Consistency in angling is incredibly important to me, and without doubt the most consistent aspect of mine has been my baiting approach. For years, I have used the same basis of thinking, involving simple ingredients that carp cannot ignore. With the bait always sorted in my head, I can concentrate on finding the perfect spot and tracking down the carp.

My mix has always revolved around the following ingredients: sweetcorn, a quality boilie, small particles and a liquid attractant. There isn’t a carp in the land that can resist the humble golden grain. From when I was a kid to present day, sweetcorn is simply one of the best baits out there. When it comes to my boilie content, I tend to suit it to the time of year. Manilla is reserved for the colder months, when it really comes into its own as the carp love hunting out the sweet, nutty morsels. When the weather warms up, The Krill is my number one choice, packed with attraction and nourishing ingredients, there’s no doubt it elevates the mix somewhat. I also like to include small particles, in the form of hemp, or sometimes just pigeon conditioner, which helps to keep the fish grubbing around for a long time, maintaining the activity in the swim. Lastly, but certainly not the least important is the liquid content. I love using Cloudy Manilla or Krill depending on what boilie I am using and the time of year. They offer heaps of attraction and create a super obvious cloud in the water column for the fish to home in on.

By using a mixture of different sized baits with the fleck of yellow it opens up a lot of hookbait options. I have always been a fan of a fluoro hookbait over my mix, as I feel it gets quicker bites, especially early on in a session. As the session progresses, you can then switch to something more match the hatch, as the fish switch on to the mix completely.

I love getting bites when I am fishing, and don’t we all love that moment? That’s why my approach is aimed at creating a competitive feeding response. Yes, you will catch small fish, but those big girls are always there somewhere, and in the end, you are always going to catch them, as proven by a recent visit to Linear Fisheries’ Oxlease Lake.

I arrived on the famous day ticket lake to find the fish milling about on the surface, and who could blame them, it was scorching! To my surprise, no one on the relatively busy lake was doing anything to try and spur the fish into feeding, they were more content with chilling out in the sun! I wasn’t having any of it and got everything ready in my usual manor. However, this time I had come armed with Krill Active, and I knew it was going to work from the off. How could something so attractive fail in these conditions!

I cast around a little bit and found a few taps of gravel, a rare commodity on Oxlease. I dispatched all three rods, followed by 8 to 10 spombs of my usual mix. With all the carp on the surface, I wasn’t even in the least bit worried about fishing on the bottom. I knew they would follow the trail down and hit the bait. And they did, hard too!

Throughout the morning, I literally struggled to keep all three rods in the water, and by lunch I had amassed eight fish. I kept topping up the bait in between, and the fish just kept coming, it was absolutely relentless! All the fish I was catching were average sized ones for the lake, upper doubles to mid-twenties but I had a feeling one of the bigger ones wasn’t far away!

Sure enough, I received another incredible double take, with camera man Tom having to take the second rod, whilst I played the first one. With the stocky on the first rod safely in the net, I took control of the other, and this was a different animal all together. After a fair old tussle, a huge-framed mirror broke the surface and in one motion, was scooped into the net. I instantly recognised it as the biggest mirror in the lake, one of the largest fish on the entire complex too!

We got all the equipment ready, and I was soon hoisting the fish on the scales, which read 46lb 8oz! A new record mirror for Linear Fisheries and the icing on the cake on what was a troubled year, that thankfully didn’t seem to alter my angling luck. I simply put this down to being consistent, as there’s no doubt in my mind that’s what lead me to this capture.