Des Taylor’s August Angling Tips
My Favourite Method of all…
The temperature of the water is up and the air temperature at this time of year is usually kind and August I find is the month of warm soft winds making this all the perfect scenario for surface fishing for carp.
I usually only fish this way for a few hours and that’s late afternoon up till an hour before completely darkness, the perfect time to fool a big carp into taking a surface bait. My perfect conditions are a south westerly warm wind, sunshine and carp showing at the surface.
First things first and that’s to put the gear down away from the lake and with only a bin of bait and a catapult I walk around the venue firing out small pouches of bait to get fish up feeding and more importantly feeding confidently, now this may take 30 minutes or even a couple of hours but be in no doubt the more you loose feed bait and the more you wait at this moment in time the better your fishing will be when you actually make your first cast.
My Favourite Method of all…
Although there are numerous rigs including all sorts of weird and wonderful floats plus of course the famous “beachcaster rig” I personally when I can will fish as simple as it gets with just a freelined hook and hook bait on the end of the line and nothing else. You can only fish limited distance with this type of setup but that’s fine by me because one of the attractions of this type of fishing for me is watching the fish up close and personal taking the bait and exploding into action sometimes even spraying water over me I am that close to the taking fish.
My bait is a choice of two first is a piece of bread crust and yes that’s as old school as it gets but you will be surprised how many big wary old carp will fall for a good old piece of bread crust on a size 8 hook and nothing else on the line. But my favourite is the Enterprise rubber pop up with the shot inside which turns the bait and hook in such a way that the hook is sitting on the top of the bait out the sight of the carp, a devastating rig. Fishing like this will learn you so much about the movements and reactions of a carp to a bait because what you are seeing in front of your eyes is what happens when you are fishing bottom baits when you cannot see any of this.
The frustrations of a carp missing the bait or even having it sat on its head unable to get it into its mouth or a big fish coming into the swim and seemingly for no reason panics and scares all the other carp in the area away as storms away at great speed. But all those frustrations are forgot when finally, a big carp comes slowly up from the depths and you can see the carps eyes studying the bait and she slowly sucks the bait it, turns in the water, the line tightens, the rod takes its fighting curve and you are playing a beautiful carp.
Pure magic and one of the best moments in coarse angling.
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