Winter Carp Fishing at Stone End Farm

Back To Stone End Farm After a great first visit myself & Kev fancied our chances back at Stone End, it never seems to fail to produce a bite or two in colder months. We targeted different areas of the lake but opted to fish the same tactics. Having fished this venue a few times before the island has always held good numbers of carp but it does offer some challenges in the way of over hanging trees, layers of jagged rocks under the surface and old snags in places. This can be difficult to over come but once you've had a few casts "Without a rig attached" and find the clear areas, a little and often feeding approach seems to work, even a recast of the Feeder can produce a few quick bites, some even resulting in takes on the drop. Spots found, a small amount of the 8.5mm Tutti or 6mm Carp Pellets fed over the top and you're ready to present your tactic.

Both myself and Kev have had some fantastic results using Pellet feeders last year, we used a lot of the Drennan ones but wanting to be a bit more stealthy and cause less disturbance whilst offering less bait with each cast I changed over to the Matrix ones, a smaller model but still provides more than adequate amount of bait for that all important bite. Kev likes to fish 2.3mm Carp Pellets with some Tutti Booster liquid applied after the soak for that added attraction & flavour but I prefer the Tutti Expander both on the day produce very well. I guess this takes us on to our chosen hookbaits - We have both fished the Boosted Pellets for many years but when the fishing becomes slow and fish a bit more lethargic a light wafter hookbait can get a few extra bites - not to mention are a bit more high vis and when soaked in Betalin have great pulling power.

That covers the bait, tactics and approach for the day and as you can see by our pics we caught a few - we did encounter a few slow spells but both managed over 30 carp each to low doubles so well worth a visit if you're looking for that commercial winter bite, Kev did try the pole but with very cold temperatures, shallow margins the fish just didn't more in so 95% of all takes came to the island or just off. 

Tight lines

Steve