Fishing for carp on the surface

As the weather starts to warm up as we head further into the spring and summer, the carp will be spending more and more time right in the upper layers, and this means that they can be targeted using floating surface baits.

You will hear all kinds of rubbish about floater fishing, such as ‘they don’t count off of the top’, but the reality is that it is one of the most fun and skilled forms of carp fishing, as well as being very effective, and especially so on days where your chances of catching on the bottom are pretty much non-existent.

Surface fishing is also one of the few carp fishing methods where you can grab a fairly limited amount of gear – just a rod, net, mat, a small bag of tackle bits and some floating baits -  and just go fishing for a few hours – such as an evening after work or school – and still be in with a good chance of catching, as long as the weather conditions are right for it.

It is also a method that puts you in with a chance of not only catching on days when you’d be wasting your time with conventional methods, but is also a method that can trip up the biggest fish in the lake.

Plus of course there is little in fishing as exciting as watching a carp moving along the surface, sucking in free offerings as it approaches your hookbait, and with your heart in your mouth as you wait for a pair of lips to engulf the one with the hook in it, whilst praying that you don’t strike too early!

Best weather for floater fishing

For the fish to be on the surface in numbers, you really need some hotter weather and plenty of sunshine, and ideally for a few consecutive days.

That doesn’t mean that you need to be out fishing for them during the hottest part of the day though, and in fact that period around midday and early afternoon can sometimes be very hard to induce a bite on the surface, as the fish are more interested in sunbathing themselves, and if it is very hot and still they can be quite lethargic and show little interest in feeding.

If there has been a run of consecutive warm sunny days then often your best chances will come during the cooler part of the day, either early morning or in the evening – or even into darkness sometimes, although the lack of visibility makes surface fishing at night harder. This is often when the carp will show more interest in actually taking some of your floating baits, rather than ignoring them completely or just occasionally slurping down the odd one, and not feeding confidently.

You don’t necessarily need the sun, as long as it is warm, and on those cloudy, muggy days you will also usually find the fish on the surface – although not always in the mood to feed.

Contrary to what some believe, some wind is actually beneficial, as long as it is just a breeze, as the ripple on the surface can make it harder for the carp to spot which bait has your line attached to it, as well as allowing you to get into a position where you can drift floaters on the wind, over where the carp are sitting, rather than hoping they come to wherever you’ve catapulted out your floaters.

Often all you need is for one or two of them to start taking floaters, and that triggers other fish to feed as well, and in an ideal situation, they will end up competing for the bait and charging to get each floater before any other fish get there first!

Wind can make floater fishing challenging though as it creates a bow in your line – which is on the surface – and causes drag on your hookbait and controller float, which makes it act unnaturally and greatly reduces the chances of a fish taking it. The bow in your line always makes striking less effective when you do manage to get a take.

One good tip if there is more ripple on the surface than is ideal, but not enough to make floater fishing a waste of time, is to pour some oil onto your freebies, which creates a slick when you fire them out and will actually flatten the surface of the water.

What sort of venue should I target

Carp can be caught off of the surface on any water, if you’re there on the right day when they decide to feed, and that includes the toughest waters in the country.

Whilst it is possible to catch off the top on pretty much any lake, there are of course venues where your chances will be much higher, and especially so if you want to just get out for a few hours and actually find some carp to have a go for, and be in with a real chance of catching.

Smaller lakes will of course make it easier to find the carp, but unless they are fairly highly stocked they also have the disadvantage that the carp will soon realise they are being fished for – especially after the disturbance of catching one or two – and that can put the rest of them on edge and make them very hard to catch.

Ideally you want a lake that is big enough that you have different areas to try – whether you catch or just end up spooking the fish you’ve found – but of a size where you can still easily get around it and find the fish. The higher the stocking level, the more likely you are to find some carp on the surface, as well as having a better chance of getting them feeding and really competing for the bait.

You also need a water where they spend time close enough to the bank to make it possible to target them – it’s no good if they all sit out in the middle on a hot day and out of reach even with the heaviest controller float available.

You will also need to take account of how busy the lake is, especially these days, as to have a chance of catching, especially if you’ve only got a few hours, you actually need to be able to get to the areas where the fish are, and have the option of moving around a bit – especially if you get them feeding on your floaters, which then start to drift across the lake, and you need to move in order to be able to reach the carp.

So, ideally you want a lake that is of a manageable size and where you can find the fish, in places close enough to the bank that you can target them, and which aren’t packed with most swims taken.

That is of course assuming that you’re going specifically to surface fish, rather than being set up in a swim and fishing conventionally, but also having some floater kit with you just in case some fish appear on the top in front of you, which is the way that many anglers do it – but of course is far less effective than actually specifically targeting them on floaters.

It pays to be patient when surface fishing and that means spending time getting the fish feeding, and ideally several of them competing for the freebies, before you even think about casting out your hook bait. Although knowing when to cast out comes down to experience and you don't always want to leave it too long either, as the fish can suddenly stop taking them and drift off!

Bait - loosefeed

Obviously if you are fishing on the surface you will need to use bait which floats, for your freebies as well as your hookbait.

Traditionally petfood biscuits have been used, with dog mixers and cat biscuits being popular choices, plus of course bread, but these days there are plenty of floating pellets which are also very effective for loosefeed.

Whichever type of loosefeed you decide to use, you will need to be able to introduce it close to where the carp are – ideally avoid putting it on their heads and let it drift to them – and this can be done via a catapult, or even a spod, although the latter obviously causes a lot of disturbance. If you’re having to fish at longer distances though, then often there is no choice but to spod your bait out and then wait for the fish to start taking it.

Obviously with a lot of these baits, which are light, the distance which can be achieved with a catapult is limited. If you need to get them out further, but don’t want to use a spod, then you can tie up some small mesh PVA bags – you can even add a stone for extra weight – and then fire those out with your catapult, which will gain you far more distance, as well as a very tight cluster of bait.  

The PVA bags can also be attached to your hookbait to give a tight spread of freebies around it after casting out, or even in situations where you want to freeline (with nothing else on the line, just your hook and hookbait) but need a bit more weight to get the distance.

Different types of hookbaits

There is plenty of choice when it comes to hookbaits, and whilst some sort of pop-up – whole, trimmed down, or even ones designed for floater fishing – may seem the obvious choice, there are plenty of others which will also work.

Pop-ups tend to be a popular hookbait for surface fishing as they are so easy to use, as well as being durable, but at times other baits can produce more bites.

The most traditional hookbait for surface fishing is a lump of bread crust, and whilst some will view it as old fashioned, it is still very effective and carp love it. It also has the advantage of having enough weight (especially after a quick dip in the lake) to allow you to freeline further out than you could with most baits, and to cast more accurately. The disadvantage of course is that once in the water it doesn’t last long before it starts to break apart once it gets soggy.

Dog and cat biscuits have also always been a popular choice, either drilled out so they can be mounted on a short hair, or glued directly onto the shank of the hook. The same applies to pellets as well, and all these baits can have the advantage that they match what you are loosefeeding and will blend in, although that isn’t always an advantage when it comes to the fish singling them out and homing in on them.

Corkballs – whole or trimmed down - are another popular choice as they last indefinitely on the hook and maintain the same amount of buoyancy. They are easy to either mount on a short hair; glue to the shank of the hook; or even drill out and mount them by the eye of the hook, held in place by glue.

Plastic baits can also be very effective, again partly because they last indefinitely and maintain their buoyancy. There are even some that mimic a real dog biscuit, but others also work and can be quite easy for you to see, if they are brightly coloured.

There are even flies – made from materials such as deer hair – which are made to mimic floating baits and which can be very effective, although sometimes the hooks that they are tied on aren’t of the best quality or particularly strong.

You can of course add flavours/dips/Goo etc to your hookbait to help make it stand out and give a scent trail for the carp to home in on more than the freebies around it.

Hookbait visibility and buoyancy

In most situations you will hook more carp if you are actively striking when the hookbait is taken, rather than relying on them hooking themselves against the resistance from a controller float.

In order to be able to do that though, you need to actually be able to see your hookbait and be able to pick it out amongst all the freebies around it – a controller float helps you to home into where it is, and you can of course twitch it to see which one moves. But there is nothing worse than losing sight of it as a carp is moving towards it slurping down freebies, and then either striking at the wrong bait as the fish takes the one next to it, or not striking at all only to see it spit out your hookbait!

This is less of an issue with more visible hookbaits such as pop-ups or plastic baits, which stand out from your freebies, but even with things such as corkballs and dog biscuits or pellets, you can make them stand out more. In the case of corkballs, simply paint the side that sits out of the water - Tipp-Ex works fine, as do some of the paints that match anglers use to change bristle colour on a float.

For pellets or dog biscuits you can simply add a sliver of a brightly coloured pop-up or foam to the side of the bait that sits out of the water (if fishing it on a hair, this will be positioned closest to the hair stop).

Obviously when it comes to how visible your hookbait is, the range at which you are fishing plays a big part, and at some point the hookbait is no longer going to be visible, and so you have to rely on your controller float as an indicator of when your bait has been taken – if something tightens the hook link and moves off, then the float will also move.

The more buoyant the bait is the easier it generally is to see, but that also has the downside of making it harder for the carp to suck in, and gives it more chance of realising that it is dangerous.

A lot depends on how the carp are feeding on the day, as sometimes they can be coming along the surface with their mouth out of the water, engulfing everything in their path, whilst on other days the lips hardly break the surface as the fish ‘sips’ the bait down.

On days when they are really having it then you probably won’t have to think about hookbait choice too much, but on the days when they are more cautious, using a hookbait with less buoyancy, which easily goes into the mouth of the carp as it sips at it, can definitely result in more chances and less aborted bites. The only downside being that less buoyant hookbaits are harder to see.

Controller floats

In most situations you will want some sort of controller float to enable you to reach the fish and cast accurately to where they are.

In the past these tended to be floats that sat upright in the water - or if you go back far enough, even an actual candle attached to the hook link swivel via the wick! – and these type of floats tended to be very visible to the carp (although they wouldn’t always spook them and sometimes they’d even try to eat the controller).

Modern controller floats, like the Korda Interceptor Controller, are an inline design and lay flat on the surface, which makes them much less obvious to the fish – especially in a colour such as translucent white - but still very visible to the angler. The way that they attach to the hook link swivel also creates a bolt effect, which helps to set the hook if the fish moves off with your hookbait, although it is still more effective to strike when you see the bait go into its mouth, in situations where you can see that happening.

Th Interceptor controllers range from 5g all the way up to 80g, so are suitable for flicking baits out at close range, right up to blasting them out towards the middle of the lake when the fish are on the surface at longer ranges.

Tackle

Tackle for floater fishing is about as simple as it gets when it comes to carp fishing, and can be as straightforward as just a hook tied onto the end of your main line, when free lining.

The less obtrusive your hook and hook link are, the less chance there is of the carp spotting that it is dangerous and avoiding it, or spitting it out.

So smaller hooks and lighter hook links are definitely the way to go, but you need to balance that with the fishing situation, and size of fish. Whilst you might get away with using 6lb line and size 12 hook when fishing in open, snag-free water, if you try that in weedy or snaggy areas you will lose most of the fish you hook. So you need to find a balance that still means you get bites, but also gives you the best chance of landing whatever you hook.

There are hooks specifically designed for floater fishing, like the Korda Mixa, which are lightweight yet strong, and fairly unobtrusive due to their short shank design.

The same applies to hook link materials, and the Korda Kruiser Control is very limp and supple, as well as being fairly buoyant, making it the ideal choice. Whichever hook link material you choose, you will need to add some line floatant/grease to it, such as Kama-Kote, with the exception of the last foot – you actually want this part to be neutral buoyancy and sat in the surface film, rather than on top of it, as it makes it harder for the fish to spot (on top of the surface, it is silhouetted and stands out as dangerous).

There is always a lot of debate when it comes to main line, and whilst mono is still a popular choice, floating braid is also common these days, and has the advantage of giving more direct contact with your controller float and a quicker strike. Although that is maybe balanced out by the fact that is far less forgiving and the strike causes a lot of shock impact on your hook link, which is the only part of the set-up with any stretch in it.

Pretty much any reel will do, although ideally something smaller as you’re going to be holding it all the time, and there is no need for a large big pit reel for this type of fishing.

When it comes to rods, you want something a bit more forgiving than your normal fishing rods and which is better able to absorb the lunges of a big fish when using light tackle and small hooks. You also of course need to be able to cast accurately with a controller float, which is usually a lot lighter and less aerodynamic than the leads you would be using.

A Kaizen Green rod designed specifically for floater fishing, and extensively tested by surface fishing fan Neil Spooner, is about to be released and is perfect for the job.

You don’t need much tackle, and all your terminal gear can easily be kept in an EVA pouch, which could go inside a Basix Carp Cradle along with a set of scales, catapults etc, and is very easy to carry around the lake over your shoulder.

Other essentials

You will of course need to be able to spot the carp and find where they are, and that means a good set of polarised sunglasses, which will also make it easier for you to see your hook bait.

As long as they have a good quality set of polarised lenses, which will allow you to see through the surface and will cut out a lot of the glare, the actual model largely depends on personal preference when it comes to style, and there are plenty to choose from in the Korda sunglasses range.

Some sort of cap or other hat with a peak, such as a boonie, will also help to keep the sun out of your eyes and make it easier to see, as well as protecting your head - and your neck in the case of a boonie - from the heat.

It is very easy to get sunburnt when floater fishing on a hot day, as you get so engrossed in the fishing that you forget about protecting yourself, so applying sunscreen before you start, and topping up when necessary, is essential to protect your skin. Or even cover up using lightweight clothing such as the Korda Kool UPF Zip Jersey and Ultralite Joggers.

It is also essential to stay hydrated and drink enough water, and the Korda Water Bottle is a convenient size and weight to carry around with you - 1 litre - and can easily be refilled back at your car or swim when needed.