it's an absolutely freezing Winter's day but I love my fishing I love getting bites and I love my feed of fishing so we are here at Spring Vil now spring Vil is a fantastic fishery just um on the outskirts of newon Trent the beauty of this fishery is that it's very mixed in stocking nature so there's a lot of different species in these lakes and I know that I can sit down on almost any Peg and I can get bites which is when the water freezing and the air temperature is Rock Bottom getting bites is
brilliant you know I just love when the tip goes around is fantastic I've got a beautiful little setup that I want to give a bit of a run out so rod and reel that I'm really keen on using and I've also got a pint of maggots now maggots for me are the perfect bait for this time of year we know how simple maggots are they catch every single species and for some reason unlike other baits you can feed them so what I don't want to do is I don't want to turn up to a venue
and feel like I'm just dobbing for fish you know chucking out bom and corn bomb and bread it's a great way of fishing great for bigger fish but it's it just doesn't feel like I'm in control of the situation it feels like I'm hunting the fish rather than sort of like attracting them into my swim so the fact that I can feed some bait I love doing that we're going to put a maggot feeder on the end of my setup my wonderful full little balance setup we're going to feed some maggots I think a pint
of bait is going to be more than enough and we're going to have a great day catching a mixed bag of fish that's the plan let's hope it all works out [Music] I absolutely love my CTX feed light this is the 10f footer and I will use this rod for my commercial fishery work fishing for match siiz carp and f1s meth feeder work all throughout the year but during the colder months when I'm targeting a real mixed bag of fish fitted with the half oun glass tip like we've got um in the rod today this
Rod's superb so beautifully well balanced there's a feel to this Rod when you're playing fish you can feel the fish kicking through the rod ball it just feels really nice and lightweight in your hand and like I say you get away re using really light kit because it is a really nice well balanced bit of um bit of carbon now this is the 10 foot Rod I think 10t is about the right length for most of my commercial fishery work on on Chucks up to maybe 30 m or so so if you're going to get
one rod get a 10f footer it's going to do you for loads of commercial fishery Work Fit to the rod I've got my invictor 5000 reel I've got 08 line on the Reel and at the business end to attach my feeder I've got a feeder link I think a feeder link when you're fishing for smaller fish feeder link is really important it helps keep that separation it helps the fish to feel the quiver tip instead of the feeder and that's quite important because smaller fish they can use the weight of that feeder to sort of
like shake the head against that feeder and get rid of the Hulk obviously for bigger fish not so much of a problem because they bolt away and they'll actually hop themselves against that feeder but for smaller fish they tend to shake really violently and fast and they can get the hook quite quick so a feed link Crees that pendulum effect when the fish is shaking its head means that the fish struggles to get rid of the hook all I've done to stop that feed link sliding off the end of the line is tie a nice
big bit of uh fluorocarbon there that's 25 cm of fluorocarbon that's 12 lb fluorocarbon and I've just water knotted it to the mainline there and that creates a really nice large knot that that feeder link buts up against and that's what I'll cast off so really simple setup no weight on the line whatsoever to that floral carbon I'll attach my hook length I've just tied a little overhand knot in that floral carbon looped over my hook length and I will alter the length of my hook length then so I tie up my hook lengths to
50 or 60 cm I keep them on a spool and then cut down that hook length as needed and I've just attached 30 C M of hook length there to that bit of fluorocarbon and I've got a total length below the feeder of around 50 cm I'm not being too critical today but around 50 cm has worked really well hook wise I've got two different setups um two different styles of hook and line that I think I'll be using today first of all the fishings a little bit fishing's a little bit tougher 010 to a
size 18 hook if the fishing is on the good side size 16 to 02 I think there's a chance of us hooking carp any sort of bonus fish 02 it's going to give you a real good chance of Landing that fish especially with this really soft Rod feeders it's all about maggot feeders today and I love two styles of feeders so we've got these drena feeder bombs these cast beautifully you load them at the base and I like these feeders when you're feeding small amounts of bait they're only a small feeder you don't need many
um many maggots on a freezing cold day to get a by and if we're feeding really fugly that is the feeder for me to use but obviously there's occasions where you need to feed a lot more bait that's where these bigger maggot feeders will come into play I hope that every time I go out fishing with maggots on a feeder I'm using one of these big boys cuz that means I'm catching loads of fish [Music] [Music] [Music] fishing with a maggot feeder is no different to when you're fishing with a ground bait feeder sometimes you
want your bait to fall out as the feeder falls through the water that's great for attracting fish into the swim sometimes you want your bait to bomb to the bottom in one solid pile and that's what's most useful that's great when you're catching a lot of fish you've already gathered them into the area so to speak so we can do that with a maggot feeder I've got two feeders on my tray with two sort of different bait release options I've got my maggot feeder here where I've opened out the holes so I just get my
scissors give them a bit of a Twist in the holes open the holes out to double their original size and that means that every time I cast out with that feeder most of the bait's going to get to the bottom but a good percentage on impact or when it's falling through the water good percentage of maggots are going to fall out and they're going to slowly drift down to the bottom and they're going to attract fish from a wide area because there's bait falling through the water we know how appealing that is to fish that's
great for Gathering fish into the area and maybe for smaller fish but once we've gathered them once we have got those fish in the area or if we're catching a lot of smaller fish we want to Target bigger fish with a more compact feeding style we'll just revert back to the standard feeder a lot smaller holes the maggots are going to stay in that feeder for a lot longer more compact little area of bait this is the feeder that is going to catch those fish especially in deeper water but you need to gather them with
that feeder with the big wide open holes [Music] [Music] [Music] something that's really important when you're fishing for fish that don't necessarily bite in the most aggressive way is quiv tip choice so if I was fishing for carp sometimes quiv tip Choice it doesn't matter you know they're going to tear off they're going to pull that Rod around whatever happens because they're aggressive you see them as they bolt away but for fish that sort of pick up a bait maybe shake their head and sort of like flapper fish I like to call them smaller fish
skimmers roach those sort of fish qutip choice is really important we're using a feeder link to create less weight on the line we don't want the fish to be able to feel any sudden weight otherwise they'll be able to eject the hook same goes for this end of the setup as well so I'm using a half Ozz glass quiver tip it is beautifully soft and when a fish takes the bait and feels the hook point it just hasn't got enough sudden weight to rid itself of that hook Point whereas if that was a solid if
that was a sudden jolt they can sort of like flap their heads a little bit and get rid of that hook point they're just not heavy enough really to drive the hook Point fully in but if there's any weight there they sort of can get rid of it it's a strange situation but trust us we've done a lot of small smaller fish silverfish work softer quiver tips are the way to go so I've caught a real mix bag of fish today we've got all different shapes and sizes of fish setting your quiver tip I find
is really important we don't want it too slack and we also don't want too much of a bend in it so I'm looking to tighten up once I've cast out to create that tiny little Bend in the quiver tip and with this nice soft quiver tip it means that there's always somewhere to go we can see those drop back bites but also if we get a really positive bites we've had some great bites from the bigger fish today with this soft quiver tip you know when a fish is on it absolutely toes around beautifully so
setting the quiver tip and using the right quiver tip is really [Music] important one of the beauties of using maggots as bait is that you never know what you're going to get a bite from next because every single fish loves to eat a maggot and we've had a real mixed bag here today at Springville it's a fantastic fishery there's loads of different fish in these Lakes we've had little carp we've had couple of cruisins roach we've had an ey but we've had loads of these little Chub big beautiful little fish which let me tell you
on a cold day love to feed and they love eating maggots we've made quite a few changes today as the session has gone on most important being is we've switched feeders around a little bit so I thought today's session with the water being so cold was going to be a real scratch session I started on this little Feeder bomb I've opened the holes up a little bit so the maggots escape a little bit faster but it's a really lightweight feeder and I can put sort of six to 10 maggots in that feeder cast it out
really Frugal way of feeding but the fishing here as I say is is so good we've ended up using a bigger feeder feeding more bait we know that chubber pretty greedy with caught an ey I imagine there's more ey out there than we're catching so they like to eat bait as well and the bigger feeder has really helped us out the other thing we've changed over again because I was expecting to be a little bit more negative is our hook length we were earlier on we were fishing with 010 line a size 18 hook real
scale down tackle which you can fish really nicely with this feeder light this 10t soft feeder light Rod but because we've we're getting regular bikes and double maggot has become a really good hookbait option I wanted to use a bigger hook and also I wanted to make sure that if we hook a a bigger car or a bigger chub that we land that fish so 02 and a 16 is what we're on now the rest of the gear is really sort of standard feeder kit so as I say I've got this beautiful CTX 10ft feeder
light Rod I've fitted the half oun glass tip in it so we can see all those little tiny indications I've got a nice little invictor reel loaded with 08 line I don't want something that's going to be too thick so this 08 line it probably breaks at around 45 which is plenty strong enough for I'm saying everything in the winter you know even if we were catching quite a few carp it's plenty strong enough for that nice and robust I don't want to go tooo thick though because if I was to use that thicker line
I couldn't get away with using those really small feeders and those lightweight feeders it' be awkward for for casting out and sinking the line so we've gone with that 08 main line and then my standard feeder rig which is a a feeder link and then a a little bit of heavy floro to act as a boom below that feeder link hard anything on the line and you can see it's working really well you see every little bite with that nice soft quiver tip take my time playing the fish and it's a little bit of a
forgotten tactic maggot feeder fishing but on the right day is absolutely devastating and with maggots always feel you can feed a bit of bait sometimes when you're fishing with other baits maybe pellets or oh he's give me a I tell you what these chub not a big fish probably about a pound or so but they always give you a bit of a doggy fight right of the net and you know what that's one of the reasons that I've I've stepped up that hook length because I just know that with that light hook and 010 I
can't really be in control of fish like that especially when they want to dive around at your feet I mean they're beautiful fish to catch I've just got two and two on camera tell what I'm going to leave it at that because I don't want to go for three and three I reckon that's pushing it a little bit but balance set up a pint of maggots you can have a wonderful day fishing it's all about getting the combinations right a fantastic venue fantastic pieces of Kit fantastic bait get yourself out there no matter what the
conditions there's always fish to catch I'm going to carry on fishing because I'm absolutely loving my session [Music] [Music] oh [Music] [Music]
