Many years ago I only had overnight sessions to rely on. I suppose at the start I only had a small percentage chance (probably as little as 5%) of maybe catching the odd carp or two. Now in anybody’s book that isn’t great - good if I wanted a good night’s sleep - but as anybody that knows me will tell you, I want to catch carp and with only a 5% chance I knew I would be up against it, so I needed stack the odds a little bit more in my favour...
A fishing circle would be my guide. A 100% fishing circle of which I set myself 70% to complete. I start my night sessions as early in the year as possible which gives me plenty of opportunity to study and mark-out a few swims. Once settled in to a chosen swim, I try and mark-out two more likely looking areas. Now this probably didn’t help my chances at the time but I would quickly discover all of the swim features and would (hopefully!) reap the rewards.
Late April - a good time to put my plan into action...
The fish are pretty active in the spring and will easily give themselves away. My plan is to arrive as early as possible at a water and have a quick look from any of the available vantage points in the hope of finding the odd carp or two.
Once I have located the fish the first thing that I do is prepare and eat my food which enables me to concentrate on the job in-hand. All fueled up, I continue watching the water for as long as possible - moving down through the swims in an attempt to stay in touch with the carp before nightfall arrives and the lake is plunged into darkness. The carp usually give the odd sign of where they might be feeding, but they will certainly let you know where they are going to be in residence for the night.
Putting in that extra bit of effort locating the carp has immediately increased my fishing circle to 35% and I’ve only just picked my swim!
It's Half The Battle!
I am almost half way their now and I can start to use the information that I learnt from my earlier feature-finding sessions. I know where the carp might be feeding and what sub-surface features are in front of me, so it's a simple case of setting the trap.
At this point my fishing circle has increased to 50% and so my chances of catching carp have dramatically improved. I still don’t have any rods out there, but I have already completed half of my fishing circle.
My next 20% improvement will come from understanding what type of features I will be casting my hookbaits into - for example; a hole in the weed, gravel patches or maybe firm silt. With all this in mind I now know what hook-link colour to use, which rig to use (be it pop-up or bottom bait etc...) and how much bait to add to each spot.
There are many different ways to fish each given spot, but to fish as cutely as possible will always make for better results.
Almost There...
My fishing circle is now up to 70% and I haven't even cast my rods out!. I like to keep a good record of the required casting distances which helps to minimize the number of actual casting attempts. Casting now complete and with all my hookbaits positioned on the money (normally before midnight!) I can sleep easy. By the way, I also think that everybody has a little bit of luck from time-to-time, so there’s probably another 5% extra to add for luck and probably another few extra percent to add for good weather etc... It would be unrealistic to set yourself a 100% target, because you will need to allow for such things as seasonal variations and other anglers etc... Carp fishing is not an exact science (far from it!) but fishing sensibly and working on percentage improvements can only help to you to acheive your outcome goals.
I would also like to mention that the stated percentages are for guidance only. Every angling situation will have it's own set of rules and therefor varying percentage improvements. I am sure that we will all have different percentages for different things, but the percentage formula has worked well for me as I am sure it will for you.
Good Luck
Birdy