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| Pop Up Boilies – Why, When and Where |
| Pop Up Boilies – Why, When and Where |
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Christopher Paschmanns on Pop Up Boilies – Why, When and Where???
What would modern carpfishing be without Pop Ups? Without hinged stiff rigs, shot rigs and all the other more or less necessary technical elements? More uncomplicated – maybe. Less successful – definitely! Most carp anglers use floating Boilies for their fishing, but only few really think more deeply about the advantageous or disadvantageous of Pop Ups. The successful use of floaters is more than tying it on a hair or putting it on a gum. The conditions underwater, the bottom structure, the time of year, the light situation and the feeding habits of the fish I want to catch, influence my choice of hook bait, when to use a Pop Up and when not! This article is not on rigs, it’s on the basic questions: Why should I use a swimming Boilie and when?
First: Which is the main advantage of a Pop Up presentation when compared to a bottom bait set up?
Easy: The brilliant hooking abilities of a thought over Pop Up rig. Why? Because the hook is in the perfect position to get hold in the fish’s mouth. Like the aggressive sting of a scorpion it stands right under the floater, ready to prick! The hook is kept out of the carp’s eyes because of the Pop Up and it is kept of the ground by the floater, so the point will stay sharp longer.
Bright Spring Time:
Spring is here and like us the fish are getting more and more active. That doesn’t mean easy going for us carp anglers, as I often had to face one typical spring problem: It is not easy to get their heads down now! You will see brought shouldered shadows cruising along the shallows but their interest in food offerings is often not so big. The thing you will have to take advantage of now is something characteristic for carp: curiousness! And what would grab a carps attention more aggressively then a fluo yellow DD Bait High Stim pineapple Pop Up, placed exactly on their cruising route?! A few people may now roll their eyes and say “not again, this pineapple hype spreads like a disease from the UK all over the continent”, before they click to the next article. But those people didn’t try it! There is something special about the ester flavour of pineapple, its taste and combination with a butyric acid dosage! They have a big pulling power on carp, for sure. It catches fish and more then often it did so for me straight away, right after I clipped the hanger in the line – especially in spring! When I interviewed my good friend Christian on his last years great spring results, he said: “What I did special? Oh, I came from work, cast three rods with Indian Spice and Pineapple Pop Ups in the shallows, close to the overhanging trees, caught a handful of twenties and went home again before darkness. And that for a few days…”
Swim Hopping:
When time only allows you to fish a few hours, when work is waiting at home and it would be much easier to take care of after you had a few fights with strong summer carp, there is nothing more efficient and active than swim hopping. A tactic I stumbled over a few summers ago. I made a walk around in the brut summer heat, my indicators were silent for hours, when I found a school of good fish, all mid-twenties, covering from the sun under some trees branches. I sneaked back to my swim on tip of my toes, reeled in a rod, bite through the line, tied on a spectrum fluoro carbon link with a C2 hook, a bright red Strawberry Spice poppy on the hair, and crept back to the fish. I freelined the boilie and within seconds I was in, landing a nice 11kg common, followed by a 9kg fish. Not bad! A few days later I did the same thing together with Christian. We fished our Pop Ups with safety bolt rigs right under the branches, two rods each, and chilled in the sun sitting on our unhooking mats. We had nothing with us, except the rods, a featherweight stick each, an unhooking mat each, one net, a pot of Strawberry Pop Ups and a camera. In less then an hour, we hooked into three fish, all upper doubles. Then we moved to another fishy looking spot, caught another two fish and so on. Really nice, active fishing! You can search the carp, seduce them with just a Pop Up and learn more about the different swims!
On top of the bar:
Its no secret that the point where the gravel bar meets the deeper bottom line is more productive than the top of the bar. Why? Because the carp will for natural reasons find more food there! Let it be crayfish, tubifex or just the baited boilies that rolled down the bar. When I prebait such a spot, I will always fish one rod (or two if three rods are allowed) to the deeper points. But one, and that’s for sure, I will place on top of the bar, with a Pop Up some 5 to 10 centimetres from the ground. Passing fish that cross the bar with the intention to search food on the deeper points will face my attractor bait and that quite often leads to a take! When I fished a big (50ha) gravelpit back in 2005 with a stock of only 9 carp, I had 3 out of 5 runs by carp on this kind of presentation, the grasscarp not counted! My 100% trust bait from this time on is the 20mm Banana and Crustacean Pop Up fished on a Spectrum Hinged Stiffrig with a size 4 C2 hook!
“Shot on the hair balanced”:
Balanced Boilies, a topic in bait talks for years. There is one situation when I really favour this method and this is when fishing over muddy bottom. From my point of view carp will often ignore a Pop Up when fished over the mud. Why? Because for the fish it’s the most natural thing to search for food with their mouth in the mud! To give my bait the best chance to work, to spread its attraction, I present it on top of the muddy ground and as Pop Ups have a high attraction, I like to use them too in these situations. I am not much a fan of creating the perfect buoyant bait at home, so what I simply do is clip a small shot on the hair right under the Pop Up. It now sinks slowly to the ground like having no weight. With this presentation I use a normal bottom bait set up, which means a rather long hair on a C2 size 6 hook. Try it on your next trip to a muddy pool: cover a feeding area with some F5 Banana Crustacean Readys, best in mixed sizes from 16 to 24mm and use a balanced Pop up on the hair! You won’t be disappointed!
The heavy baiting no go:
Pop Ups do have disadvantages, a fact I don’t want to hide. One situation I would advice you not to use a floater, is the tricky fish – heavy baiting thing. What is that? Years back, heavy baiting campaigns were the key to success on the French reservoirs. The fish learned fast and the results went to the basement. People started using single hookbaits or just small amounts of bait. Even worse, as the carp smelled danger with that soon again. Today, most anglers still use small amounts of bait with mainly little results. Often, and especially in difficult waters, heavy baiting works again! Sprinkling large areas with a god amount of quality boilies is a brilliant tactic that made me and my friends catch a few really stunning tricky fish on waters, where others struggled to get a bite on their small bait patches. That actually is a different story. But in such situations, when fishing on a wide bait carped, I think Pop Ups are deadly for fishing! The carp develop trust in your free bottom baits and a Pop Up then would give you away pretty soon, like a black swan in a swarm of whites. In this situation one! Simple bottom bait is the key!
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