Showtime!

By Carl Sharp

　
I find it amazing the amount of people that ignore showing fish! I can’t see any point personally in sitting at the other end of the lake watching carp after carp leaping and rolling, almost teasing you into joining their party! In this feature, I aim to explain the thoughts and techniques I utilise in these situations to hopefully bank these bonus fish.
 
I can understand those times that we’ve just finished meticulously placing our baits on dustbin lid sized features, followed by X amount of kilo’s of bait lovingly scattered to precise co-ordinates, only to find that the fish start to leap and roll 500 yards down to our left. After all that effort, and with bait being pretty expensive these days it’s no wonder you’d rather sit it out and hope they will come to you, been there, got the t-shirt!
 
But more often than not you will wake up to motionless bobbins and be left wondering to yourself ‘what if’ and regretted not following your instincts and getting onto the showing fish.

Anglers seem to forget that a carp lives within the confines of their lake day in, day out, and rarely will they travel around the whole lake during each 24 hour period, and why should / would they!? I’m pretty sure from my experiences that they’d much prefer everything close to hand, including warmth, shelter and food, and areas that offer all of these things are more often than not the areas that these fish will spend most of their lives.
 
I’ve gone a little bit off subject here, but basically what I’m trying to get across is that if fish are showing in a certain area, get on them as quickly as possible!

Now that I’ve packed up and got around into the active swim, I’d then take my time to observe and pin point the exact spot that the carp are rolling on from my new position. Accuracy is key here, there’s no point in moving to your new location only to be fishing 20 yards past the spot (carp are brilliant at rolling in the same 3ft square of water every time, so you want to be in that zone).
 
Once the area is lined up with regards to positioning, it’s then time to think about getting a bait presented to them. Personally, I would only put out single hook baits with at most a tiny PVA stocking bag attached. The fish are already there, so it’s not as if you’ve got to create a baiting situation to draw them in. I do actually think that baiting a swim with fish already present can do more harm than good.
 

I’ve got so much confidence in single hook baits already that I never hesitate in leaving the PVA bag off in these situations, as more often than not I will be casting out bright pop-ups anyway, in which case pellets on the bottom play no part in tricking the carp in my opinion.

Rig-wise I would normally be using around 3ft of Solar’s Contour Unleaded material in 40lb breaking strain as the leader, along with one of their lead clip systems holding on a 3oz distance type lead. I find that as long as you feather the cast down, these long pointy leads will hit the waters surface with minimal splash, after all, the fish are ultra close to where you’re casting so you don’t want to be alarming them too much of your presence if you can help it.

 
As mentioned, I’d normally be using a bright pop-up, which I would usually have tied onto a stiff-hinged rig. I’ve been using these rigs for almost 12 years now, and the hook holds that you achieve with them are incredible. The stiffness of the rig allows you to hammer these out at any range without fear of tangles, although I do always like to cover the hook with a nugget of dissolvable foam, just to stop and debris affecting the presentation upon landing on the lakebed.
 
As you can see from you’ve just read, there’s no special bait or rig that you will need to help bank those showing fish, it’s just all about giving them a little bit of what they like, where they want to be!
 
So what are you waiting for, get on em!

Carl Sharp is sponsored by Solar Tackle