Carp in shallow water.

 Fishing to a margin on the island I took over 40 fish in 4 hours.

At this time of year, the carp are mostly found in shallow water during the day on commercials. By shallow I mean 18" to 3' deep. Find this depth and your sure to find carp feeding. A great way to catch them is with a method or pellet feeder. Casting into open water works nowhere as well as up against an island, or far bank where the depth is just right normally.

Today at Hallcroft I misguidedly fished water too deep, about 5'. It was a great margin swim with plenty of features, but just too deep. I did catch, but as my old school teacher said of me "could have done better ". One fish was a stunning mirror of 16lb, second biggest from the venue this year. I had just 6 fish for a days fishing, working hard switching methods several times during the day.   Constantly trying to feed the fish into the swim, but being too deep I could not watch the carps behavior as I like to do on my trips. If you can observe fish they will normally tell you what to do.

 Margin float-fishing took this 18lb mirror carp.

When I arrived lots of fish were on the surface milling around. So my first thought was to keep them up with pellets fired out every 30 seconds or so. I tried the pellet waggler for over an hour to no avail,  the fish were just not interested in eating in the open deeper water. I expect this food is eaten by smaller fish, or by the carp later in the day probably after dark. Anyway a nice steady day, and a cracking mirror to boot.

See you on the bank.