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- Fish With Natural Baits. While some anglers still produce fantastic results during their winter carp angling, others are left scratching their heads about what they were doing wrong.
- Fish With Singles. While fishing with a single hookbait is a devastating tactic during the winter months, it shouldn’t be ignored at other times of the year, either.
- Enhance Your Hookbaits. Following on from the above, enhancing a single hookbait can really give you an edge. There are an abundance of hookbait enhancements available nowadays, including glugs, liquids and bait sprays to name a few.
- Enhance Your Boilies. Whenever the best baits for carp fishing gets discussed, the humble boilie will often be at the top of the list. I would bet my last pound that 99% of carp anglers have used boilies at least once in their fishing.
- Use smaller baits. As a general rule size down on the tackle and baits – especially the free offerings. There’s no need in winter to spod out a load of bait, try smaller baits – boilies of 10mm and 12mm work well even for the bigger carp.
- Find the rubbing spots! Every lake will have spots that the carp like to rub themselves against. These can be very hard to find – have a look at my Youtube video below where I show you a spot I’ve found underwater that has all the trademarks of a rubbing spot!
- Glug, Glug and more Glug. I’ve mentioned this a couple of times already but a top tip is to make sure you keep glugging your baits on every cast and mix the flavours up.
- Watch the water. It’s tempting to download the latest game of thrones and just watch that on your tablet while fishing but watching the water can have good long term results.
- BAIT. Choose a bait with a winter track record. Lots of bait companies have a dedicated boilie designed for winter use. Looking at a few bait companies’ web sites or a trawl through social media will give you an idea of which baits are doing the business during the winter.
- BAIT – DON’T DO IT! This may seem at odds with what I’ve just said about choosing the right boilie, but bear with me – I will explain. Carp will feed less when it’s cold.
- STAY MOBILE. Once you have found their winter haunts you may be able to settle down a bit but until then, I’m afraid, it’s the mobile approach all the way.
- DEEP WATER. I know a lot of advice given tells you to head for the shallows when it is sunny but that has not been my experience at all, especially during early winter.
- Stay on The Lookout
- Downsize Lakes
- Scents and Additives
- Baiting Up
- Wrap-Up
- Maggots
- Zigs
- Staying Mobile
We always express how important a good observation of the lake your fishing is, well it is even more so important when carp fishing in the winter. Unlike the summer, carp won’t breach the surface or show themselves much in shallow water which makes finding them very, very difficult. This means you have to keep a sharp eye on the lake when you walk ...
Fishing a big lake in the winter, where the carp are widely spread is nearly impossible. There is far too much area to cover and you’ll rarely be able to spot any signs of fish, forget catch any. This is why we prefer to stick to smaller specimen lakes in the winter which are well stocked with carp. Essentially fishing a small, heavily stocked lake...
It’s a well-known fact that carp significantly decrease feeding in the winter, so in order to make them have a go at your hook-bait, you have to give them a little extra incentive. If you’d like to learn more about what happens to carp in the winter carp and they’re feeding patterns, you can check out our article: Do carp stop feeding in the winter...
We’ve always been strong believers in baiting up little and often regardless of what season it is, think of it like this, you can always add more bait into the lake but you can’t take any out. Throwing a bucket of bait into your swim may work sometimes however in the winter, the carp decrease feeding substantially and a tactic that may have worked ...
If you’re thinking on going on your first winter session, be sure to put on plenty of layers and stay warm when your fishing. In these situations its very easy to quit and give-up because of the cold and the fact bites are far and few. Keeping yourself warm and well looked after really changes your mindset when your sitting on the bank for hours on...
Maggots are arguably the best winter carp fishing bait out there. The pellets and oils which brought in a ton of fish in the summer are now not as effective. In the winter months we resort to other baits, maggots being our current favourite. We love incorporating them into ground bait and using them as a hook-bait. However, we would recommend that ...
Zigs are our ‘go-to bait’ when we’re not catching pretty much any time of the year. However, we have recently noticed them to really successful when used in the winter. Sometimes bottom baits just won’t work and the carp aren’t interested, in cases like this we reel in our rigs and switch out our bottom baits for some zigs, it’s amazing what a smal...
As we mentioned before, there is no point in the winter, to sit behind rods and wait for the carp to come to you. You have to be alert and stay on the lookout, we generally like to fish one spot an hour to two at a time and if we’ve had no bites, we take another quick look at the lake and move swims again. There is no point fishing an area of a lak...
Dec 5, 2016 · Short zigs can work really well when winter carp fishing just a 2-foot zig sometimes is all you need as the fish can just be sat in the lower layers but off the bottom. Try different colours again even more bright than dark. If you can try using an adjustable zig and alter the depths every couple of hours.
Jul 5, 2023 · Conclusion – Top 5 Best Winter Carp Rigs. Catching carp in winter is much harder than any other time of the year. Carp behave differently and as a result you should adjust your tactics and carp rigs accordingly. The five carp rigs we’ve covered are tried and tested in the colder months by some of the UK’s best anglers.
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2.Don’t Go Too Deep. Carp usually feed all over the water column, but they tend to stay near the surface during the winter. That’s unusual compared to bass, bluegill, and other freshwater fish. If you want to catch a lot of carp during the winter months, you’ll want to use floating rigs and good bait.
