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My First Time Surface Fishing for Carp – With Amanda Hook
In this blog, Angling Direct’s photographer; Amanda Hook, reveals her experiences with surface fishing, discussing the excitement and challenges of the first session.
After enjoying lure fishing and having had some success with fishing back in 2018, I knew I wanted to give carp fishing a go. After being out photographing Phil and Stephen whilst surface fishing I was eager to try this style of carp fishing.
Short Session of Surface Fishing
Surface fishing is hands down my favourite way to catch carp. I’d say to anyone starting out in fishing to give this a go as it's simple (but not always easy), rig-wise and you don’t need a huge amount of gear. There’s a lot of fun to be had with this style of fishing, even catching a small one is good fun.
Heading off to the bank with Phil one evening after work, it got sporadically warm, so we decided to walk around with the surface controllers. After some hours of not having much luck, we came to a part of the lake where the fish were eating off the top in decent numbers, so we had a go there!
Phil helped me cast my carp fishing bait which landed me with a couple of carp. One nice pristine common carp which turned out to be my new PB at the time was just under 20lb. I also caught another little mirror carp.
“I like surface fishing because you get to see the carp go for your bait which makes it a lot more exciting and totally addictive! It’s very much just one more cast feeling”.
After having a little teaser session, I was really looking forward to the weather warming up again so I could have another few goes. So, when it did heat up I took a day off and Phil kindly took me out for a day. We spent all day just surface fishing at Homersfield. I got a lot of casting practise in with the number of times you have to recast which was great, I really needed it! We both had a few carps.
By the evening I’d had another PB This time at 36lb 10oz. I did not expect this to happen on my second-time surface fishing! What a way to be able to catch it, I was absolutely over the moon to catch this one! Especially as it really dug itself into the weed and at one point, I wasn’t sure I was still attached to a fish. Phil guided me to get up high on the bank and just keep steady pressure on it and it did finally come out of all the weed and safe to say I was very relieved and blown away when it rolled into the net.
Surface Fishing Rigs
I managed to get another little session in after doing my very first night on my own with Zigs (whilst doing star photography) After having just a bream on a zig throughout the night. The weather warmed up the next day and Phil happened to also be fishing on the same lake, at Homersfield again. Phil sent me a quick message saying “fancy a go surface fishing?”. I snapped his hand off at that! So, I packed away and set up my surface rig and was ready to go. We flung out some dog biscuits with a catapult as they were close in. They were feeding all over the place.
This was the first time I’d set the rig and everything up myself, so I rushed a bit as I just wanted to get going. I was getting extremely close bites, but they were turning away and getting a bit spooked. So, Phil had a quick look at my rig and suggested I needed it a bit neater.
After adjusting the rig to an extremely tight hair rig so the bait is touching the hook, the carp fishing hook is then a bit less obvious to the fish. You can also put a soft hook bait on the actual Hook but as we were casting quite far past them, we wanted to bait to stay on and not get nibbled off by the high numbers of roach. After adjusting the rig, I shortly had a couple of 20s in the net close to each other.
For any beginner surface anglers, ensure your rigs are as neat and tidy as they can be the difference between getting bites and not getting any bites. Every time I go out, I definitely get a bit more confident with everything I learn from Phil and my own mistakes each time I go.
