Using PVA mesh for carp fishing

Solid PVA bags are all the rage these days, and whilst they are incredibly effective in many different angling scenarios, it has led to mesh style bags being overlooked by many anglers.

PVA mesh, such as the Korda Funnel Web System, is an incredibly versatile item of tackle, allowing you to present your rig and freebies in all sorts of different ways, and for years was the go-to type of bag that people would use, if attaching any sort of PVA bag to their rig.

In more recent times though, solid PVA bags seem to have almost taken over in terms of popularity, and part of that is because systems such as the Korda Solidz have become so user-friendly and easy to use compared to in the past. Plus there are lots more instructional videos, from experts such as Rob Burgess, who have had great success with the method and show you exactly how to set it up properly – a lot of the issues people have with solid bags is not tying them correctly or using the wrong sort of tackle.

That doesn’t mean though that mesh PVA doesn’t still have an important role to play in carp fishing, and not only does it give some presentation options that you can’t get with a solid bag, but is also an awful lot quicker to tie up, especially in situations where it is taking you quite a few casts to get a rig in place.

What is PVA mesh?

PVA, or poly vinyl alcohol – not to be confused with poly vinyl acetate which isn’t water soluble! – is a material which can come in the form of a sheet (such as used to make solid PVA bags or tape), or as a thread not dissimilar to cotton.

That PVA thread is then literally knitted into a thicker string (for things like PVA string or mesh tape) or into an actual cylindrical mesh, of whatever diameter is required, and that is where your Funnel Web style PVA comes from.

You will usually find it sold on some sort of system incorporating a plastic tube, on which the PVA mesh is stored, and which comes inside another tube with sealed ends to prevent moisture from getting in and starting to break down the PVA , which it isn’t being used.

It couldn’t really be easier to use – simply tie a knot in the end of the PVA mesh, add your choice of bait and required amount by putting it in the other end of the tube, then use some sort of plunger (supplied) to push the bait down compactly and then off of the tube, so you are basically left with a tightly packed bag or stick (depending on what you put in it) hanging from the end of the tube, which you can then knot at the other end as well and then cut it off.

It's incredibly quick to use and creates virtually no wastage, plus you can easily refill your system via the refills that are available – either on a spool designed to fill the system once, or on bulk spools if you are using lots of PVA mesh.

Your PVA mesh system can easily be stored in a side pocket of your rucksack or carryall, or in one of the Korda Compac EVA pouches, and the PVA mesh inside will stay dry until you need it.  

It is such a simple system to use, literally a couple of knots and you can have a mesh bag ready to cast out in well under a minute!

Ways to use PVA mesh

As well as being a way to present a small amount of bait very accurately around your rig, PVA mesh bags are also useful for preventing tangles, such as where you might want to use a braided hook link, but where it either isn’t practical to fish a solid bag; you want to use a hook link longer than is suitable for solid bags; or you want something that you can quickly hook onto your rig before casting and which takes literally seconds to do.

In its simplest form you can literally just tie up a bag – the size of which is up to you but obviously the larger it is, then the less distance and accuracy you will get on the cast – containing something like pellets or boilies, place your hook through the mesh a couple of times to ensure it stays on, then cast it out, and once it reaches the lake bed it will dissolve fairly quickly (due to how easily water can come into contact with all the PVA) and leave your rig and hookbait in amongst a small pile of bait.

This type of set up is far from the most aerodynamic though and will tend to cast like a bag of spanners, as there is so much drag and extra weight attached to the hookbait, compared to normal, and it will often cartwheel through the air if using a larger bag, and even very small ones don’t cast that well.

That is largely because you effectively have two weights on your line, rather than just a lead as usual, and which are acting independently. To get around that and to make mesh PVA bags practical to use when casting further or needing to be very accurate, you can attach the bag to your lead (depending on the lead system you use) and then nick your hook into the other end of it, which makes everything much neater and means that all of the weight is connected to each other and tends to act in tandem, meaning it casts much better. For this sort of set-up a stick shaped bag tends to work better – these are usually formed by using finer items of bait inside (such as breadcrumb) plus the system plunger to create a neat cylinder.

PVA Sticks

At one time the use of PVA sticks – also known as dynamite sticks due to their resemblance to one! – were all the rage, but whilst they may have dropped off the radar in terms of popularity, they are still just as effective as they always were.

Rather than being hooked onto you rig, a stringer needle was used to go through the stick from end to end, and it was used in conjunction with a hook link that had a loop in one end and attached via some sort of quick change clip. You literally just used the needle to thread the stick onto your hook link, and it would sit so the hook point was in the end of the stick.

Not only was this very anti-tangle, but it also meant that your hook link and hook were covered with the contents of the stick – usually some sort of fine crumb or groundbait – thus masking it from the carp, and it could be used with most rig set ups without having to worry about components shifting around during the cast.

Tom Maker has an even simpler way of doing this, which he uses to great success, and doesn’t require the use of a needle – literally just pushing the hook into the end of the bag and using a half hitch in your braided hook link around the PVA stick knot at the other end, to hold it in place for the cast. This set-up also has the advantage that it can be used with pop-ups, or any rig where you want a piece of putty on the hook link, without that being dislodged (as it would be if you tried to thread the stick on with a needle in the conventional way.

Size of PVA mesh bags

Theoretically the only limit on the size of your mesh PVA bag or stick is the length of mesh that you have on your Funnel Web System, but obviously in reality you will reach a size that isn’t practical to use and cast.

The size largely comes down to still being able to get the accuracy and distance that you need consistently – if using large bags then every mis-cast means a bigger pile of bait in the wrong place.

There are times when you might see an angler using very large bags, maybe when fishing maggots and dropping rigs from a boat or bait boat, to ensure the maggots reach the bottom and don’t get eaten by small fish on the way down – often small nuisance species are more likely to eat them on the drop than once they’ve settled on the lake bed.

At the opposite extreme, a mesh PVA bag could literally comprise of a single boilie, either crumbled up or whole, that is being used to prevent tangles as well as adding a little extra attraction around your hook bait.

What can you put in a mesh PVA bag

In theory you can put anything inside this type of bag, as long as it isn’t wider than the diameter of the PVA cylinder, but in practice you want food items that allow you to form a tight bag that will cast as well as possible.

PVA mesh actually has a fair amount of stretch in it naturally, and this makes it easy – especially when using the plunger – to ensure that your PVA bag is tightly packed rather than floppy.

Typically anglers tend to use things such as varying sizes of pellets, boilie crumb, bread crumb, groundbaits, pieces of boilies or nuts, or even whole boilies – a mesh cylinder can be used to replace a stringer, and because the PVA is on the outside you don’t have to worry about leaving gaps so it melts, it will just do so anyway (unlike tape/string which runs  through the centre of boilies and where water can’t get at it unless you leave gaps between baits).

For any bait that has any sort of water content though, you will need to either completely dry it, or add a PVA friendly liquid to it such as something oil based – sweetcorn being a very good example as the water content will cause the PVA mesh to breakdown upon contact before you even get a chance to cast out.

Any sort of PVA friendly liquid works though, such as the Korda Goo, and this can either be soaked into whatever you’re putting inside the bag – such as crumb – or added directly to the bag once tied. You can literally just squirt on your chosen liquid attractor, or even dip the whole bag into it.

It is worth remembering though that in order for the PVA mesh to break down, it needs to be able to react with water, so if you are suing something that is oil based, for example, it is a good idea to tie your bags up as you need them, as soaking them in it in advance may mean that the PVA becomes drenched in the liquid and then once in water won’t dissolve, especially in lower water temperatures.

You can even put non-bait items inside a mesh PVA bag, in particular, some anglers will put several foam nuggets inside one and attach the bag - rather than a nugget directly on the hook - then once it melts, the foam nugget floats to the surface, giving you a visual marker, and makes it easy to catapult some bait around it.

You don't even have to attach the mesh bag to your rig, and in some situations they are great for giving you more range when catapulting out small or light baits, especially when floater fishing, where you can make up small mesh bags full of mixers or floating pellets, and then catapult out the bag as this will give you more range than firing out the floaters in the normal way. You can even add a stone to the mesh bag, along with your floaters, to add extra weight if you need even more range - and of course, are in a situation where you aren't directly catapulting floaters on top of the carp - as the bag will sink initially, then melt and burst open quickly, allowing your floaters to rise to the surface.

Different mesh for different times of year

Different types of PVA mesh are available, both in terms of diameter and also depending on the time of year, and type of bait you want to put in them.

The Korda Funnel Web System comes in three different diameters, Original, Boilie, and LongChuck.

The Original is the widest and is great as an all-rounder for mesh PVA bags; the Boilie one is narrower and lends itself more to creating sticks; and the LongChuck is for where you want to use some sort of mesh PVA bag but want it to be as compact and aerodynamic as possible, hence its narrow diameter.

Our Funnel Web Systems come with Hexmesh as standard, which is ideal for larger baits such as pellets or pieces of boilies.

A Micro Mesh version is also available in the form of 5m or 20m refills, and has a much tighter weave, which makes it ideal for smaller food items such as boilie crumb or maggots, that could easily fall through the holes of the Hexmesh and leave your bag half empty before you even get a chance to cast it out.

Both types are very durable and anti-ladder, so unlike some types of PVA mesh, they won’t easily get damaged when being threaded onto the tube (when filling it with PVA initially) or when pulling it off to tie a bag – ladders will leave holes and weaken the structure of the bag so it may not hold together for the cast. It also won’t easily get caught on things such as rough skin on your hands, which can also cause ladders.

Both types of PVA are designed for 4 Season use, meaning that they will still breakdown even in very cold water temperatures, but at the same time are able to hold together until they reach the lake bed when being used in warmer water (as long as it isn’t too deep and warm, in which case the bag is likely to dissolve or detach on the way down).

Can I use a mesh PVA bag with any rig and lead clip system?

Whilst mesh PVA bags are very versatile, there are some instances where they don’t really work and can’t be used, when it comes to certain rigs and lead clip systems.

This is due to the extra drag that the PVA bag causes through the air, as it hits the water, and when it sinks.

When it comes to lead clip type systems, they can be used but only when not setting the tail rubber lightly, and even then sometimes the lead will come off as your rig hits the surface – this is due to the speed that the lead is moving at versus how quickly the PVA bag slows on impact with the surface, so basically the lead keeps going and can rip the tail rubber off of the clip.

The size of the PVA bag plays a big part in this, and whilst you may get away with smaller mesh bags attached to your rig, larger ones will cause issues. Attaching the bag to the lead system, rather than your hook, does help as well, as the lead and bag tend to act more as one, rather than as separate forces.

When it comes to rigs, there are certain ones where the addition of a mesh PVA bag to the hook, and the force that exerts upon the rig components during the cast, means that your presentation is ruined and the rig doesn’t sit as you intended it to.

There are plenty of examples of that, and usually basically anything where a piece of silicone or hook bead is being used to set the exact point whereby your bait is attached to the hook, be it via a hair or some sort of micro swivel.

These include rigs such as Darrell Peck’s multi combi rig, where the addition of a mesh bag can actually cause the hook to pull free from the kicker! Other rigs such as the flipper, which uses a piece of silicone to determine where the hair exits the hook, and the addition of a mesh bag will cause that silicone to slide back round towards the eye during the cast, thus leaving your hair exiting in completely the wrong place and ruining the mechanics of the rig.