careful, Marmite is dense and too much on a bait and you’ll make a floater into a sinker!

Oh, and you’ll need a hand towel, you can’t help but get covered in the stuff. As will your reel handle, rod butt, shorts, everything!

 

Fish On!