By Lee Clifford
From Cast Away PVA
A couple of years ago I decided to start targeting carp
on the river. This is how my first river carp encounter
goes. I spent a couple of months looking over a few
carpey looking spots. One of these spots I just had that
feeling about, everything seemed right to hold a few
carp. As I look across the water to my left is a deep lock,
next to the lock is a big island that separates the river
from the canal section, so the river is flowing on the
opposite side to me. In between the river and canal is
big slack area with reeds and lily pads, these stop
where the river joins back up with the canal. I spotted
quite a few small carp in this area from singles to low
doubles, I also noticed a lot of activity on the far bank
under 2 trees, these were around 10 yards apart and
both hanging into the water nicely to give some cover.
As I sat there watching, tails and fins where showing
from carp and barbel it was great to see and got the
adrenaline going. It was time to check out the opposite
bank, I didn’t fancy fishing over all the reeds and
lilies..
FISHING FOR RIVER CARP
After a half hour walk to get on the other side of
the river I was now back at the spot, things looked
great from this side as well apart from the peg that
is which was 12 feet below me and straight into
the river, this was not going to be an easy task
landing anything. I started to trickle a little bait
under these 2 trees in about 7 foot of water, I did
this for just over a week baiting every other night
with half a kilo of boilies and a kilo of maize. I was
really looking forward to getting a line in there as
most of the time this sort of peg ends up being the
best one because it never gets touched. Now I am
sat on top of the bank looking down in to the
water just thinking what could be swimming
under my feet, this is the best thing for me with
rivers you just never know what’s going to
happen next.
The time was here to put a line in the water, I only
fished
the one rod in this spot as it was too tight
4
for 2; I was only fishing 4 foot off the bank so
stealth had to be used when entering the swim
another reason why I love this sort of fishing
Let’s have a quick look at the rig I will be using for
this spot. This is a simple combi rig using a
fluorocarbon boom section in 25lb tied to small
piece of green un- coated braid, the hook was a
size 6 curved shank and the bait was an 18mm
boilie topped with a single piece of maize. Now
most river anglers will have a long hook link but I
kept mine short at 7 inch because am targeting
carp I feel a long rig will allow the carp more
opportunity to get away with it.