Boilie fishing was all the rage around the turn of the millennium, now is the time for it to make a comeback!
Boilie fishing was all the rage around the turn of the millennium, now is the time for it to make a comeback!
If you rewound the clocks back 20 or so years and took one of those virtual 360 tours you see on many a holiday home website, around any given carp fishing venue, anglers using straight boilies would far outweigh other methods. As time has moved on, it seems the once fashionable, humble boilie, is being used as one of a number of different ingredients in a bait mix. Now, I am not for one second suggesting a typical spod mix isn’t going to catch you fish, of course it will! However, as captures throughout time have shown, straight boilie fishing can be super effective, and it could be the key to unlocking the code on your venue.
It goes without saying, boilie fishing is as simple as it gets, and comes with as little faff as possible. Unless you make your own bait, there’s nothing to cook and prepare, you can simply grab your bag of ready-mades and hit the road. Of course, you can add liquids and any number of powders to your boilies if you wish to give them added attraction.
LIQUIDS
When adding liquids to your boilies, always bear in mind the consistency of the liquid. If it is too thick, then it simply won’t soak into them, and will just cause the baits to stick together and make them a nightmare to get out into the pond. Pure Calanus Liquid is the perfect happy medium, it soaks into your baits perfectly and leaves the outside only slightly tacky. If you wanted to take the attraction a little further, you can either add your own powdered ingredients or use something like the Krill or Manilla Active instead.
LIQUIDS
When adding liquids to your boilies, always bear in mind the consistency of the liquid. If it is too thick, then it simply won’t soak into them, and will just cause the baits to stick together and make them a nightmare to get out into the pond. Pure Calanus Liquid is the perfect happy medium, it soaks into your baits perfectly and leaves the outside only slightly tacky. If you wanted to take the attraction a little further, you can either add your own powdered ingredients or use something like the Krill or Manilla Active instead.
One of the biggest appeals of boilie fishing is the ease of their application, you are most certainly not chained to the spod rod like you are with particles. Catapults make perfect short-range choices, while throwing sticks cope with spots further out. Unfortunately, bird life can ruin your baiting with these devices so you may have to use a spod to get your bait out during daylight. If you wait until dark though, you should have no problems using a stick or catapult.
I am going to hold my hands up here and say I don’t use much in the way of liquids or powders with my boilies. I use them straight out of the packet, standard Krill is my normal choice, however if there’s not many small fish in the lake then I would certainly use the Krill Active instead. My reasoning behind this is pretty simple, Krill Active is almost too good on some lakes! It seems to attract absolutely everything to the party, and if there’s a head of stockies in the lake then it could see you overrun with them in no time. Unless there’s few small fish in the water, I always go for good old, standard Krill.
“Throughout the warmer months,
boilie fishing is my go to method”
“Throughout the warmer months, boilie fishing is my go to method”
BOILIE SIZE
When it comes to the size of baits I use, I tend to use large baits through the warmer months, very rarely do I use anything smaller than 20mm! During the winter, I rarely use the boilie only approach, as I find the smaller baits come into their own then. The reason for using a large bait is, well, why not? A 20mm bait is far less likely to be taken by a bream or tench, and often brings me the larger carp as well. This is even further exaggerated by my preferred rig for boilie fishing. So many anglers now seem to lean towards middle of the road sizes, like 16mm, so going bigger could be a very subtle change to your boilie fishing which will stand out in comparison to other anglers’ approaches. Whether the larger baits pick out the bigger of the stock, I’m not sure, but in my experience, the smaller baits such as pellets tend to always attract the smaller stocked fish as they’ve usually been reared on them.
BOILIE SIZE
When it comes to the size of baits I use, I tend to use large baits through the warmer months, very rarely do I use anything smaller than 20mm! During the winter, I rarely use the boilie only approach, as I find the smaller baits come into their own then. The reason for using a large bait is, well, why not? A 20mm bait is far less likely to be taken by a bream or tench, and often brings me the larger carp as well. This is even further exaggerated by my preferred rig for boilie fishing. So many anglers now seem to lean towards middle of the road sizes, like 16mm, so going bigger could be a very subtle change to your boilie fishing which will stand out in comparison to other anglers’ approaches. Whether the larger baits pick out the bigger of the stock, I’m not sure, but in my experience, the smaller baits such as pellets tend to always attract the smaller stocked fish as they’ve usually been reared on them.
Most of the time when I see boilie fishing written about in magazines and such like, the angler will be using some form of pop-up over the top of his bait. This is all well and good if you are fishing in weed, but for me I will always try and fish a clear area. As such I think you can’t beat a simple bottom bait, on a rig I like to call the Basic-Complicated. On the face of it, there’s nothing to the rig at all. Just an out-turned eye hook, knotless knotted to a piece of fluorocarbon. I also like to pull the hair out at an angle to make the hook sit aggressively. In theory, the rig is basic to tie, yet in practise, it is complicated for the carp to deal with, especially the big ones. The combination of the stiff hooklink and aggressive hook angle help catch the carp out, specifically when they are eating boilies, and the key is how you feed them. You want the carp to move around, picking off the boilies over an area. You don’t want to concentrate them to a specific spot.
As I mentioned before, boilies are the easiest bait to introduce to your swim, but the key part to this is to bait a good-sized area. Rather than aiming to land a spod on a dinner plate, I spread my boilies around. Something like a five-yard square is a great starting point, but feel free to try something a little larger, especially if you are using multiple rods on the same spot. This makes the carp move between mouthfuls, and a moving carp is incredibly susceptible to making a mistake! It’s the same when using it in a stalking situation, the larger boilies tend to be picked off one by one, whereas if your’re using a smaller pellet mix, they can become pre-occupied on it and avoid your hookbaits. Match the hookbait to the feed, and the carp won’t know any different!
Most of the time when I see boilie fishing written about in magazines and such like, the angler will be using some form of pop-up over the top of his bait. This is all well and good if you are fishing in weed, but for me I will always try and fish a clear area. As such I think you can’t beat a simple bottom bait, on a rig I like to call the Basic-Complicated. On the face of it, there’s nothing to the rig at all. Just an out-turned eye hook, knotless knotted to a piece of fluorocarbon. I also like to pull the hair out at an angle to make the hook sit aggressively. In theory, the rig is basic to tie, yet in practise, it is complicated for the carp to deal with, especially the big ones. The combination of the stiff hooklink and aggressive hook angle help catch the carp out, specifically when they are eating boilies, and the key is how you feed them. You want the carp to move around, picking off the boilies over an area. You don’t want to concentrate them to a specific spot.
As I mentioned before, boilies are the easiest bait to introduce to your swim, but the key part to this is to bait a good-sized area. Rather than aiming to land a spod on a dinner plate, I spread my boilies around. Something like a five-yard square is a great starting point, but feel free to try something a little larger, especially if you are using multiple rods on the same spot. This makes the carp move between mouthfuls, and a moving carp is incredibly susceptible to making a mistake! It’s the same when using it in a stalking situation, the larger boilies tend to be picked off one by one, whereas if your’re using a smaller pellet mix, they can become pre-occupied on it and avoid your hookbaits. Match the hookbait to the feed, and the carp won’t know any different!
“Round stringers are an old school
tactic that still works wonders today”
“Round stringers are an old school
tactic that still works wonders today”
In my opinion there is no finer way to single out the larger fish in your venue than using a standard boilie approach. You might not have a photo album as bulging as other anglers, but I can assure you, your average size will far outweigh that of those using smaller baits, whilst angling using a pretty traditional method without the bells and whistles!
