My (lockdown-) feeding tactics.

I slowly push my trolley along the club’s waterfront. The winter lasted a very long time and even now the water temperatures are only rising very slowly.

May is generally a very beautiful month that can still be very moody, especially this year. It doesn’t really look like summer at the moment and many heavy rain showers keep the water quite cool overall.

Nevertheless, it is one of my absolute favorite months of the fishing year. Nature begins to wake up inexorably from the calm, the fish are increasingly moving and the sun can quickly provide the right vibes. Last but not least, my fishing style just fits pretty well into this time. The fish show up after just a few hours of sunshine or mild winds in the shallow areas of the water and are very easy to catch there during the day. If the temperatures rise constantly, the first nervous behavior will quickly become noticeable among the carp and the spawning season is just around the corner.

Conversely, cool nights, rain or even hail can quickly make the fish disappear from these areas and turn the previously mega-productive shallow water zones into dead areas.

Due to this situation and the ongoing nightly curfews, longer feed campaigns are currently not necessarily possible or useful for me. Mobile fishing over short time slots a day is now the only legal way to fish. Flashy and attractive food is now the key to success and for me it is definitely the time of the popups!

My bait bag is kept very minimalist during this time and has a lot of particularly attractive lining. This is due on the one hand to the short sessions of a few hours and on the other hand to the mobile fishing style. I don’t want to “lure” fish over a long period of time, I want to cast on the fish that are found or suspected and quickly persuade them to bite. For this I use a maximum of a small Pva stick or a portion of crushed boilies and micropellets.

If I fish at my own feet, carefully distribute a small portion of Crushmix with the hand or the sling at the spot. If it has to be thrown further, I rely on Pva sticks and the small Wolf Competition X-Spod is used. If the fish are clearly eating, I distribute a maximum of 10-15 boilies with the throwing pipe over a larger area.

In my bag I find my favorite pop-ups in the four most important colors yellow, orange, pink and white, mixed in 16 and 11 millimeters. I use the larger versions as classic pop-ups on the chod or multirig, the smaller versions with relatively large hooks on the slip-D in wafterstyle.

Such a small Pinapple or OrangeP in 11 millimeters, plus a Pva stick … that’s a damn cool trap!

I like to use very light boilie varieties based on milk protein / bird food as additional and stick feed. I have to clearly admit that these boilies are used purely as supplementary feed, usually crushed, halved or quartered, only rarely do whole boilies end up in their original round shape in the water.

The light color of these freebies creates very noticeable, small food stains on the bottom of the water and makes the fish curious – the ideal combination with the gaudy popups.

Soaked in a little CSL, I like to add milk powder, brewer’s yeast or a small amount of oat flakes and micropellets. A simple but very effective mix. Have you ever had an X-Spod filled with oatmeal and a good portion of goo or liquid. A real weapon !

I prepare my pva sticks at home if possible and like to leave this mixture very dry in order to create a real explosion with a proportion of rising attractors. If the fish are sunbathing one floor higher or swimming around nervously, there is a good chance of arousing interest. Since fishing is generally done in shallow water anyway, I also like to play with dried mosquito larvae or krill meal in pva, but the mix must always be as light as possible.

If we have landed the first fish safely, just don’t feed it too much! Stay true to the tactics in round 2, a small stick …. a small portion of food and you can go again very quickly!

Sometimes less is just more! Before the spawning season I need little, but very attractive, food. Pop-ups and some Chrushmix and a small portion of boilies are easily enough to experience a successful day with fat carp

Cheers, Manu (Wolf Germany)