ONLYKARP®

Fishing for large carp in winter offers us a challenge for which we must prepare well conscientiously, since the situation that we will find will be very different from what we have enjoyed at other times of the year.

The difficulty is high, both on a technical and physical level, but the incentives are going to be so interesting that we will not be able to put fishing aside in these months.

WHAT IS WINTER?

Many fishermen think that winter begins in the month of November, when the drop in ambient temperature begins and bad weather is present.

But this is not the case, we must not forget that water is an element that varies in temperature more slowly than air.

Although the cold begins in the month of November, the temperature of the water will decrease more slowly, and we can find ourselves in the middle of December without having reached its lowest value.

It will be in the months of January and February that we have colder water and, therefore, a more extreme fishing situation. But we also have other factors:

Spain is a country where winter is not as strong as in other European countries.

The temperature does not drop excessively and we enjoy a more benign weather.

This fact is of course reflected in the water, which will not get as cold as in countries like Germany and France.

Furthermore, not all communities in our country have the same weather. In Valencia, Spain experiences very mild winters and, on the other hand, Ciudad Real often presents snow in its places.

WINTER LAKE

What are the other reasons?

Tent activity can favorably surprise us even in mid-December.

The water continues to cool and the carp continue to eat to obtain the energy reserve that allows them to spend the winter.

But there comes a time when the water is really cold.

Traditionally it has always been said that carp cannot be fished in winter, that it becomes lethargic like bears and does not eat.

Today it is proven that carp, especially the largest, continues to eat, although it only does so at certain times of the day and never copiously.

DID WE SAY THE BIG CARP?

Yes, because the larger carp needs a greater energy reserve than the small carp to survive during this period of time and therefore needs to eat more.

So we have already presented one of the incentives of winter fishing: The possibility of getting a larger catch.

Low temperatures do not only affect the carp!

Fishermen also suffer from them on our skin. And this is an inconvenience that will become another of the incentives of winter fishing.

Reservoirs saturated at other times of the year, where we barely had space for our rods, become lonely beaches where stillness reigns and nature makes itself present to us without being hidden by the “madding crowd” of dozens of fishermen.

A LITTLE GOOD TIME

Carp is a cold-blooded animal like a frog and carp that perceives changes in temperature much better than humans.

Your body notices it immediately and your metabolic activity increases or decreases with the change.

Thus, a few days of improvement in the weather, where the sun is present, scaring off bad weather, will greatly influence the behavior of the carp.

Of course, we do not have the same sun as in summer, and its ability to heat the water will be much lower, but those rays of sun will be able to raise the temperature of the water of a shallow beach by some degree and the carp will go to it.

This stimulus can cause the carp to pay attention to what food it can find and “sit at the table.”

The weather in winter is not of a stable harshness until spring arrives. The sun and good weather visit us from time to time and also, with some regularity.

We have obtained from the Meteorological Service a graphical table that marks the temperature variations of several years in a row, and we have verified that all of them show certain parallelism.

After bad weather there always come periods of placidity.

They more or less always fall around the same dates. So be prepared if good weather is announced, as its effects will influence the catches of your fishing session.

The anticyclone and high pressures play a favorable role in this period of the year.

And the wind? In these months or it blows ice cream or if it is hot it is little more than the temperature of the water, so it does not influence positively in the fishing.

On the contrary, cold air will move the surface of the water, cooling it and causing it to mix with the lower layers, lowering the temperature of a large portion of the reservoir. The consequences for fishing would be disastrous. In summer the wind is very good because it oxygenates the water. In winter cold water contains much more dissolved O2 than hot water, so the oxygenating effect of the wind has no influence.

Rain or snow? The rain brings us cold water that will negatively influence the activity of the fish and the snow obviously more.

The ice? That the surface of the reservoir is frozen! Well, go for the skates because what is fishing. However, in a small reservoir the ice can be present during a large part of the winter, which would prevent us from fishing in these conditions.

In a reservoir with a greater volume of water, the surface layer of ice acts as an insulator and favors a more benign temperature in lower layers of water.

So we only have the work of the sun as a determining factor to increase the activity of the carp and that they come to eat our baits.

In a small, shallow reservoir, its effect will be rapid and the water temperature may rise slightly, even if only half a degree, which will stimulate the carp.

In a small reservoir, with deep areas, the carp will look for the beaches where the action of the sun is noticeable.

CARPS IN LARGE RESERVOIRS

The greater volume of water prevents the slightest change, although if the sun is present for several days in a row it can be noticed on the beaches of the western sector where it affects all morning.

We have already said that tents are greatly influenced by temperature, which offers us another conclusion: they will usually be grouped in the areas of the reservoir that present the most benign and stable temperature.

They will form a school in one, two or three… areas of the reservoir where they are comfortable, usually at a certain depth.

So when the beach in the previous paragraph presents an optimal situation, they will all go there.

Get ready for the bites! Well, let’s not exaggerate, do not think that you are going to do doublets without stopping. You will have the tents in your fish, but now they have to feel the stimulus to feed.

However, it will be your time to get a piece. And one more conclusion: if on shallow beaches the water heats up more quickly, it will also cool down more quickly.

So when the carp notice that the temperature of the water drops on the beach, they will return to their living area, with a stable temperature and which is now more benign than the one above.

The tent is never going to present a great activity throughout the day.

On the contrary, its metabolism has slowed tremendously, and the fish will avoid any movement that wastes its energy reserve.

Only occasionally a day will it move and then feed if it finds food within its short range.

Also, he will not gorge himself but will nibble here and there. This behavior conditions the baiting of the fish.

Winter is not the time for big fattening, unless we want to go home with a 0 in our locker.

If the carp is going to test only a few boilies, one of them should be the one we have on the hook. The more bait that accompanies it, the less likely we are that the carp will choose the correct dish.

In other words: 100 boilies around in the fish, one of them on the hook, has a 1% probability of a bite.

Awesome math, huh!

Baiting should be low and concentrated around the hook.

Carp should not be forced to search a large area, but should find the bait where it smells the scent.

It is proven that in the absence of a great nutritional stimulus, the carp will sooner decide to try a small boilie than a larger one. A small bite does not cost any effort.

It happens to them like us when they put an aperitif on the table before eating: a snack here, another there and when we have realized it we have binged !!!

So now 10-14mm boilies have their place. Or even better: a PVA bag full of boilies cut into small pieces, so that they expel their additives better.

It is time for the threads, bags and nets in PVA, which will allow us an exact and effective priming, but be careful that they dissolve well in cold water, which not all do.

Let’s look in the trade for products specifically prepared for winter.

And the pellets? Unbeatable. They will create a zone of attraction around the hook and since they will dissolve, the carp will not be able to satisfy itself with them. You will only have a boilie as a main dish and a fish hook as a dessert.

The feed for cyprinids will also be a good choice for fattening, as it has a great capacity to quickly attract carp.

It is better to bait when we observe that the carp are feeding in our fishing position.

We can take a few boilies after a bite, never more than 10 (that is to say) because we have already explained that it is not convenient to saturate.

And since we have named the boilies, indicate of course that they have to be of quality, as we have already talked about in a previous article.

The stomach of the carp now takes much longer to digest the food. If we use poor quality boilies we will make digestion difficult and possibly end up feeling bad for the fish.

But should we consider something else in the boilies?

Yes. We must take into account the aromatic aspect, because in cold water the aroma does not diffuse as well as in hot water.

So we will be interested in boilies with a strong aroma and with good porosity to expel it.

In the trade we can find boilies whose main ingredient is “bird food” that meet these requirements wonderfully.

If we are one of those who make our own boilies, the time has come to add, in addition to bird-food, also wheat semolina and soy flour, and let’s not forget the aroma overdose!

Now we have come to the topic of soaks (boosters, dips, trempage liquids, …).

Although this bait treatment will be covered in depth in a future article, we are going to give you a few lines now to clarify its role in winter.

Soaking is a liquid in which we submerge the boilie before launching it
We can leave the boilie soaking for a little while, a couple of hours or whole days, depending on the product we use.

Is it convenient to use these soaks in winter?

The answer is yes, because in this way we will achieve a greater aromatic attraction on the bait, a very important factor in these months, as we have already discussed previously.

But there are soaks and soaks. Those made with an oil base are not as advisable as those with an alcoholic base, because the oil would waterproof our boilies and would not let their aroma escape to the outside. Instead, the alcohol is diluted in the cold water and will be a vehicle for transporting the boilie attractants.

The carp looks for natural food.

The carp will seek more than ever the areas of the reservoir with abundant natural food.

Why? Well, we know that it lives at idle speed, without making vain efforts, only feeding itself for a few minutes a day.

It seems clear that if you spend the winter in a sector rich in natural food, you will have little to travel and, therefore, the greater the energy savings.

But where is this natural diet going to be found?

In two places: in the riparian vegetation and precisely in the areas of the reservoir where, like carp, plants and animals (crustaceans, mollusks, etc.) have found the most benign and stable temperature (that is, the same area of ​​”living” that we talked about before)

The carp will remain in these places until it notices a rise in temperature in another area that attracts it.

But you will always have these living and eating areas well present to return to.

This leads us to one more conclusion: we will fish in winter in those reservoirs that we know enough about, of which we know for sure the areas frequented by carp.

Unknown reservoir is throwing the time out the window.

It is essential that our assemblies are fishing 100%.

If on top of that the carp will only give us one chance, we miss it because the bait is incorrectly placed or defective, turn off and let’s go.

We should renew the baits more frequently than usual, to present a fresh and attractive bait at all times.

In this way, we also delimit the possibilities that the assembly is placed incorrectly in the background, as it will act for shorter periods of time.

We can also test more fishnets, since we are going to launch many more times. Perhaps one of them will put a tasty and fresh bait within a foot of the mouth of a future catch.

Is there a difference between the assemblies to be used during the rest of the year and the winter one?

Be it free or semi-fixed, if you are well employed and fished for carp in the summertime, you will do so now too.

The only thing we have to take into account is the lower rhythm of the carp, which will do everything more slowly, and that also includes the bite. It will not be the same carp that in spring greedily nuzzled the bottom and is ready to quickly swallow anything that moves appetizingly.

This carp will head to the bait, take it, taste it a little, spit it, take it again and if it gets nailed it will probably not stampede, but will speculate a bit dragging the lead and trying to free itself from the hook.

We have to adapt to the circumstances:

For fishing, it may be a good option to decide on hooks of a smaller size, which strike better than the large ones and regulate the sensitivity of the alarms to the maximum, so that they warn us of the slightest movement of the bait.

Another thing to keep in mind is the possibility that the cane will freeze.

Indeed, we can get up one morning and see a layer of ice sheathing our rods and blocking the reel.

In these conditions, a dive can end in disaster, so we must avoid this situation.

For this we can spray the coil thread with special silicone, which will protect it and keep it lubricated.

The Kryston house offers the “Granite Juice” product, which is perfect for this task.

We have already finished showing you what winter fishing is like.

A fishing full of difficulties and risks, for fishermen with bomb-proof morale, with good fishing technique and with adequate physical condition.

But this is the last of the incentives, because the greater the challenge, the greater the satisfaction of the reward.