I was about to embark on my latest Barbel session, and popped into my tackle dealer to get my day ticket, together with some hemp and casters to go in my ground bait mix. As ever I took a while to checkout the bait section as I was running low on soft hooker pellets for my float fishing. I had tried a number of different makes and wasn’t that impressed with their catchability, hookability or shelf life. I spotted a new type I had not seen before and frankly only chose them because they seemed to be good value. Neil the shop owner told me he had heard some good things about them. So I duly bought a tub and thought no more about them.
I blanked on the barbel but caught a couple of nice chub and a big fat bream. A few days later with a break in the rain I decided to fish my local pool, two pools actually. I chose my swim because it offered shelter from the sun and lots of nearside vegetation and overhanging shrubs. With these pools in particular as they are quite small, I always fish the margins, that can be tight to the bank up to maximum 6feet out. I usually use the pole these days as I think there’s nothing quite like hooking a decent carp on the pole, seeing and feeling the elastic stretched to the max and grimacing in case it pings back if the fish throws the hook. As usual before I set up I threw in a couple of handfuls of 2mm betaine feeder pellets, this always get the fish fizzing but doesn’t necessarily put fish on the bank.
My set up is 1.0g full bodied float black out tip because of all the cloud cover lately with most shot about 6inches above the hook 6lb/ 5lb line. It is quite a heavy set up but compensates for some undertow and the swirly wind I often experience is these pools. My hook choice is kamasan B911 wide gape barbless eyed.usually14 0r 16 depending on bait. It is quite deep here margins 1.5mplus.I was thinking about hook bait, I didn’t want to be pestered by diddly perch or roach so I decided against maggots, and was just about to slip on a grain of corn, when I remembered the new Crafty Catcher pellets.
I opened the new tub and was immediately taken by the texture they seemed firmer than the others I had used, I was pleased with that. The first fish after only a couple of minutes in the water was a roach of about 12oz, the biggest I’d had from this venue for a good while, the bite was really deliberate and positive, so I hoped I was in for a good afternoon. The roach was followed quickly by several others of the around the same size, together with a couple of small carp to 4lb. I was having a great time.
Being ever curious I decided to change bait to corn - nothing a couple of twitches is all and I have had reasonable success on corn here in the past. I tried maggots, hard pellets on the band but being impatient, after about an hour switched back to the soft pellets, with instant results. More roach, small tench a goer gudgeon, and then I hooked into something I couldn’t stop, obviously a big carp just snapped me off at the hook length.
I changed my top 2 and beefed up my hook length and was back in the water fairly quickly even though I was concerned that the big carp would have ruined the swim for a while. It did, but not for long, a few loose fed hook baits and feeder pellets had the fish lining up again.
At about 8.30pm I wasn’t exactly fed up with the silver fish because it was great sport but the lost carp was playing on my mind. I thought I would try two of the hooker pellets to see if it would make a difference and because they were so nice and firm, the first one held its form while I pulled it all the way through the hook and I easily attached the second. By this time I was fishing vertically from the bank as there was much slurping under the overhanging shrub and I must have dropped these juicy offerings straight into a big gob, as both float and pole shot off at great speed.
After an intense battle I landed a perfect 15lb common carp. So my first experience of crafty catcher soft hooker pellets was brilliant. |
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