Four seasons of spring results, and how I got them, point to one thing – by all means fish several rods, but hedge your bets and go easy on the loosefeed, says Rob Hughes
CHATTING to the Editor about potential subjects for this month’s feature, we began chatting about successful February and March campaigns from the past.
Last month I predicted that a fair few big fish would be caught in mid-February, and now, with the benefit of hindsight, we can see that’s exactly what happened. The main reasons are that the weather is changing and the sort of anglers that are out there in February are generally a little more hardcore.
It’s something that we see every February – good anglers catch big fish. Through years of competition and coaching it’s been my responsibility to watch patterns develop, so with that in mind, rather than giving the usual standard early spring advice, we thought it would be helpful to see a working example of some captures from previous seasons and see if there was a recurrent pattern.
There certainly was, and here’s a small selection…
MARCH 2015 – ATEAM SUCCESS
Wind the clock back to March 2015 and a big old sheet of water in Cambridge. It’s a long way from my home in the South West, so a couple of nights there was a real treat.
There’s always a temptation to go for the known pegs on any lake, but at this time of year they can be anywhere, so it pays to be open minded. The lake has a large area of open water, and a small bay with some islands. The open water is hugely popular, and the carp do tend to spend a lot of time out there, but it was clear, with high pressure, and we were just on the edge of the last frosts.
Carp obviously like the security of islands at any time, but in spring I find they are extra attractive as they break up the wind movement and underwater tow to offer the carp a more stable place to hang out. I found a lovely gully between two islands that I thought the fish might be spending some time in, and a nice shelf close to an island that, if they decided to become more mobile, they’d likely visit. A small scattering of bait went into the gulley, but the rod up the shelf was on a single.
Guess which went? Yep, the single. They just can’t help themselves at this time of year and if your bait is the only one out there, it’s the only one they can pick up. An ‘A-Team’ member and a March forty on the last day of the month too.
MARCH 2018 – BEING IN THE RIGHT PLACE
With a three-night session ahead of me I’d pitched up in what I thought was a likely-looking area, and I was a couple swims down from a pal so we could “meet in the middle” and have a bit of a social too.
The weather was relatively nice. Not too hot or cold, not too windy or wet.
