Have Your Best Autumn Ever

MYLES GIBSON explain show he approaches the lead-up to autumn, a great time of year for catching big carp…

- Myles Gibson

While autumn has traditionally been one of the best times to catch carp, in recent years it has been hard work. There are plenty of good opportunities to be had and it remains one of my favourite times of the year to angle but the margins for success can be quite fine.

The carp will still put on big displays and won’t be hard to find, the only change from the warmer months is the time of day that it happens. Quite often the hours of darkness are when the carp will be most active. For whatever reason, certain periods during the night are full of carp activity.

I set my alarm during the night; every other hour or so can be good. This means that I can listen out and hear what is going on. If the fish are only showing on darkness and hiding during the day, I will turn nocturnal if I need to. You can always sleep during the day, so if you are not seeing anything on first light or during daylight, sit up at night and the carp will reveal their whereabouts.

Once you have found them, quite often there will be a lot of fish in one zone. Keep note of where they are in certain conditions because the shoal will shift on weather or angling pressure changes, so keep track of them. Even note down if a fish gets caught from an area in certain conditions; it all helps to put the pieces of the jigsaw together when they are not showing as much. When it goes quiet, you can look back on similar conditions and come to a conclusion of where they might be.

When the water temperature is up I try and fish on the shallow spots. This is where a lot of the natural food will build up and quite often the reason why the fish feed on them so regularly. In the colder months that natural food tends to be found in dying weed beds and silt.