It's a great time to go in search of a few carp and MARC COULSON has a great way of targeting them once you’ve found them...

It’s still a little early in the year to start piling the bait in, although levels can certainly be upped from now onwards; however, the majority of us will want something different altogether. Casting at showing carp is a great tactic in spring, especially if you’re only on short, day-only sessions, and one method to use when doing so that scores hugely is a small PVA bag of pellets soaked in oil. 

The pellets inside the bag offer inherent attraction and, let’s face it, there are few carp that won’t eat a trout pellet! This is where
a PVA bag (I’m talking a small mesh one nicked on to the hook) will work perfectly well, With water temperatures rising, you can start to get away with raising the oil levels in the pellets – trout and halibut pellets, for example, will start to work now, but carp pellets are still very effective. I’ve found that the addition of oil can literally transform them... and it’s probably entirely different from what most other anglers are doing on your lake right now.

The choice of oil is important at this time
of year because, despite the aforementioned rise in temperatures, you don’t want to go all gung-ho with heavy fish oils just yet. Sunflower oil, bizarrely, is a brilliant and cheap option, but my favourite is most definitely hemp oil. Get the best quality one you can – even
then it’s still considerably cheaper than the majority of fish oils.