A lot of anglers in the UK spend a lot of time and a lot of money weaning carp onto particular baits, and on both drawing and holding them in particular favoured swims. But I'll wager a great many more anglers spend a great deal more money (though far less time) inadvertently making a much better job of it than they probably realise without actually sticking around for long enough either to notice or to reap the rewards. They do this by throwing piles of unwanted sweetcorn, hemp, maggots and other perishable small particle baits into the shallows just as they are about to pack up and go home. And at some day ticket fisheries, like the example of Holme Grange Reservoir near Fleet used here, the carp not only know this, but have become conditioned in to waiting until late in the day for it to happen. Then when it all goes quiet, thinking that the anglers responsible have gone, they sneak right into the margins, often to the point of almost grounding themselves, to mop up the big free feed without any of the risks of getting caught. So who says fish are stupid.

Aware of this through having observed it on many occasions over the years, Graeme Pullen invited me down with the video gear, and of course some tackle, to take part in one of these 'free' sessions on the carp. I say free in the sense that we would be waiting for anglers to pack up and dump their un-used bait to demonstrate just how easily it can be done. But by way of insurance, we also called in at 'Tackle Up' in Fleet on the way to Holme Grange where shop manager Nigel Newport provided us with a variety of particle baits of our own to do some 'pretend' packing up at a number of locations around the lake so that we could do a bit of swim hopping if the anticipated activity spooked the fish. This way we could simply move on to another swim having put in a bit more feed at the previous one in the hope that as things quietened down again, we could alternate backwards and forwards between them all and have a bumper session, which as predicted, was exactly how the afternoon panned out.

The size of the fish coming in to rummage about, often with their backs out of the water right up to the very edge of the dry land, ranged from a couple of pounds right through occasionally to double figures, with an average probably in the 5 to 8 pound bracket. So it isn't only small fish that are prepared to participate, which surprised me in light of the small size of the hook baits we were using which were typically two maggots, one off which was threaded well up onto the shank of the size 12 to 14 barbless wide gape hook in an attempt to conceal it. The trick is that once you know fish are interested in a particular vacated swim, you need to keep them there with a regular sprinkling of whatever it is they are after, and also not to spook them by standing too close to the waters edge, which can be difficult at times at Holme Grange due to a lack of bank-side cover. With no casting required, the technique is to creep up to within a rods length and kneel in front of the fish, then simply lower your bait down to settle out with the rest of the stuff on the bottom knowing that it should only be a matter of time before a carp hoovers it up.

Obviously when this happens, the sudden burst of activity from a hooked fish is going to set up a chain reaction amongst the rest. But if you have the drag set nice and light, which it needs to be anyway in case one of the better carp takes hold, you can let the fish run out away from the margins and the rest of the shoal, and start working it into a barren area of the lake allowing the others to re-group while you are playing your fish. While all of this was going on, depending of course on who was into a fish at the time, either Graeme or myself would keep a bit of bait going in to the other swims as well so that we always had fish grubbing about within bait dropping range somewhere. And a very successful ploy it turned out to be as the photographs here show with literally dozens of carp brought to the net and released from swims that had in many cases produced little or nothing to other anglers earlier in the day.

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