Guide To Surface Fishing

Arguably, one of the most exciting fishing techniques at our disposal. This technique is not straight forward and does require skill as many frustrated anglers will find when targeting the dark shadows on the lake surface that ignore the hook bait time after time.
At fishing your way, we decided to tackle this from the basics right through to the catch.

Locating the Fish

Primarily this is a carp anglers' mission. Sometimes the sun is up in the sky without a cloud in site, no wind and the shadows of carp can be seen with the naked eye without effort, if that's the case all the better because your job has become very easy.

I fished on a lake at Newlands Fishery in Oxfordshire recently where the sky was completely overcast, the wind was up causing rough waters and no-one was surface fishing, but still very little was being caught. I decided to go for the surface. The 3 bits of equipment you need are: 1. Polarized sunglasses so that you can see deeper into the water; 2. A catapult; 3. Mixer style dog biscuit.

I tend to catapult out 10-12 pieces of mixer in the area I want to check out, which is what I did on this day. I had no chance of seeing the shadows of carp over range due to the conditions, so what I was looking for was a subtle difference in the rough waters. I squat down so that my eye level is only about 1m from the water line. Sure enough after not much time I could see a couple of very small swirls that would be very difficult to see with the naked eye or even stood up. The people in the swims near me could not see this and were probably wondering why I was bothering to surface fish, but I now knew there were carp to be caught.

Get them Feeding

Once you have located the carp, you need to build some confidence in them by firing out free offerings. You don't need to go nuts with this and my fishingyourway tip is to keep the bait going in with regularity. I keep a steam of 6-12 dog biscuits going out to the same area every few minutes. This is something you will gage through experience. Because on this particular day the conditions were difficult, I used 3 – 4 pieces and only fired more after I had seen some swirls. The swirls that were barely visible.

The set up

I wanted to test out the Avon feeder Rod with the float tip attachment, I knew its 1.75 test curve would be more than up for the battle.

Fishing line: you need to select a line that you feel comfortable with. I have used many brands of surface line and tend to use 10lb. Just make sure it is surface fishing line.

Float: on this occasion I was using a bubble float, there are many surface floats out there to choose from and they depend on the cast distance and other things so have a look around if you fancy. I find that a bubble float will suit almost any situation and they aren't pricey at all.

I tie a size 11 swivel using a blood knot and put a float stop behind the float to stop the line slipping through on the take. This encourages self hooking.

will leave between 5ft to 8ft of hook-length. The key to the hook-length is that you want it to lay as flat as possible to the surface. What I have done to great success is keep my hook length line stored on a large spool. When I need to tie another hook length the line comes off the spool and is remarkable straight and does just the job.

I have 3 main set-ups that I use depending on how strongly the carp are feeding; pictures from this article can be seen at www.fishignyourway.co.uk.

Set-up 1
This is a very effective set-up for most surface fishing situations and the one to start off with. The picture
speaks for itself. I use either a size 10 or 12 hook; make sure the point is a very, very sharp one. Tie on a
hair-rig you can play around with the length, but don't underestimate the importance of leaving a gap.
Use a chopped down boilie, cut it to the shape of a dog biscuit and try to get a colour match.

Set-up 2

Very similar to the above set up but I simply use an artificial dog biscuit. I want the hook to sit below the
biscuit so I put a boilie stop instead of a shot in the space provided by the artificial biscuit. Why do I do this…
if the carp are not self hooking on stet-up 1 I want something that is very visible over range and I will strike
as the visible hook bait gets hit.

Set-up 3

These are enterprise artificial dog biscuits. The shot are supplied in the pack. You want the biscuit underneath

the hook as shown in the picture so the carp is unaware of it on approach. I will strike as the hook-bait is hit.
I use this when targeting big shy carp on difficult waters.

The Catch

When you have the carp feeding well just remember to keep the bait going in. Cast past the area you are fishing and wind back in, this is so you don't spook the carp with a big splash but importantly so that you have a straight line with good tension to encourage the hook to catch. If you can't see your hook bait or even float well, just watch for the line to pull around on the water and strike.