Guides

Stalking is close-range, opportunistic carp fishing where fish are located visually before the bait is presented. No bite alarms, no rod pod, no long waits. This guide covers the conditions that make stalking work, how to read the water with polarised glasses, approach and positioning to avoid spooking fish, the minimal gear setup, rigs from a freelined bait to a dog biscuit on a controller float, baits including bread, sweetcorn, worm and boilie, how to manage the take and fight in tight marginal swims, and the most common beginner mistakes. Day-ticket lakes, estate lakes and clear-water venues are all covered.

Boilies are the dominant bait in UK carp fishing, but the technique that puts them in the right place at the right density is what produces takes. This guide covers spot selection over hard ground and silt, the choice between a single hookbait and a baited area, building a pre-baiting campaign over weeks, clipping up for accurate casting, rig choice across hair, chod, Ronnie and PVA bag setups, bite indication for the full range of takes, and session-length strategy from short sessions through 48-hour campaigns. Common mistakes are covered too.

The chod rig is the correct choice when the lake bed is soft, weedy, or unknown. Its sliding hooklink adjusts to the depth of whatever the lead drops into and the pop-up sits above it, presented correctly regardless of conditions beneath. This guide covers everything needed to build and fish the rig: hooklink construction and D-shape mechanics, pop-up buoyancy testing and trimming, leader setup with correct lead safety, reading the swim to decide when the chod is the right choice, and how to set stop positions to match weed depth and season.

Finding fish is a more productive use of your time than refining tackle in the wrong swim. Watercraft is the skill of reading a venue before you commit to a peg: its features, its weather, its seasonal rhythms, and its fish. This guide covers how to read both stillwaters and rivers, the key structural features and why fish use them, how weather and pressure redistribute fish across a venue, how to identify feeding fish from the bank, seasonal location patterns, and which feature-finding tools make the job easier from marker floats through to echo sounders and mapping apps.

Boilies are the dominant carp hookbait and freebait in UK stillwater fishing. This guide covers the full picture: how shelf-life and frozen boilies differ, how to match boilie diameter and hook size from 12mm to 20mm, and when to fish a bottom bait, wafter, or pop-up. Baiting strategy is covered in detail, from a single PVA bag on an unfamiliar venue through to a sustained Spomb campaign on an established water. Seasonal selection and a full gear requirements list are included.

The hair rig is the foundational carp fishing presentation. Without it, every other modern carp rig would not exist. This guide covers the mechanics of self-hooking, the function of every component, and full construction instructions using the knotless knot. Hook selection by bait size, hooklink material choice by lake-bed type, hair length setting, and five bait presentation variants are all covered. It also identifies the most common mistakes that cause dropped fish and missed hookups on otherwise well-set rigs.