Stewart Bloor

Field Tester

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Although I fish throughout the year, it's all very different as far as species, venues and methods are concerned. In fact over the winter just passed, it's been my favourite species the perch that has dominated proceedings. As we now enter the warmer months, although no doubt I'll be pursuing perch, the other more traditional spring and summer fish will come to the fore.

And that's exactly what I have been doing of late. As you can see from the photograph above I banked a nice grass carp. Caught on an overnight session, it fell to 2x 12mm Ace Lobworm popped-up boilies. It's important to get on the fish, and arriving at dusk on a local lake, I spotted dark shadows just beneath the surface. I catapulted loose offerings of boilies, cast out and settled back.

It was well into dark before I had any action though, as line peeled through the ATT and the blue light came to life. Some minutes later I had the fish on the mat followed by a pose for a photograph before then returning it back to its watery home. You can see my rig set-up above. It's simplicity in itself. As you can see, SBS is more than just bait and ever since the terminal tackle range has been released I've been using that to good effect as well.

I like the Grip-Tip hooks as they are thinner than others that you will encounter on the market. Don't let that deceive you though, what they lack in size they certainly don't surrender in quality. I've caught some pretty decent fish on them so far, especially barbel, tench and bream as well as carp of course. When setting my stall out for big carp though I've tended to go for the Enigma range. When you set that hook, you do so with full confidence.

I've also been fishing for other spring species this month, including my favourite carp - the crucian. Nowhere near as widespread as its larger cousins, there's something of a mystery and and a challenge surrounding it. Tiny tremors on the float or tip and elusive to say the least, I guess it can be a source of frustration to many anglers. I sometimes fish for them at range and use scaled-down carp gear. The one in this blog was caught on a popped-up 10mm Ace Lobworm boilie at 50 metres.

Then there's bream. Hardly welcomed by most carp anglers, for me as an all-rounder I actually target them. I did an overnighter and the fish that you can see was caught on perhaps my favourite SBS product - the corn-shaped popper. Actually three poppers fished on a hair off a size 6 Grip-Tip hook. Whatever your target species I'd strongly recommend this item, it's caught me countless big fish over the years. See you next month.