As the temperatures warm and the carp really turn on the feed, usually after spawning, this is when I turn to an all-out boilie attack on ‘Church. It’s no secret that the carp love The Krill in there, and with access to the unreleased Krill Active at the time, it was an edge which would certainly put me in good stead moving forward into the season. Generally, after spawning, the fish are well up for the bait, so I’ll tend to fish a match the hatch pop-up on my go-to Ronnie rig. I’ll still be targeting the gravel at this stage, focusing all my attention on the clean areas. For me, I’ll not touch the silt or clay-like areas until autumn is approaching. Silt in early summer when the temperatures are on the rise can be really, really rank! This year, Christchurch, went through a really bad spell where a lot of the silt was rotting and it had that recognisable, eggy smell and certainly put me off going anywhere near it. That smell you get from rotting silt is a sign of oxygen depletion, if it’s devoid of oxygen, not even the naturals are going to be present in it, hence why I’d avoid it at all costs. This only spurred me on to targeting the raised, gravel areas. When late summer approaches and the angling pressure is at an all-time high, something which worked wonders for me was resting the swim. Bite time was during the day, so I’d opt to not fish the nights to give the fish room to move in and find areas of sanctuary. I moved the rig a little bit further away from the bait, like on the fringes of spot to make it less obvious. By summertime the carp have been under immense pressure, so when it comes to looking for little edges to keep ahead of the game, this was one key part that I changed.

In autumn, I spread my bait a little further by using a smaller Spomb, in the hope of keeping the carp moving and not really looking at what they’d probably consider as obvious and blatant. Daylight hours are on the decline, and the bite times and activity will start switching to the darker periods. This year has been a rather funny autumn, and they’ve transitioned very quickly from becoming catchable to very cautious. With that, I’ve found myself switching to a mix which consists of much smaller food items but with lots of attraction. The spots that I’d be looking to target are those glassy like silt spots. The smaller food items would not only provide lots of tiny food particles and pulsating signals in the silt but would be far less blatant than a big bed of boilies.