Underwater Carp Fishing Lessons from The Manor That Will Help You Catch More Carp

Korda has been making Underwater films for well over a decade and during that time has visited a wide variety of venues to see how carp behave and react to different rigs and bait.

Our latest Underwater filming took us to The Manor in the Test Valley, a four acre, ultra clear, weedy lake that is home to around 100 carp, including the famous fully scaled mirror which tops 60lb.

Tom Dove and Neil Spooner were first to put their rigs in front of the cameras, and here we take an in depth look at exactly what they learned during their session, highlighting the observations that will influence their own fishing in the future, as well as those which reinforced ideas they already believed to be true.

Some of their long held beliefs, along with rigs and hookbaits they had total confidence in, proved to be ineffective in certain situations. The lessons learned weren't unique to The Manor though. They are observations about carp behaviour, feeding and presentation that can be applied to many different waters, and which both anglers will be taking into their own fishing wherever they go.

Why Carp Avoid Chunky Gravel and What It Means for Your Rig Presentation

Underwater filming is very different to a normal fishing situation, in terms of where the cameras can be placed and the type of lakebed they can be used on.

Just how much difference the type of bottom makes in terms of how the fish feed, the way in which your rigs are presented, and even how your loose feed behaves, can all vary massively.

During the latest Underwater filming, Spooner and Dovey wanted a spot at the shallow end of the lake where there was a lot of fish activity – they also had a couple of spots in the middle but the fish weren’t visiting those even after days of baiting - and a suitable clear area amongst the weed was located, which was larger pieces of gravel with clay behind it.

Usually both anglers would opt to fish on the smooth clay or hard sand and ignore the clean gravel, but for filming purposes that wasn’t possible, because as soon as fish started to feed on the clay and mud, the water would have clouded up to the extent that filming anything underwater would have been impossible due to the lack of visibility.

So, they had to opt for fishing on the gravel, and this soon highlighted why they usually avoid it, and why you should do too, where at all possible. Not only did they get visual confirmation, but also saw the difference in terms of results compared to when fellow Team Korda members Darrell Peck and Tom Stokes fished the venue (both of whom caught the big fully scaled mirror), without any underwater cameras, and were able to fish on the type of spots they would normally choose, on the edge of the gravel rather than in the middle of the lumpy stuff.

During filming Tom and Neil quickly got to see how this type of lakebed adversely affected presentation and the way that their rigs sat.

They also got to see first hand how different types of bait made things even worse, with smaller boilies, boilie crumb, pellets and corn potentially settling in between stones, and any type of sloppier spod mix or smaller particles ending up right in amongst it, with the result being that the carp were feeding very close to the bottom.

Whilst that might not sound like such a bad thing, it actually means that the fish are hardly moving when they are feeding, which makes them much harder to hook – if you have watched the Underwater film at Carplantis, you’ll have seen both anglers deliberately spreading their bait around, including some off camera, so try and get the carp feeding in a way that gives the best chance of hooking them if they do pick up a hookbait.

It also meant that Tom’s favourite pop-up presentation on a spinner rig was largely being ignored as it was actually sitting higher than where the carp were feeding. At the same time it also meant that wafter and bottom bait hookbaits could easily settle in a funny position – which they observed first hand with one of Neil’s wafter hookbaits that ended up hanging over the side of a larger stone and was ignored by fish feeding right next to it.

This type of lakebed is also terrible for blunting hooks, especially sharpened or Kamakura type, or even for the hooklink getting caught on stones and not giving the bait enough movement to go into the mouth if it is sucked in from the wrong angle.

This led to both anglers drawing the conclusion that this type of gravel should be avoided wherever possible – something they already knew and apply to their own fishing anyway, but this served as visual confirmation.

How Bait Type, Boilie Size and Bait Spread Affect Carp Feeding

We’ve already touched on baiting and the impact that can have on how the fish feed and the likelihood of getting a hook up when your rig is taken inside their mouth.

But during the filming they fished two very different spots – one being out in the middle of the lake over chunky gravel, whilst the other was close in and a much nicer type of lakebed to fish on, with a hard bottom but no bigger stones, and was the type of spot that you would pick anyway even if you were just fishing normally, without any cameras.

On the preferred closed in sandy spot they were able to get a bait spread that was much closer to how they would normally fish with boilies, and also found that whilst the nut ‘sludge’ mixture – which the lake owner uses himself – proved to be more of a hindrance than a help on the stony ground (in terms of actually getting bites, rather than fish not responding to it), on the other spot it helped to get the carp feeding, but not in a way that reduced their chances of a pick up.

Neil and Tom were actively using this nut sludge on this close in spot to draw the carp in and get a feeding response if fish had been on the area and then things quietened down, and they then fed a little bit more of it.

Whilst you can’t see all of this going on, unless of course you are fishing a spot that is close enough to the bank that you can actually watch the fish feeding without spooking – and even then it is very different to having a camera at the eye level of the fish and being able to observe exactly how they are feeding – you can put things in your favour by considering not only what type of bait you are going to use, but more importantly the sort of feeding response that you are expecting to get.

A great example of this is hemp, which has always been very effective at getting carp to feed, but at the same time can make it almost impossible to get your hookbait picked up if that seed is mostly what you have introduced, and there aren’t enough larger food items to make the fish feed in a way where they will pick up something larger like a boilie hookbait, and even if they do, they aren’t moving enough between each mouthful to actually tighten the hook link and for the mechanics of the rig to have a chance to work, prior to the rig being ejected.

There are times when a carp can pretty much be stationary on the bottom, sucking in food and with its gills moving as it ‘chews’ on the food items and filters out any debris, and whilst this is indeed a carp that is actively feeding well, it isn’t doing so in a way that makes it particularly catchable, and so definitely isn’t a desired feeding response for angling.

So, whilst one type of bait might be brilliant on a particular lake, or even in a certain spot or fishing situation on that water, there will be other occasions where it can actually end up ruining your chances, or at the very least making it much harder to get a bite – especially as you don’t have the benefit of seeing what is going on in your swim, like we do on an Underwater film!  

Why Prebaiting and Resting Your Swim Catch More Carp

One thing that didn’t come as any sort of surprise was just how effective pre-baiting can be, and that was evident when Dovey and Spooner had a few days off from filming, but the crew kept trickling bait in during their absence from the lake, and upon casting out when they returned, the response from the fish was almost instant.

It did reinforce though just how successful a tactic it can be if you can keep on trickling in some bait regularly on the same spot – Neil has had plenty of success in the past doing so, even if just putting in 200 boilies each time – but obviously only where the fishery rules allow, and you aren’t interfering with any other anglers who are actually fishing at the time.

It was also noticeable that removing their lines from the water for a few hours definitely helped in terms of the fish gaining confidence on the spot and becoming less wary in terms of how they fed.

Given how clear the water was and it being shallow, plus them having to fish with fairly heavy gear due to the amount of weed, the carp definitely seemed to know that there was a rig in the water – and that was just fishing with one rod on the spot. So, by resting your spot, especially at times of day when you aren’t expecting action anyway, you are actually increasing your chances of a bite when you have got a rig in the water.

They were also able to observe how wary the fish can become after a couple of them have been caught from an area, and that is something that Tom has observed in his own fishing, with spots building over a period of time, and then the action tapering off once enough fish have been caught from there that the rest become very wary of feeding there, and it is time to find somewhere new to fish on.

Best Hookbait Presentation for Different Lakebed Types

Both Dovey and Spooner have hookbaits that they have a lot of confidence in and use for much of their own fishing, so this Underwater filming session proved to be a real eye-opener for them, when these baits failed to work as they expected.

Having complete faith in your hookbaits – which Tom does with the yellow pop-ups which he uses for the majority of his fishing, and especially so during the spring – is a big advantage as it means there is one less variable to think about with your fishing.

But from what they were seeing on the underwater cameras it quickly became apparent that the wary carp in the gin clear waters of the Manor Fishery certainly weren’t picking out the hookbaits quickly as they had expected them to – especially given that they were also boosted with proven Goo flavours that both anglers use all the time. In fact, they seemed to be actively avoiding the bright baits at times.

Over the years that the Underwater films have been made, pink has been an incredibly successful colour in the spring – going all the way back to Underwater 7&8 in 2013 at St John’s on the Linear Fisheries complex, when Danny Fairbrass famously caught the Big Fully Scaled on a pink almond Goo hook bait – and has proven itself time after time, but on this occasion it made no noticeable difference compared to Dovey’s favoured yellow pineapple Goo pop-ups.

It wasn’t even the case that the fish were actually wary of the colour itself, as they were loose feeding Mainline Essential Cell boilies, which themselves are a fairly bright colour, along with standard Cell.

And having gone through Neil’s extensive selection of different pop-ups and wafters, it soon became apparent that it wasn’t just the colour that might be an issue, but also the fact that the bait wasn’t hard on the lakebed – not just on the lumpy gravel spot but also the close in area as well.

This led to them trying various different hookbait variations to try and increase the number of chances they were getting, including much duller match-the-hatch type hookbaits that they would usually use later in the summer once the fish had seen everything, rather than in the spring (which is when the filming took place).

A brown coloured Cell pop-up that had been soaked in Honey Goo – to the extent they were no longer buoyant enough to pop the rig up – produced fish, once Dovey had drilled them out and added enough cork that they would fish as a pop-up on his spinner rigs.

A snowman hookbait also worked very well, with an Essential boilie straight out of the bag topped with a piece of yellow pop-up – so it definitely wasn’t just the colour that was an issue. Both of these hookbaits were picked up far more often than their initial choices – with bright baits that stand out the carp should actively be picking those out, if you are going to get quick bites as you would expect to, but the Manor carp definitely weren’t keen on them.

So a combination of the bait colour, and also how it behaved and sat on the lakebed was a critical factor on this particular session.

On the lumpy gravel spot a pop-up, which presented much better and kept the hook point clear of the stones but which also wasn’t too obtrusive and was a duller colour, definitely seemed to be the best option.

Whereas on the sandy spot, and bait fished touching the bottom, but with a little bit of buoyancy and a bit of colour (yellow which matched some of the loosefeed anyway) worked best on this occasion.

Rig Mechanics vs Presentation: What Really Hooks More Carp?

A topic which is often debated amongst anglers is not only which specific type of rig is the best, but also the exact details of how they set it up, and if you asked ten of the Team Korda anglers you could well end up with ten different answers – even for one specific fishing situation!

That is partly because it is such a subjective subject and there is no right or wrong answer – especially as most of the time you don’t actually know anyway, aside from your catch rate, and can’t see all the times a carp either ejects it or won’t pick it up in the first place.

There are also variables which are completely out of the anglers hands as well, such as how the rig and lead system land on the bottom on that particular cast, which was something that became evident when fishing the lumpy gravel spot, as sometimes it would be sitting horribly, and without a camera you would never have done. On that type of lakebed the lead system can easily settle in a sub-optimal position, or the rig itself can end up sticking up (when using any sort of stiffer hooklink material) if it happens to land badly with a big stone under the swivel end of the hooklink.

Or you can even end up being unlucky with the hookbait sitting in a position where it either looks dangerous to a carp or is hard for them to suck in, meaning it is unlikely to be picked up, and in that scenario it doesn’t matter how good the mechanics of it are, as it needs to end up inside the mouth of a carp for those to have any chance of working.

There is also a constant trade off between just how ‘spiteful’ the rig is in terms of hooking potential once it is inside the mouth and how often it converts when it gets picked up, versus the chances of it ending up in the mouth in the first place by being picked up. This is something that Dovey highlights – if the rig hooks 2 out of 3 carp that pick it up, it can still be a worse option than a rig that has a 1 in 2 hook-up rate, but ends up inside the mouth twice as often due to the way it presents and resets.

So it is a constant battle between hooking potential, presentation, and knowing that the rig is still fishing effectively even after being picked up and ejected, and that is what both Tom and Neil tend to focus on, and their spinner rigs do exactly that – unlike Danny Fairbrass who is very much focussed on the rig mechanics and making small tweaks to try and hook every carp that takes it into its mouth.

The reality is though that all three anglers are very successful in their own way, and highlights once again that there are no right or wrong answers – confidence also plays a big part in this, and you want to be sat behind rigs you know work.

Whilst you obviously want to be thinking about what you are using in any given angling situation and not just blindly casting out the same thing wherever you go and whatever type of lake bed or feeding situation you encounter, at the same time you don’t want to be constantly doubting or changing your rigs either.

Tom and Neil both have a standard length that they typically fish their booms at on their spinner/Ronnie rigs – that being 5.5 inches of 25lb Korda Boom for Tom, and 7 inches for Neil – and during this Underwater session both of them did play around with that. Dovey even completely moved away from his usual set-up and tried something different for his snowman hookbait, with a boom section made from Hybrid Stiff, still fished Ronnie rig style, but with a Spinner hook rather than his usual Krank. To further enhance the mechanics of this rig, rather than the ready-made Shot-on-the-Hook, Tom prefers to mould a small piece of putty onto the bend of the hook, which helps it turn and take a hold, as well as ensuring that the hookbait sits on top of the hook and hides it.

But by the end of their filming, they’d reached the conclusion that they will largely still stick with what they know and go on the basis that they won’t hook every carp, but will pretty much always have something on the end of their line that is going to get picked up regularly, and is effective enough when that happens that they will still catch plenty of carp.

The reality is that a lot of the changes that are made during filming in direct response to what the angler sees on the camera would never have happened in a real fishing situation – for a start you’d never know you’d just been done on your current rig anyway, and would base any changes on the actual angling and your catch results.

The time you might respond is when you caught a fish and saw that the hook hold was in a sub-optimal position inside of the mouth, as you will often see with Danny Fairbrass on his films, where he then might tweak the length of his boom slightly, or even the hook pattern, in order to try and achieve the perfect hookhold. But even then he won’t know if it has worked or not until he lands the next carp and can see how it is hooked, and will also never know how many times it might have been ejected or ignored by other fish in the meantime.  

The Best Time of Day to Catch Carp in Spring

The session did reinforce just how big a part the weather plays in fishing, and especially so in the earlier part of spring.

The carp were definitely favouring the shallow end of the lake initially and often turned up in the afternoon once the sun had a chance to warm up the water after the colder nights they were getting.

It also showed how quickly things can change in the spring, with very limited fish activity initially and colder temperatures, but by the end of their session they were concerned about the carp potentially spawning, as they were already doing on other lakes, and these days we often get very short windows in terms of ‘traditional’ spring fishing, and those need to be taken advantage of.

Those sunny days will also mean that the carp also spend a fair amount of time off of the bottom altogether and explains why zigs at this time of year can be such a deadly tactic.

A real eye-opener and something which both Tom and Neil will change in their own fishing, is the amount of feeding activity on the spots at dusk, and often this wasn’t much different to what they observed early morning, which is the time most carp anglers see as being the ‘golden period’ when you’re most likely to get a bite.

It is often the case that during this dusk period anglers are still getting their rods out or baiting up, and potentially missing out on chances they might have had if they’d done so a bit earlier and already had their traps set ready for a dusk feeding spell.

Underwater Filming at The Manor: Quick Questions

Why is chunky gravel a poor lakebed to fish on?

Chunky gravel can negatively affect both bait presentation and rig mechanics. Smaller food items often fall between the stones, causing carp to feed almost stationary, whilst hookbaits can sit awkwardly and hooks are more likely to become blunt or snagged. Whenever possible, choosing a smoother lakebed such as clay, sand or fine gravel will usually improve presentation and hooking efficiency.

Does the way carp feed affect how well a rig works?

Yes. Underwater filming showed that carp feeding almost stationary are much harder to hook than fish moving between mouthfuls. The more a carp moves whilst feeding, the greater the chance of tightening the hooklink and allowing the rig mechanics to work as intended.

Should you spread your bait or keep it tightly grouped?

In many situations, spreading bait encourages carp to move between individual food items rather than feeding in one place. This creates a better feeding response and increases the likelihood of the rig working effectively when a hookbait is picked up.

Are bright pop up hookbaits always the best choice?

No. The underwater observations showed that the Manor carp often ignored bright pop ups and responded better to more subtle hookbait presentations that sat closer to the lakebed. Hookbait colour, buoyancy and how it is presented should all be matched to the conditions rather than relying on one approach all of the time.

Does prebaiting make carp feed with more confidence?

Regular prebaiting can significantly increase carp confidence, especially when anglers are able to keep introducing bait over several days. The filming also showed that resting a spot by removing the lines for a period of time helped carp feed more confidently once the rigs were reintroduced.

Is it better to recast at dusk or have your rods already in position?

The underwater filming revealed that dusk was often one of the busiest feeding periods of the day. Rather than recasting or baiting up during this time, it is often more effective to have your rigs positioned beforehand so they are already fishing when the carp begin feeding.

Is rig mechanics more important than presentation?

Both are important, but presentation comes first. Even the most effective rig cannot hook a carp if the hookbait is never picked up. The filming reinforced the importance of balancing presentation, resetting ability and hooking efficiency, rather than focusing solely on aggressive rig mechanics.

How do weather and time of day affect carp feeding?

The underwater filming highlighted how quickly carp behaviour changed as spring conditions developed. Sunny afternoons often produced increased activity in the shallows, whilst dusk consistently proved to be a major feeding period. Adapting your tactics to changing weather and feeding times can significantly improve your chances.