One trip wonder by Official Nash Tackle

NASH KNOWHOW

One Trip Wonder

ALAN BLAIR

ONE TRIP WONDER He’s renowned for his energy, enthusiasm for carp of any size and one of his greatest skills is turning up on a new venue almost anywhere in the world and catching carp – quickly! Here’s Alan’s lowdown on making your first visit one to remember.

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NASH KNOWHOW

One Trip Wonder

TIMING IS EVERYTHING

CIRCUIT TRAINING

Think about when you arrive, that simple bit of foresight can completely change the outcome of a trip. In the summer I want to arrive 3.30am or in the winter 6.30 to 7am. It gives me the best opportunity of seeing fish when the light levels are changing and the lake is waking up. You can’t guarantee you will see carp every time but put yourself in with the best chance and nine times out of ten that morning period is a golden time for location pointers. Turning up at midday or even midnight to the early hours just doesn’t help you as much.

In any form of fishing, invest as much time as possible into tracking down where the fish are on that given day. Last week the fish were here – not useful unless there’s nothing else to go on. The first hour or two would be invested into looking around. It’s far easier in the summer, those morning and evening windows when carp will be showing somewhere at some point. It might be coloured water, bubbling, crashing, cruising around and they are the cliché giveaway signs. Angling pressure might give some clues – but you need to be cautious, if everyone is down one end it might be because the fish are all down there, but the fish might also have been pushed away from the pressure. I’m not scared to politely have a chat with

In the colder months try arriving at the other end of the day towards dusk. Even carp that have done nothing all day in miserable conditions will often show in the last hour of the day.

someone and ask some questions to see how they are getting on. Sometimes you get that golden answer… “I’ve not had any but they’ve been jumping over there all day…”I had lots of great sessions and great results in Swim 18. One time I had six carp over 60lb in one trip and a couple of times I had more than ten 50-pounders in one stint. My last visit was December 2015 and once again it didn’t disappoint, I managed a small common on Christmas Day and a much larger one of 69lb 4oz on the 29th.

“I’ve not had any but they’ve been jumping over there all day…”

Of course the swim has changed a bit over the years, the pressure on those same spots has been immense and those spots have changed too with some trees just rotting away and new ones falling in but the memories of those action-packed trips will stay with me forever.

QUESTION AND ANSWER Any prior knowledge you can collect about a venue before you visit can only help. I don’t use social media properly but it’s never been easier to put a few questions out there or private message someone and get the lowdown on a venue. Generally if you are polite and are prepared to help other people they will repay the goodwill. I still prefer to get in touch with a local tackle shop, ask if they know anything about a venue or even if they can put me in touch with someone who could help. I find the best shops are the most helpful, no surprise… Then there are fishery websites, Instagram feeds, catch reports – loads of avenues for information gathering. I want to try and get key information like the stock, basic layout, deeps and shallows, good areas, substrate, anything to help build a picture. Beware preconceived ideas like the best swim or the going method, just look to collect jigsaw pieces. As an example if a lake covers ten acres and eight of them are really shallow and two acres are significantly deeper, to immediately know that can save you a lot of time and eliminate a lot of searching. Google Maps and Google Earth is another good source of information, my mind is quite photogenic so I like images for inspiration, I want to be excited to be going there. Anything you can do so you aren’t going in blind!

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NASH KNOWHOW

One Trip Wonder

WALKING INTO IT I’ve caught a lot of bonus fish by following one rule in the warmer months – don’t walk around without taking a rod with you. I take a Sawn-Off, net and mat, plus the basics in my pockets or in the Sawn-Off Utility Skin clipped around me as a belt. There’s no point lapping the lake only to stumble across six carp milling around and then by the time you come back with a rod they have moved on or someone else has seen them. I’ll be looking for one chance as I’m walking around a lake. Take care where you leave any other tackle, but on any fishery where it is safe the gear stays in the van and I’ll be off looking with a rod in my hand just in case.

BARROW BASE CAMP Even when I pick a swim to cast out, I won’t set up camp because experience says I’ll often need to move again. I had the classic example last week, saw a fish show, set up and put the rods on the deck. Then I saw three more show quickly in a different corner, so even though I’d found them in one area, there were better chances elsewhere. The first opportunity isn’t always the best. Don’t put the brolly up or get the bed out. The rods can be out but the gear stays firmly on the barrow. If you’ve never been before you don’t know what to expect, seeing one fish could be really important, on other waters you might see a dozen if you’re in the best place. If you’re one of those carpers who spends two hours setting up camp before the rods even come out of the skins – really…? Get fishing without building a camp and unpacking everything

FIRST CHUCK CHODDIES

HELPING HANDFUL

Of course, you can’t walk around for hours and hours, there comes a point when you have to commit to a swim.

If you’re lucky enough to get on fish the big question is always whether to put feed in over the rigs or just fish singles?

I have always got a pair of rods set up with choddies on them, so I can rock up and get baits out and from the off be fishing confidently, even if I don’t know anything about the swim, lake bed or depth. Over the years it’s caught me so many extra fish, no doubt about it.

Time of the year and temperature and numbers of carp are key factors but if I’m going to cast a choddy at showing fish I struggle to fish a single. I want to put 6, 12, maybe 20 free baits out over the top, it’s a confidence thing. I believe that as soon as a carp feeds and as soon as just one free offering is taken there’s a stronger chance they will pick up the hookbait. By the time two or three are eaten there’s a great chance you’re getting a pick up. If they approach a single bait and it looks wrong that’s the chance ruined. I’d rather the action took half an hour not two minutes and let carp feed. I wouldn’t just put a single surface bait out with a controller and just wait and watch. You don’t do that you build it up and get them feeding, and I’m using the same philosophy on the bottom. We’re not talking about a kilo of freebies but a few free offerings just to get the party started and encourage fish to look about.

Chods might not be the best presentation for a venue in the long term but if you want to be able to cast anywhere on any venue and have a great chance of a bite they are still absolutely the number one go to rig. I can sit and tackle another rod up with something different based on what I see or what the depth is or the bottom feels like, but I’m not wasting time, I’m fishing effectively whilst I’m doing that and tweaking my approach for subsequent casts. Always take a couple of chod rods!

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NASH KNOWHOW

One Trip Wonder

FEELING YOUR WAY IN Always carry a fourth rod just with a bare lead on braided line. It allows you to make a few subtle casts to understand a bit better what is out there. I’m not talking about using a marker or feature finding, I’m talking about there’s a nice snag bush over there so I just want to land a lead close to it and check the bottom is clean. Unless I’m fishing zigs and need the depth exactly, measuring depth is irrelevant, I get all the information I need from how long it takes the lead to land after hitting the surface and skipping it back along the bottom.

ALAN’S GO ANYWHERE BAIT BOX What I won’t do is go to any new venue without alternative baits – here’s the hitlist:

A marker float stays in the bag, almost permanently. If I had three days I might consider using a marker but not for an overnighter for example. Carp spook and often very easily. You will move them out of an area and you could have invested an hour and a half finding them, done the hardest part and in two minutes you’ve killed your chances and they have gone. It happens too often. People read and hear about location but then when they find carp they go about the assault the wrong way.

NO UNCERTAINTY WITH CITRUZ You’ve got to be using a bait that have confidence in and you have to have a variety of types of bait so you can take advantage of any situation that you find yourself in. I’ve used Citruz for the last two and a half years home and abroad, if for no other reason than I just can’t be dealing with the cluttered mindset of ten pots of different pop ups. The best bait might be crab, pineapple or strawberry on a venue but I find Citruz catches everywhere so I’ve stuck with it, and the fact it is so good in the winter means I can use the same bait all year round. It is a visual bait with great attractors – why would I take anything else?

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PINT OF MAGGOTS

SLICES OF BREAD

CITRUZ

Every fish eats maggots and so many times a wriggling bunch of maggots freelined in front of a fish is all you need to catch even difficult carp.

A few slices of cheap white bread are first choice if I can see what I’m fishing for. A good wedge in a Bread Bomb to float or sink slowly is deadly.

My favourite boilie and pop up, ever since I first had the test samples almost three years back. The Citruz Concentrate atomiser in the pots helps get bites on hard days.

CULTURED HOOKBAITS

RISER PELLET

HEMP

For margin fishing or gravel and clay bottoms these kick out loads of attraction, are totally different to most boilies and soft life a broken down safe boilie.

When the weather is warmer I always carry Riser Pellet. On its day is it really the most deadly carp bait ever – yup!

I love pre-cooked Hemp, it’s oily, gets carp grubbing hard and holds them for long periods. I also often have a handful of crushed or grilled hemp to add to bags, stick mixes or slops.

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NASH KNOWHOW

One Trip Wonder

LET THERE BE LIGHT If I’m arriving in the dark I always have a high power lamp. So few people use them but I wouldn’t be without mine. As long as I’m not disturbing other anglers they allow me to identify where carp are as long as there is some clarity to the water. Carp aren’t scared of light in my experience, and I was watching barbel under the lamp recently and they weren’t at all concerned either. Just before Christmas I lamped two miles of a canal and found no carp, drove to another stretch and also found no carp. By the early hours I was on a large low stock reservoir, lamped the margins and immediately found a group of fish. Back to the van, I dropped a Cultured Hookbait in place and caught a lovely old carp the following morning. Without the lamp there’s no way I would have caught that carp.

LIFE CHANGING Keep your finger on the pulse - Next Generation Bite Indication

ALL OVER FAMILIAR Always stick to what you know and approach a venue for the first time safe in the knowledge that everything is proven and will do exactly the job you need it to and catch carp. Hooks, links, line, end tackle, presentation - everything. If you want to experiment, make time to do that on waters where you are there to specifically do that. If you’re there to catch, use what you know works.

RISE AND SHINE Hate that feeling when you wake up and the indicators haven’t moved? The mistake is to lie in your bed and brood over it. I hate blank nights but the first thing I will do is get up, pack my gear away I don’t need and be ready to move. Instead of counting the time down to having to leave I treat the new day as the start of another great period of chances to catch carp, and just like arriving at dawn to see carp and make sure you get on them, follow the same principle when you wake up after fishing the night. Find them and fish for them – because if you’ve blanked they aren’t in front of you are they? Get your alarm clock set to get up for half an hour before dawn!

THE SIREN R3’S line speed sensing system eliminates false indications from wind, weed and even flowing water. Yet the moment a hooklength is tightened, a lead is moved or the bobbin lifts from a line bite the R3 tells you what you need to hear. It’s next generation indication.

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