My Way with Small WatersByDarren Wilson
Before I start with explaining the way that I approach small waters, I must point out that I am not a superstar of the angling world nor do I aspire to be one. I am simply an angler that enjoys his angling regardless of the end results. Small waters are something that anglers get the misconception that they are going to be easy and that the fish will hit the mat constantly throughout sessions. This is where most anglers become unstuck before they have even had their first session. I hope to be able to explain the reasons behind my approach and that you can understand the reasoning. Obviously each venue is different, but from my experiences on fishing many of these types of venues over the years, they have a lot in common. What is a small water? Every angler has their own definition of a small water but I gauge the venues in three sizes; under 2 acres is a small water, 2-15 acres is a medium water and 15 acres+ is a big pit. A small water to me is one that you could theoretically or potentially reach every fishable area of the venue from one swim (which is not going to happen generally due to differing shapes of the venue). This means that if required, the day can be spent walking about, swim to swim, looking for feeding fish. Every article that you read seems to be focused on location being the most important part of angling. To a certain extent, that is correct as if your bait is not near a feeding fish, you may as well not even cast out. When fishing a small water, you can be certain that your bait and rig is not going to be that far away from a feeding fish, and in general will be closer to a fish anywhere in the venue than a rig on the right spot in an inland ocean. With this in mind I tend to approach small waters differently to most other anglers. I tend to focus on setting traps on areas that the fish patrol regularly and feed on. This type of baiting and angling focuses on placing baits where the fish are likely to visit rather than where they actually are at that time.
On a small water this approach could mean baiting as few as a couple of spots or as many as a dozen or so. Your eyes are the key to this and how you approach the water that you are fishing. On small waters, the general rule is that the fish will patrol the lake in a set pattern each and every day and will deviate from this route very rarely. Before I introduce any bait into the water, I will make a couple of recce trips first at the same time of day but in differing weather conditions. Each of these sessions is simply for observation purposes and notes of fish spotted and the areas will be made both on paper (or on phone!) as well as embedded into my mind. These notes can be essential pieces of the jigsaw to success. I have been guilty myself of turning up on a recce trip to small venues, seeing a load of fish mooching about and rubbing my hands together thinking that I am going to catch straight away and then move on to a different water. On occasions like this, I have found that I have turned the chances against me before putting a single bait in to the water. Do not let your head rule your actions.
Every small water will have a variety of features of which all may look to be attractive to the fish. The recce trips will tell you if the areas see a lot of attention or not. Some anglers like to take it to another level and use glass bottomed buckets or scuba masks to check the bottom by potential areas, but I personally feel that this might be beneficial on inland oceans when checking spots that are hundreds of yards away from the bank from a boat, but from the bank, a good set of polarised sunglasses are more than good enough. I won’t go into detail on which areas are best to target as each water is different, but margins should not be ignored in the same way as islands or other features in the water. On pressured waters, the quieter areas of the venue where anglers are not fishing will be where the fish hold up and if you can get a bait to them somehow, you will stand a good chance of catching them as they are not used to seeing baits in these areas. One thing to be aware of though, is that you make sure that you stand a reasonable chance of landing the fish as the last thing you want to do is to hook a fish on inadequate tackle and lose it in a snag or worst of all, break off and lose a fish and your end tackle. On the tricky little waters I fish, I want to make sure that I stand the best chance of landing a hooked fish, so I will fish as heavy as I feel I can get away with. This means none of the small hooks and light lines that a lot of anglers recommend, as I do not feel that getting a bite on light gear only to lose it is the right way to go about things. A lost fish just means that it is going to be harder to catch next time round as well as potentially blowing the swim for that session. For my bottom bait rigs, I will always go for a standard blowback style rig and just vary the length of the rig itself rather than change hook sizes etc. Keeping things simple like this allows me to concentrate on other aspects of my angling. I like to use a longer than usual hooklink for bottom baits than most would use as the bottom of thesesmall venues tend to be fairly silty or covered in weed and the last thing you want is the bait being dragged into it by the lead. 9” is usually my starting point and I have used up to 18” in the past on seriously silty waters. With pop-ups, I will almost always go for the Chod rig, as this gives me the best chance of good presentation over other pop-up rigs.
My typical bottom bait rig consists of a size 6 Atomic Tackle Haula hook with a long hair to allow good separation between bait and hook tied Blowback style using a small piece of tubing situated on the bend of the hook. Korda’s N-Trap Soft is my standard hooklink material with a couple of inches stripped back to allow hook movement when picked up. Instead of using a boilie stop to keep the hook bait on the hair, I have started using an Enterprise Rubber Maggot instead. This gives an extra piece of attraction to the hookbait over the free offerings, and as I always have these with me, I know that I am not going to be searching around for a boilie stop. At night, I have been known to use the glow in the dark versions simply for the reason that if I drop it when rebaiting, I can find it easily! My Chod rig is no different to anybody elses in the components or mechanics and as there has been so much written already about this rig, I won’t go any further, other than the hookbait must be seriously buoyant. CC Moore produce some superb pop-ups in their range and my first choice is the 18mm Live System corkball pop-ups as these allow me to glug them for a couple of days prior to fishing without effecting the buoyancy drastically. I will always have a tub of Airball pop-ups in my bag though in case I wish to counter balance a bottom bait.
Hemp will always be the staple part of my particle approach as it works everywhere and for virtually all species that swim. The beauty of the CC Moore Intense Hemp is that it is cooked in the jar and all the goodness is kept within rather than being boiled away. This gives a more attractive seed than any home cooked hemp. Rather than use the larger hemp seed that a lot of companies look for (as well as anglers for some reason), CC Moore use a standard sized seed which contains a lot more oil than the larger seeds do. The oils within the hemp seed are one of the most attractive and nutritious of oils to the fish, so it makes sense to put things in your favour rather than working against you.
During the cooler months, I will omit the particles from my angling and concentrate on a good quality, high nutritional value boilie instead. My boilie of choice for these waters is CC Moore’s Live System. This milk protein based bait is highly soluble in all water temperatures that the angler will be fishing in, and means that the attraction from the baits will seep out into the water column easily. Using a milk protein bait means that I can use the same bait all year round instead of changing when the water becomes warmer or cooler. During the cooler months, I will concentrate on introducing small amounts of 10mm baits as loose offerings. This could be as few as 10 baits or as many as 150 dependant on how active the fish are. If the fish are active and moving around then I tend to err on the higher number as the fish will be using more energy in colder conditions to move around and will need more food to keep its metabolism stable. If in doubt though, always err towards the lower numbers as you cannot take out what you have already put in. In the cooler conditions, the carp may not be as active as other species in the water and the last thing you want is to have a bait out and it has been pecked away by roach or other silver fish, and has left you with a baitless rig for several hours. If the venue contains silver fish, I will generally fish a bottom bait consisting of a Hardened Hookbait to try to keep the silver fish at bay.
During the warmer months, I have no problems in going through a couple of kilos of 15 or 18mm boilies during a 48 hour session. If the fish are feeding hard, then I feel that the more bait they are willing to eat, the less wary they will be of rigs or lines going through the swim. Most of the time though, a kilo of bait will last a 48 hour session. Most importantly of all though on small waters is stealth and confidence. Have confidence in what you do and also fish as if you are poaching, and your results will improve. Until the next time, you will find me tucked away on a small water somewhere in the Midlands after my target fish. Be good rather than lucky, Darren WilsonMy Way with Small Waters is sponsored by CC Moore
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Bait choice plays a big part of the parcel on small waters. Small waters tend to see a lot more pressure than their larger counterparts, and as such the fish tend to see a lot of the tricks that anglers use to tempt them. Some of the waters I fish hold 30 to 40 Carp per acre, and theoretically, these fish should be easy to catch, but the complete opposite applies and 20 captures a year total between all the anglers fishing is a good year. Some fish may go 2 years or more between captures. To start out on small waters, I first speak to anglers fishing and the owner to find out what most are doing. If there has not been much making an appearance on the bank, then I will start a baiting approach that is different to what the others are doing. This is where particle baits play a large part to my angling. There are many suppliers of particles within the angling world, but I will always stick to what I am confident in and that is the CC Moore range. Rather than just settle for the tried and tested seeds, nuts and pulses, CC Moore push the boundaries and I will always start my warm weather campaign using a combination of Intense Hemp, White Haze and XXL Tiger Nuts in Talin.
