Thinking Tackle Carp Arena out now

This episode of Thinking Tackle sees two of the UK’s most successful big fish anglers, Darrell Peck and Tom Stokes, teaming up to go on an adventure across the Channel, to Carp Arena in Belgium, where a 60lb+ mirror known as Dino is very much on their target list.

It is spring time and the weather has only just started to warm up, which means that a lot of the residents of the lake are to be found in shallow water in the margins, but things are very different to when they’ve fished the lake in the past, as it has undergone extensive snag removal to increase the chances of landing anything hooked at this Embryo Angling holiday venue.

Boat fishing is very much a part of Carp Arena, both to place your rigs accurately on spots in the far margins that you could never cast to – due to both the distance and some of them being under overhanging bushes etc – as well as for landing fish, as although a lot of snags have been removed, it is still advisable in a lot of spots to use the boat to play and land the fish from.

Luckily both Darrell and Tom are very much at home in a boat, and throughout this episode of Thinking Tackle will show you how they use one, and especially the type of things they are looking for when it comes to placing their rigs on suitable spots. Given that they are mostly fishing in shallow water, they are actually dropping their rigs onto spots where they can see the bottom, or close to areas of coloured water where it is obvious that fish are feeding.

At this time of year it quickly becomes obvious that it is these types of spots that are mainly being frequented by the fish, and especially so with a lot of the cover having been removed from under the water.

At times the action is pretty frantic, especially considering that this certainly isn’t an easy lake, but it is still very noticeable that both anglers need to keep tweaking their spots and repositioning rods, based on where they have seen carp, in order to keep the bites coming.

Despite moving their spots around, it quickly becomes very noticeable that baits tipped with pink are being preferred – to the extent that sometimes when re-dropping rigs after a bite, they can see that most of the bait is still there and the hookbaits were one of the first things taken.

That was something that was very apparent during Underwater filming, and both have also taken parts of the rigs that proved successful during that filming – with Tom relying on the shot on the hook rig and a stiff boom, to a spinner rig, but with a bit of a difference at the other end so that it can be fished effectively when using a COG lead.

Darrell is very much sticking with his favourite combi multi rig, but he has also taken away some bits from Underwater and adapted them for use with this rig to make it more effective.

Not only is this episode of Thinking Tackle highly entertaining, and with the duo landing some big carp along the way, but it will also help you to put more fish on the bank, whether you’re specifically looking to pay a visit to Carp Arena, or just when it comes to fishing any similar venues where boats can be used, or even some of it can be taken and used within your spring tactics on any water.

This episode of Thinking Tackle is available from 5pm on Sunday, September 1 via the Korda TV Carp Fishing channel on YouTube.