Autumn Fruits... Rob Shanks

This entry was posted on 20th November, 2013

Autumn Fruits... Rob Shanks

Well, where do I start? As I write this I’m thinking to myself where the summer went. It took so long to turn up but when it did Norfolk was bathed in sunshine for weeks on end, and quite frankly I loved every minute of it. It’s now mid November and the nights are drawing in very quickly and the temperature has dropped dramatically, The Autumn fruits are in abundance and I’m depressed because my flip flops have been retired for another year and with it the angling press is full of reports of big hits of fish getting caught across the country as the fish get there heads down for there pre winter feed ups.



Regarding my own fishing I’ve really enjoyed myself catching plenty of nice fish throughout the warm months of the summer but rather than recap on my recent captures I thought I'd write about what turned out in the end to be a big turning point in my angling back in July which almost certainly has put me a few extra fish on the bank as a consequence. My results had been good but I still felt that there was room for improvement, considering I only fish ten to twelve hour overnight sessions, I want to be making sure I’m fishing as effectively as I can. Now I’m not normally one to get fixated on rigs, always opting to keep things simple but on one particular session I was in a fortunate position where I managed to find some fish feeding in the edge and rather than grab the stalking rod and go free lining I decide to not let the guilt edge chance to drop a rig in and watch the fishes reaction too it slip me buy, to be fare I could have caught one but I wouldn’t have learnt anything, so I quickly got a rod ready and baited rig to drop in the edge.



I set about spooking the carp from the shallow gravel margins by dropping in two or three halved Sticky baits 15mm Vortex boilies, the fish slowly ghosted out of slight which gave me the perfect opportunity to get the rig and some bait in lowered gently into position and with the lines slackened off nicely it wasn’t long before the carp where becoming vaguely visible around the spot and gradually picking up the odd bait, gaining in confidence they happily picked away at the vortex boilies. Straight away the first thing I noticed was they were a lot less suspicious of the halved baits to the point that they were visually selecting them where possible and before long I had two carp, one a lovely carp I’d been fortunate to catch the previous year, a lovely scaly mirror in the upper twenties along side him a high double figure common feeding confidently in the vicinity of the rig and with that came the adrenaline rush as I just new with the way they were devouring every bait in sight that it was only a matter of time before my hook bait would be engulfed in the cavernous mouth of a hungry carp.



How wrong I was, the only thing I hadn’t bargained on was how quickly the bait would also exit from its cavernous mouth and as if nothing had occurred the culprit, in this case the larger mirror, continued to feed unperturbed by the event with even more confidence, now knowing exactly what bait to avoid. With the smaller common still in tow feeding hard, I was now thinking I’d settle for a bite of this little fella only to have my pants pulled down for the second time in approximately thirty seconds when the common did the same trick as his bigger brother. They both carried on feeding until all the bait was gone bare my rather lonely and embarrassed hook bait and I was left standing there, crouched in the bushes feeling like I’d been the victim of the biggest practical joke in the world. It was time to get the thinking cap on and over the next forty minutes I made all sort if rig adjustments I thought would make the difference, length of the hooklink, weight of lead, position of the hook bait within the baited area and on all occasions the fish managed to feed quite comfortably on the Vortex boilies, sucking in and ejecting my rig for fun until they had obviously filled themselves up enough and decided to go and have a rest elsewhere. leaving me a quivering mess of uncertainty staring into an empty swim.

I decided at this point to go home because my brain was quite frankly shot to pieces and I needed some time to digest through and evaluate what I’d just witnessed and a conversation with a close friend, another member of the same water confirmed to me my original thoughts as he’d had the pleasure of watching his target fish perform the same escape act on his rig earlier the same day, these fish had upped their game. I don’t want to give you all the answers, quite frankly because I don’t know them, but there was a list of things that needed evaluation. The important questions for me were, how important is the lead, from what I’d seen the lead never came into play on any of the occasions that the fish picked up the hook bait and bare in mind at one point I had a 4 inch hook length and a 3.5 ounce lead. The second question that really stood out to me is the exit point of the hair and where the bait pivots from on the hook, possibly one very important piece of rig mechanics that is overlooked in importance.

In my next few blogs I’ll be doing a few technical rig pieces interleaved between my usual diary accounts showing you a few of the presentations I’ve tried as a consequence and more importantly some of the results that have followed.

So until then, good luck and tight lines...

Rob Shanks



The Tackle Box Sticky Baits Vortex Boilies ESP Polaroid’s Fox Horizon Rods Daiwa Basia QDA Reels ESP Synchro XT Line