We are now into the hardest spell of the year in terms of catching carp, with the weather mild one minute and then temperatures dipping well below freezing the next.

Most of my limited fishing time at the moment is taken up with a teams series at the Makins complex near Hinckley in Leicestershire. It is a series where anglers are allocated certain pools and this winter I have been concentrating on Phase Three, which means fishing the pole across to islands and down the track.

What anglers need to try to understand is the reasons why catching carp is so difficult - and this is at the root of how I go about preparing my bait.

When the water is cold - and I mean less than 7 degrees Celsius, carp find it very hard to feed. Their instinct and survival mechanism tells them that they want to, but physically they find it very difficult as their metabolism is almost in a state of shut-down. That is why so many are hooked near to the mouth as well as inside the lips at this time of year.

Understanding this, what I try to do is use a bait which is very smelly and very soft. And the number one choice for me, virtually every time I go out in January, February and into March, is a very soft expander for the hook.

The ones that I use are the 4mm Sonu Expanders. I don’t prepare them the night before the match. I pump them, using water from the lake, on the morning of the match, and I will pump a couple more batches during the match because they do start to go too soft and break down and there is not an expander available in the shops that will last five hours in a fishable state once pumped.

The softer the pellet you can fish with, the better, in my book. I know some anglers use gelatine but when the water is as cold as it is in the early months of the year, that gelatine is affected by the temperature. Consequently, the pellet goes harder and in my opinion this makes the bait less attractive to the fish.

When I have pumped my expanders - I normally only pump around 50 at a time - I always keep them submerged in a little water, I never leave them exposed to the air.

Feed-wise, I will wet some 2mm Fin Perfect micro pellets, and these will be introduced, only very occasionally, via a small Prestons Cad pot. In winter it is best to feed next to nothing and I will normally only feed around 20 to 30 micros at a time. It’s a case of putting some scent through the water to try to trigger a response.

You need to be patient and keep the rig in the water as much as possible when it is hard. One tip is to use a float with a capacity that allows you to have only two shot down the line, at mid-depth. For example, I use a PB14 and in the 4 x 12 size I know that two No.8 Preston Stotz cock the float perfectly, because the float has a round, pear-shaped profile and a wire stem, those two shot, at mid-depth, act almost like a keel, along with the float’s stem, meaning the float is extremely stable and this means my presentation is good enough to fool a carp now and then.

And one final thing. Don’t think that because it has been minus three or four overnight that carp won’t, at some point in the day, have a little feed. On my most recent match at Makins we had to break an inch of ice and I still caught 30lb of carp, fishing the way I have just described, with Sonu 4mm expanders on the hook doing the damage.

Before signing off, just a word about my rigs. In winter I fish 0.13 Preston Powerline direct and my favourite hook for pellet or corn in winter on the pole is the Preston PR24. This is a very light hook but it is razor sharp and strong. Elastic-wise I use Preston Hollo 13H or 11H. Yes, you can fish with a lighter grade of elastic but when fish average 2-3lb, on lighter elastic they might find snags and shed the hook. Better to be safe than sorry is my motto.

I like to keep everything simple in my fishing, so I will set up only two or three rigs and I will plumb to find the same depth in several spots and then I can feed micro pellets in some and feed nothing in others. This way it is easy to keep an idea as to what the fish are doing in your peg. Generally in deepest winter, I find that the last couple of hours of a match, between 2o’clock and 4 o’clock are the best. Yes, you will usually catch one or two mug fish early on. These will be the fish that are naturally in front of you,  but then you need to be focused and determined  about your fishing. If you have a few carp in front of you and you can trigger them into a small feeding spell, who knows?  It might just be your day.

Tight Lines

Andy