Carp bait - building a picture

Carp bait - Once you get the hang of what different lakebeds feel like and their depths you can then begin to piece together what’s in your carp swim. You can take notes or make sketches of the picture you have of the lakebed in relation to your points of reference, found through your carp rod.

Baiting up

Baiting - Once you have chosen a likely spot for your hook bait using your marker-float, you can leave it in position, say on top of a gravel bar or at the bottom of a drop off. With the marker-float marking the position of your feature you can cast to it with your baited rig and introduce freebies or use it as a ‘spodding’ marker.

Note - A ‘spod’, used for ‘spodding’, is a missile or rocket shaped object, which is tied directly to a heavy shock-leader. With the aid of the line-clip on your spool and using a marker-float you can introduce various bait using a carp rod including particles, pellets, boilies, etc, accurately up to a range of 100 yards without too much trouble.

Bait tips

Bait tip - Once you’ve built up a picture of the lakebed using a marker-float and you have your points of reference you can then fish to the same spots time after time. I’ve seen anglers using two marker-floats to mark the width of a clear patch in the weed. Although I’ve never done this myself, it shows how other anglers use marker-float set-ups as part of their armory.

Whenever I visit a water to have a walk round I always take my marker-float set-up. If I see bubbles or a fish rolling I’ll then cast to where they are to see what feature attracts them to feed.

Its just Fishing, but keep it simple

Fishing - The only time that I will not use a carp marker-float is if I’m doing short sessions and its use might spook the fish. Saying that, on some waters the constant thrashing of the water attracts the fish! Another consideration is that other anglers might not want a marker-float crashing around the edges of their swim. If I am worried about spooking fish on a short session then I would do my feature finding after I’ve fished, ready for the next session.

Marker-float set-ups are a very valuable tool. After all, it’s what’s in the water that’s most important!

Tight Lines