For many carp anglers this period will be very challenging as fish are still in late winter or very early spring sets of behaviours. This can mean many less bites when fishing conventionally; here you will find some sound insights, alternative bait substances and real fishing experiences to help you understand what fish are doing right now - and how to exploit this to catch many more big spring fish!

This is a time when waters are warming up but maybe not quite enough for the carp to begin feeding in the depths, areas or in the modes of feeding you might be hoping for, now that sunnier warmer days have finally arrived - following the coldest winter for 30 years! Normal carp metabolism has taken a set-back because many carp waters are still in the process of reaching a minimal temperature for carp to be able to digest the volumes and range of foods and fishing baits you might normally expect.

In spring as in other periods, the night temperatures can severely limit the warming up process of water and although a carp water might get a few days of sun and double figure days the night-time cold could easily lose the heat built-up and disrupt carp feeding as a result. If you really study fish behaviours of fish at this time, then this will really pay great dividends. It could well be the case that many deeper water swims that are normally very popular and productive are simply not producing fish right now. If you measure the temperature of your lake water and find it significantly below 10 degrees Celsius there is no doubt that in many cases the fishing has yet to really get going as carp will be far less willing to feed heavily on high protein baits especially. If you are pinning your hopes on deep water swims, this choice could well have negative impacts on your results at this time.

If I recall my facts correctly up until water temperatures reach 15 degrees Celsius, lowered carp metabolism plus stored glycogen means that carp need to consume a minimum of 3 percent of their body weight daily just to sustain themselves. Coming out of long hard winters into cold lingering springs you can see how this can be advantageous if natural food is scarce because carp metabolism will rise at the same time as their natural food begins to flourish.

Actually you can see in this that it is carp natural food provision that has led to the way that carp metabolism rises in the way it does so carp are far less likely to run out of vital stored energy and starve before natural food levels regain adequate levels to sustain carp naturally. Taking angling baits out of the picture you can see how carp can easily survive on minimal marginal browsing and mid-water and top-layer filter-feeding on extremely nutritionally-rich natural foods such as algae and plankton. This is while mainly remaining in the warmer more energy-efficient upper layers of water or thermocline. Spring is certainly a great time to exploit low protein baits that are designed to have very good digestibility that reflect carp needs at this time and replenishing the lost glycogen stored in the autumn for the winter is important as it will be needed for spawning for instance soon enough!

The way layers naturally are formed in water in lakes means that carp may be found in a layer that is comfortable for them that is far more energy-efficient to spend the majority of time in than colder layers. The densest coldest water will be the layer lower down and in spring it can be very difficult to get bites fishing on or close to the bottom – especially in deeper water swims where the water is significant colder that other water layers. To illustrate this kind of effect, on one of my spring visits to lake Salagou in southern France it was my habit to swim out to the spots in the swim was fishing and create accurately baited feeding spots for when the fish came through and fed at night.

While doing this, although the sun was so strong it produced nasty sun-burn this process highlighted just how the water layers can be different temperatures – even to an extreme degree! The top layer of 4 feet of water was comfortable and warm, but the water beneath was freezing cold. I was swimming out into my swim deliberately following a raised area in the swim that was much shallower than the surrounding very deep water going down beyond 40 or even 50 feet or much more in places. If I let my legs drop down I could have easily got cramp due to the cold temperature of the water there but I was fine staying in the top layer of water; note doing this requires a life jacket nonetheless!

By baiting-up like this the results produced by fishing the top layers in as shallow water as possible really paid off for me big-style and other guys on my trip fishing the deeper water struggled to get bites at all. In the end everyone simply fished the shallowest water they could find and all caught fish. Finding areas of reeds in spring time is a really good place to start if you are stuck for ideas and if over-hanging brambles on sun-hit margins are not accessible.

In spring-time, finding fish sunning themselves at or near the surface at range or even in the margins right by the bank is always a good indication that fishing shallow water spots in swims or in the top layers of water will more than likely be more productive than fishing the deep water swims or spots.

Over my 30 plus years in fishing for big carp spring has been much more successful when fishing areas heated by the sun and fishing in water depths of around 6 feet or much usually much less. At this time carp can often be found swimming around with their backs out of the water when the sun is strong and even feeding on the surface itself.

It will not be many weeks before the fish will be getting into spawning or pre-spawning modes of behaviours so exploit any opportunity or preferably create any feeding opportunity you can that is appropriate to depths of water and water temperatures. This is opposed to simply jumping into a swim, baiting-up as usual and maybe struggling to get any action due to not taking the time to observe how fish are behaving and creating your own feeding situations for example, or not exploiting natural ones that are very apparent to those who have decided to be sharper carpers!

Obviously carp are warm-blooded and their essential processes are governed to a massive degree by temperature of the water surrounding them. Therefore it is no surprise that carp and other fish too will seek out water layers that are energy-efficient. Many organisms will proliferate in areas of warmer water temperatures and this has a kind of chain reaction that you need to be on the look-out to exploit. Spring shallows and marginal areas are very often great places to catch carp sometimes despite obvious attention from anglers near those areas.

Wind lanes that support plankton, and carry algae and other potential food items such as hatching fallen or hatching insects and are something else to look for and exploit. It can take experience to develop the eye for seeing them and their potential but once you have it do not neglect to use it! On warm winds in spring, to fish off the bottom in the warmer water in the top layers can seriously out-fish those guys fishing on the bottom as fish may well spend the majority of their time in this location. So-called zig-rigs are not the only approach to use and it is staggering how few carp anglers actually float fish baits in old-fashioned ways.

Float fishing a boilie under a float is not an advanced method but can easily produce lots of big fish where taken advantage of in the spring – and any other time for that matter. Float fishing for spring carp is very exciting and there are ways you can draw more fish to your swim and turn them onto feeding very powerfully by leveraging certain bait substances.

Bait choice can really make all the difference in the spring. I take into account the water temperatures and exploit this. Fishing paste is about as instant as it gets and pastes break down much more slowly in colder water. Some anglers use foam or fake baits but I prefer to use real natural bait substances in my homemade pastes that trigger intensive feeding and pull fish from all around the swim at various depths and even from long-range.

It is far cheaper to make your own homemade pastes than buy those little tubs of paste powders or readymade paste. There is not doubt that many readymade pastes will dissolve too fast or actually have something about them that can make fish wary of them when they approach the bait because they recognise flavours of substances such as many squid extracts and powders etc, or Robin Red etc that have previously led to the hooking or capture of fish previously that will be remembered!

This is a major reason that I make my own baits apart from the cost of readymade baits anyway – and the fact that using readymade bait all too often means taking the chance that fish you are after have already been hooked by other anglers using the same bait you are using! In my personal experience using completely new baits that fish have never experienced before massively improves your chances of hooking some of the biggest wariest fish even on their very first introduction – provided you use the correct bait substances that is!

Coming up with new and innovative bait recipes consisting of substances that carp certainly will be stimulated into feeding by but have very little reason to fear as they are hardly if ever used in readymade baits is an activity that excites me greatly – because the rewards are so good – and doing this really can produce those far more rarely caught fish that seem to avoid conventional readymade boilies pastes, pellets and fake baits etc!

Just a few ideas of nutritionally-stimulating substances you might try if have the desire to source them for your own unique homemade baits and baits soaks and so on include hydrolysed worm extract, daphnia, abalone extract, chick pea flour, and freshly-collected snails, slugs, worms, live meal worms and molassed insects for example. All these are easily-digested nutritional ingredients and additives for use in spring baits of all kinds and sun-heated shallow marginal spots will be a natural place for carp to find baits containing these at this time! (For further information on making, adapting, designing and boosting your baits see my bait secrets ebooks website right now - and improve your catches for life!)

By Tim Richardson.