Bigger The Hooks, Bigger The Fish.
As a beginner you may be under the assumption that you need to use bigger hooks to catch bigger fish which in some cases is very true, obviously big hooks have their time and place but for this post I’m going share my experience from over the weekend in Febuary when I was fishing at one of my local lakes using small hooks, small hook baits and small amounts of bait while feeder fishing.
What Size Hook To Use ?
This is a question I normally ask myself before and during my fishing sessions, if you have read any of the earlier post’s here at Lake Amenity you may remember me mentioning about hook sizes and hook lengths in regards to feeder fishing. Now you also may have noticed that I wrote about normally using size 12 and size 10 hooks as these are my general my go to hook sizes but a couple of weeks ago I went for a steady day session at one of my local commercial lakes and used size 12 hooks a medium feeder and quite a lot of bait which didn’t turn out to be the best fishing session ever.
The result of this meant I blanked all day (caught nothing), I sat for hours just waiting for a bite that never happened. Now I do realize that this could be a couple of external things causing me to gain no action on the lake that day but it had me thinking about my set up and how I could change things to succeed in catching throughout the winter. This is when I ditched the size 12 hook and went for a size 16 instead.
Size 16 Hook
On my return I decided to change things up by using a smaller hook this been a size 16 barbless, I never really use hooks this small because I have always stuck to larger hooks as I’ve had some really good sessions using them on many occasions but after a few blank sessions I opted to give something else a try.
Having a larger hook when the fish are not feeding quite as frequently and aggressively could turn out to be somewhat of a deterrent as they might be more likely to notice the hook or feel the hook when feeding, it sort of make sense as if you can imagine the fish taking more time to feed in a less aggressive manner if they was going to get spooked by a potential hook and bait then that would be the time that this may occur leading to fewer fish in the net. This may seem like an unlikely scenario to some but fishing is all about percentages and giving yourself the best chance of catching no matter how insignificant it may seem it’s still worth thinking about and considering change.
On this Occasion I changed to the following setup, a 24g small Guru feeder, 4 inches banded hook length with a 16 hook, 2mm pellet on the feeder and a 6mm pellet as a hook bait. Now I had recently spoke with someone about winter fishing as it’s always been harder to catch for myself and most people if I’m honest as a pose to any other season especially when you are fishing for Let’s say Carp as a lot of the places I like to fish are locations where Carp are the most sought after.
After speaking with an experienced match fisherman and realizing that fishing the way I had been fishing in the late spring, summer and Autumn was not the optimal way for catching me many fish I then moved on from my original set up to the one mentioned above, this resulted in me catching around 12 Carp between 4 to 13lbs on my latest day session.
Winter Fishing/More Bites
As I previously discussed winter has never really been my best time to catch but now I’ve had time to reflect on the results from my last outing. Here I had the smallest setup that I’ve not used in a long time and netted myself one Carp after the other on a chilly winters day. I am pretty confident that the change in hook size and bait amount made all the difference as I did resort back to default when i initially turned up at the lake with a size 10 hook, large feeder and loads of bait thrown out to the area where I was fishing and not even a single bite, after around an hour and a half of waiting I de rigged and put two rods on the smaller terminal tackle. After doing so it only took around 20 minutes before the first signs of a bite emerged, then before long it was pretty consistent on each rod throughout the rest of the day.
How Much Bait To Use
because It’s winter the fish are not feeding like they would in warmer seasons I decided against loads of bait and tried a more subtle approach, a small 24g feeder did the trick, this was the smallest I could find at the time and doesn’t hold much more than a thumb nail size worth of bait but never the less it did the job. I only used the bait that was on the feeder itself and stopped throwing bait out as much and by doing this it ultimately helped because now I wasn’t allowing the fish to fill up on surrounding baits too much and giving them only small amounts to focus on which had my hook bait trap waiting within.
I used matching baits for both my hook bait and feeder pellet shown in the picture above, if you can not get access to this exact brand then I would just opt for something similar but this specific brand worked wonders for me, but the main point here is that if you are one to just use crazy amounts of bait regardless then it may be worth trying the less bait approach and a smaller rig if you are not catching as more is not always better.
While I was on the lake I noticed quite a few people fishing with really heavy tackle, big hooks, big baits, now their is always a time and a place for heavier tackle depending on the venue’s and specific type of fishing and so on but for this occasion I didn’t see the need, size 6 hooks were been used and spod after spod of bait was used in hope to catch but this showed to be insufficient on the day, I simply used the smallest set up that I had available to me and caught the most and the biggest fish on the lake that day, so the moral of the story is, bigger hooks and more bait does not necessarily mean more fish and bigger fish.
If you can imagine a Carp in the winter slowly moving around the lake just grazing slightly and it comes up to huge amounts of bait it’s only going to feed on so much of that bait you have out and then maybe move on missing your Feeder/Rig completely, meaning you may have missed out on a potential catch. If you give the fish less option then this may give you a higher possibility of catching, this is exactly what I did and I believe this played a massive part in my success on my last day session.
Next Fishing Session.
The main aim with this post has been to give you insight on how a simple change in my approach on the day changed the whole trajectory of the session, when your out their fishing and wondering why things are not quite going your way try to look at what you could be doing different and don’t be hesitant to try new things or try a new approach as I did, sometimes even the most simple and more obvious methods work the best so there is never any harm done by trying something different or basic for that matter like using smaller hooks and less bait.
In the winter months try to use baits that are less dense with high carbs and other filling ingredients that may satiate the fish too much, using lighter baits will give the fish more of a snack than a full meal and seen a though they are not feeding as much in winter time and as frequently you will want to keep them on the feed for as long as possible and not want them to fill up on surrounding bait as a pose to your hook bait trap you have laid out, maybe something to keep in mind for future sessions.
Conclusion
What we have spoke about here is obviously my own honest experience and some aspects may be subject to changes depending on your specific type of Angling etc, this is my take on the matter while general course fishing and for Carp but I have given you some pointers throughout which I hope will come in use for yourself when out fishing the lakes.
For more on Fishing please visit some other pages here at Lake Amenity, hopefully you may find some of them to be useful.
martin@lakeamenity.com
