SILT,WEED,GRAVEL.
its always a debate between us anglers as to what surface of the lake bed you should fish on to create a bite, most anglers would choose to fish on gravel which usually shows fish have been feeding in that particular area and have been active. look at it this way pretty much any rig is fish able over gravel from a simple kd to a withy pool rig …
I got into angling when I was 10 years old walking up and down the canal with my dad seeing these match anglers catching so many varies of fish which made me want to start fishing Britain’s water ways.. as always you learn most the basics from match angling and progress from there , as I was growing up and was old enough to join social media I realised that there were fish out there much bigger than what I was catching from my local canal. As I was getting into fishing more and more I went out to the local tackle shop and bought my first ever carp rod nice and light test curve to play the fish in and still be fun..
from that day forward I’ve been hooked on carp fishing and have been a carp angler for the last 3 years, over those last 3 years I’ve learnt so much and all im thinking about everyday is carping and getting out on the bank…

anyway getting back on track as I said fishing on gravel is very popular with anglers these days but i think different… at first i cast my rods out into the water and hoped for the best whilst catapulting boilies into the lake every hour or so, over the last 2 years I’ve learnt that where im fishing can produce fish more than any other spot on the lake. I have found that the majority of lakes I fish are silt bottoms with features such as lily’s and islands. if I turn up to a lake and I find that there is weed patches I will see how thick and deep the weed is, if the weed is not too thick and deep that would be my number one spot purely because I’ve found weed contains the most natural bait that the carp feed on, and with my freebies and hook bait i like to think i can get them feeding confidently without the fish getting to smart as if there getting caught from particular spots they will start to get more weary every time they feed on that spot…
fishing in weed I’ve found that chods or pop up rigs work best and I usually put a pva nugget on the hook so the hook is covered for a couple of minutes and the hook is sitting above the weed…

silt-

I don’t have to much to say about silt really as I still fish on silt and know it can produce a bite but I prefer weed over gravel over silt but I think silt would be my last port of call unless the lake bed is just silt all over then I would approach with a very simple rig that i know works and can get me that magic carp..

Big thanks to John Piper for writing this article