In article , Matt (IS Team)
wrote:

The swans were a pain in the arse, but the most frustrating part was
watching the carp take all the freebie's and my hookbait being left well
alone!!

I was using dog biscuits that I had flavoured with Liquid Molasses, mounted
on a hair of 4lb Shinobi hooklength to 6lb Maxima, 4 feet from the
controller float.
I lost count of the number of fish that started to rise to the hookbait but
turned away, only to take some freebies under a foot away!

OK, they were line shy,,,

I tried swapping to a 3lb flourocarbon hooklength, but this just sank and
pulled the biscuits right next to the controller. Hook was a PR27 size 14, I
tried dropping this down to a 18. I put fresh bait on the hook every 10
minutes. Tried half a biscuit.
Nothing I did made any difference, hookbait remained untouched - while the
freebies were sucked down with confidence.

This is ridiculously light tackle for carp - scale up a bit and hide the
line. If the fish are small you may get away with 8lb bs but 12-15 might be
better, use much larger hooks, about #4 would be right.

Take a sliced loaf, sread it all out, spray with green food dye and replace
the loaf in it's bag. (Uneven spray will creep and even out over a little
while.) Toss a few freebies among lilly pads and under marginal vegetation.
Try not to let the swans see you doing this, as long as they don't twig by
your actions they will ignore a green crust unless they actually bump into
it (but once they do twig you can forget the tactic for that year.)

Fish with just a crust baited hook on the line. Usually fish in the lillies
will feed first, cast the bread into a gap, lay the line over the top of a
lillypad and draw the crust up to the edge so only the bait is visible to
the fish. When you get a take let about a foot of line go then hit and hold
hard - you must keep the fish on the surface so forget baitrunners and
clutches.

If the baits under the bank are taken push just the tip of the rod over the
bank and lower the bait to the surface allowing no line to touch the water,
keep two feet of line in hand and let yhe fish take this before you strike.
Hit and hold again...

Cheerio,

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