Make Some Noise!

It has long been known that fish find the splash of bait entering the water very attractive, and in this article I want to look at ‘ringing the dinner bell’ ...

This ‘noise’ is synonymous with shallow fishing – a recognised big-weight tactic – where the constant rattle of bait on the surface draws carp from a very wide area. As they compete for the falling freebies they rise higher in the water column.

Now we have even designed specific rigs to use when fishing shallow that create a fish-attracting noise when whipped over the pole and ‘slapped‘ on the surface. When shallow fishing we pretty much realise and accept how important the noise is to our day’s sport, but how many of you think of it in connection with your other forms of fishing? In the right hands making some noise is a deadly ‘weapon’ and, without question, will catch you more fish when exploited properly.

When we introduce bait of any kind into the water it creates a noise, and how you deposit the bait can often reflect on how soon you get a bite. In some circumstances you need to make a lot of commotion to attract the fish into your peg and in others you want to make as little noise as possible. Today I’m going to give you some examples of how I go about using noise to increase my catch rate at Viaduct Fishery, in Somerset. Hopefully I can demonstrate that it’s not just for shallow approaches but applies to all aspects of your fishing.

Let’s be honest, we can’t always draw flyers (no, not even me!) so how do you compete with the better pegs? The answer is a bit of logical thinking! The peg I’m fishing today, on Cary Lake, wouldn’t usually compete with others on this lake but hopefully I can show you that by ‘calling’ the fish you can transform an also-ran draw into a framing or at least section-winning one.

Assessing your peg is very important and the decisions you make from there will dictate how you fish and how your peg fishes. I don’t think this peg will hold large numbers of fish but those that are here will be resident fish, which tend to be on the larger side. We all know how the big lads love to patrol the margins so this is going to be the main area to target. These big carp are usually caught late in the day but will happily come in to have a feed earlier than that if they realise there is food on offer.

I’m starting in an area 11 metres down the bank in a cutout where I’ve found about two feet of water. Because I’m not looking to ‘bag up’ on numbers of fish I’ve plumbed several areas to target, from short at 5 metres right through to 16 metres down the bank. Rigs are simple but strong, with 0.20mm diameter lines, a strong Fox Series 2 hook and a hair-rigged 8mm pellet on the business end. The fish today may not come at regular intervals but are well worth it when they do turn up – on this lake carp to 20lb aren’t uncommon and it doesn’t take many of them to put you in the race.

To kick-start the swim I’m cupping in a large pot of 6mm pellets together with a few 8mms. However, rather than just cup them in normally I lift my pole a good six to eight feet off the water and pour the pellets in from there.

This does two things: firstly, it will spread the bait slightly rather than just creating one big mound of bait on the bottom. This gives the carp an area to graze and feel confident on as they pick up individual food items, rather than them finding a pile, having a feed and moving off when they are full. The more they search for the bait the more confident they will be when they find your hook bait. Also, if there are numbers of fish present they won’t be fighting over a small feed area. This is a recipe for disaster, as it will only result in foul hookers.

Secondly, and very importantly, pouring in the pellets from a height will alert any fish in the area to the presence of food and they won’t be able to resist coming in for a look. (This is something I do a lot these days in both open-water and margin swims as the commotion will pull fish from a wide area, even neighbouring pegs.) Just be careful if you do this when you’re on a lot of fish, though, as it will force so many into your swim that all you will do is foul hook fish until you get them settled!

In a swim such as mine today I’m only looking to catch one fish at a time, so topping up and re-feeding becomes vitally important. Once I’ve caught a fish I almost always have a quick drop in without feeding because I could be lucky and catch a second before having to re-feed. When I feel there are no fish there the process must start again. How to go about it, though, is what can make or break a session.

There are several options when refeeding – big cups, small pole-mounted pots, catapults or throwing. Today I feel there aren’t many fish in the area so it’s definitely a case of trying to make something happen. I think another big pot will run the risk of putting too much feed in and could result in a fish moving in, having a feed and moving off again without ever finding my hook bait. What I need to do is try and create as much attraction as possible with minimum feed and thus increase the chances of pulling a fish into the swim and picking up my hook bait. A catapult is wonderful for this because it doesn’t feed on a sixpence but at the same time creates a lot of commotion. What I also do is Toss-Pot pellets in, which gives a target area for the fish to home in on right next to my hook bait.

How regularly to feed is governed, as always, by the response and at first I keep it to irregular feeding. What I don’t want to do is draw a fish into the swim and then feed on its head and spook it before I’ve caught it. I want them to feel settled as they mooch around over the feed, so I’ll give it maybe 10 minutes before feeding again if a bite hasn’t occurred. If I catch a fish then I can keep working as a pattern will soon emerge.

If I get no bites and feel I’m going nowhere then I have no qualms whatsoever in trying to force them into the peg. In this instance constant catapulting will create a lot of commotion on the surface and attract the attention of even the most stubborn and lethargic creatures.

One example of this is a match I fished last summer, here at Viaduct. With two hours gone I was going nowhere, with only three fish in the net, and having been through the usual tactics to try and get a bite I soon realised that there were quite simply no fish in the swim. Something had to be done. I flicked the bomb out, picked up my catapult and proceeded to fire in two pints of 6mm pellets over my long-pole swim. This took about 10 to 15 minutes in all, but the result was a swim full of fish and it blowing like a Jacuzzi a short while after! I went on to win the match with 158lb. The dinner bell certainly did it for me that day!

Another tactic that catches an awful lot of fish at the moment employed when fishing for larger fish on the long pole. It involves regular feeding via a catapult while fishing on the bottom, as opposed to fishing shallow when this feeding pattern would normally be used.

There are several reasons why this method works. Firstly, as the size of fish we catch increases the more they seem to wise up. These big fish know that they don’t have to compete like their smaller, more naive cousins. Quite frankly they are lazy too, because they know they can happily have a free feed on the deck. It also enables you to feed an area larger than you would with a Kinder pot to create a grazing bed for the fish to become confident on. more than 100lb. The key was to make as little noise as possible, so that I could pick fish off one by one and without having too many in the swim to cause foul-hooking problems. Ringing the dinner bell in that match would have been detrimental, to say the least!

There are simply hundreds of examples I could give you on how important ‘the noise’ is; I remember reading an article by Will Raison years ago about how he balled in to draw the fish in and then fished shallow over the top. Why did he do it? The main reason was to instantly draw fish into his peg to get off to a flyer – and if Will’s in front from the start there is usually only one winner!

Without doubt, though, the key to this method is the noise the pellets make when they enter the water. The regular rattle on the surface is a magnet to carp and, as you are only feeding a few pellets at a time, creates maximum noise with minimum feed. This noise tells the fish there is feed about but makes them work and search to find it. Bites with this tactic are usually super-positive as the confidently feeding fish find your hook bait.

Just to counteract that and illustrate how important it is to think about how you feed, I recently drew a peg with great form (a nice break from the norm!). Next to me was Timmy Bull (Mick Bull’s brother and, yep, he does draw as well as him!) and although we were both catching on the straight lead my swim was slowing as Tim’s was getting stronger. The only way I was going to catch up and compete was to catch on the pole – I knew if I could line them up it would be quicker than catching on the lead.

As I knew there were loads of fish in the area I didn’t want to pull too many onto the one line in one go so I gently potted in a cupful of 6mm pellets. Minutes later I was into fish and catching well on a hairrigged 8mm pellet. Topping up was very important, and I believe if I had used a catapult there would have been too many fish at all depths in the swim. I couldn’t afford to spend or waste time trying to get them settled shallow so I reached for my Toss-Pots. Once I’d got the amount of top-up pellets right the float was burying as fast as I could get it in the water. The race to catch up was on!

Tim weighed in 165lb to win the match and I weighed in 160lb for second, just one fish short. If I hadn’t switched to the pole I’m sure I wouldn’t have got much Feeding is the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question in fishing, but it’s not just about what and how much you put in, it’s also about how you put it in that counts. As I said earlier, it’s a deadly weapon in the right hands and all it needs is a little bit of thinking. It’s also not just something that affects summer fishing, either, because it plays a massive part in winter too – but that’s something to look into at a later date. In the meantime, next time you go to the bank try ‘calling’ the fish – it’s sure to put more in your net!

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