TIMING HOW LONG A BAIT HAS BEEN OUT FOR METHODICALLY

You can read all the articles you want and watch all the YouTube films you want but none of them can teach you how frequently you should re-cast as every situation and each water is unique, that’s a fact. Of course you can have a decent idea about productive times on your chosen water and make a call on whether to chance a recast or not.

Many anglers prefer to leave the rigs in position at first light as it’s a good time and they fear a re-cast would spook any feeding carp. I would suggest, however it is easy to slip into this type of pattern sometimes with not so much evidence that these types of things are the best option.

I decided a long time ago that guess work, no matter how experienced I am, is not acceptable. After a lot of thought I determined to do something to reduce any guess work to a bare minimum.

I decided scientific tests were required to work out once and for all if going on gut feeling and experience really was the best choice.

So I decided to time how long I would leave between recasts using alarm clocks (mobile phone countdown timers are great for this) and have a more methodical and scientific approach and perhaps learn more from conducting real live tests.

That one Eureka moment was going to be inspired let me tell you. From my extensive use of high attract bright single hook baits I knew only too well that bites on a freshly cast bait could often come really quickly, especially if you had got your location right and fish were in evidence in the swim upon arrival.

Sometimes the luxury of finding the fish was not an option as the lakes would quite often be very busy so it was quite often a case of “beggars can’t be choosers” and I would have to just take any swim available.

So lets assume you got a swim with no fish in the area or at least suspected the swim might well be devoid of fish do you bait up and wait on every rod or try something different on every rod?

Well what I tried was using something I knew would work on every rod but put the emphasis on when to re cast, so what I did was to use cheap pound shop alarm clocks which is sat under each rod, if I was using 3 rods I would set one alarm to go off every 20minutes, the next every hour and the 3rd every 4 hours, when each alarm went off

I would re-cast that particular rod and re set the alarm, same thing on each rod, keeping notes all the time of action and captures.

Using either solid PVA bags or mesh type bags or even methods on all 3 rods rod during timing experiments the sole aim was to see which rod would perform the best as only by doing these type of comparisons can you see if a pattern emerges so learning if it’s better to be actively recasting much more than normal for example every 20 minutes to an hour or the more conventional 4 hours plus.

To my surprise the 20 minute rod more often than not made the rods cast less often look stupid, totally out fishing them. It was rare to see the opposite result, the only time the 20 minute rod did nothing was when all 3 rods did nothing usually signifying I had no fish in the swim or certainly nothing feeding in the swim.

The one water in particular where this rule of thumb became more obvious was Cuttle Mill near Birmingham. I would fish this water on purpose mainly in the colder months as it had a very decent head of carp in a moderately sized water that kept on feeding throughout winter. This was because it was quite shallow and busy with anglers so had plenty of bait going in to keep the fish interested.

What I quickly noticed on this water was you might get a number of liner type hits on the indicator soon after casting and many people would sit back and patiently wait for something to develop, more often than not it wouldn’t and an hour or two might easily pass before the decision was made to recast. One day I also noticed that newcomers to the lake tended to cast far less than regulars.

What I did by timing recasts was to establish fairly quickly that a bait without a bag or method had a peak active time and that was usually the first 10 to 15 minutes, more so with a bag of any kind.

If you had indicator activity that failed to developed into a run you quite simply had been ****ed over for want of a better term, and it was as though from that point on the hook bait had been marked or singled out as a problem or best avoided.

The

unique Delkim alarm vibration technology and tension indicators ensure Frank registers even the slightest movement

More often than not the old notion of leave it in place nice and undisturbed would result in the time ebbing away culminating in a blank on that rod. It was almost like a rat triggering a trap and rendering it useless. I think this is happening constantly on busy pressured waters but as I have found it happens on virtually every single water no matter how big or small or the stock levels.

So by timing the rods and experimenting on various waters I fish I can start getting a very clear picture of the best frequency to recast. Amazingly most waters are mostly what I call 20 minute waters some are even less. Some of you will no doubt disagree and that’s fine, each to their own.

Of course there are exceptions to this where it may be better to sit on your hands until the carp turn up but I guarantee that most anglers will be super predictable, recasting late morning after the perceived morning feeding spell and then again in the evening before dark for the night. That’s totally predictable and you are not learning much from this. When you make more regular recasts and you take notes you can choose whatever time grabs you on each rod or even try every 20 minutes against for example 8 hours and 24 hours. As I say it gets very revealing when you start finding out more.

One thing I have found is that no matter where I have started timing rods from English runs waters to massive inland seas in Europe or North America a pattern emerges that is usually very different to the normal time I would normally have recast the rods.