Match Fishing Snake Lakes Advice from Des Shipp

This question comes from Geoff Lowe. In a 5 hours match, on a typical snake lake, at what stage would you feed and then attack your margin swim? - Good question that, Geoff, and often that makes a big difference on a snake lake. - When you actually target the fish. - Yeah, it depends, really. It depends on fish, F1s or carp. With F1s, I think you need to feed them more, especially with things like maggots and casters. I think you can feed it really early. - Right, OK. - The F1s, especially when the warmer weather's around, they will come in immediately. If you're on a snake lake with big carp, it can be really difficult. It might not come in right to the end. Normally, on a snake lake, I would feed it casually at the start for maybe the first three hours. Just littlin' off then. - And you try to do that by hand? - Try and do it by hand, it depends on the venue, how good the fish is. Obviously if it's a quite hard fish, you might have to go down ten, eleven meters away from you, and I might just start every quarter of an hour, well, probably every 30 to 45 minutes, bit of bait in the big pot, go down and prime it. You're just primin' it out. - So, be regimented. Come off your long line. - Yeah, even if i'm catching, that's your next lines basically. You might be feeding your top five, and you're also priming your line up for later on, because them fish, you know, they do come in and out. You see carp come into the margins. You see them going out and they always come back. You don't need to put piles and piles of bait. You just want to make sure that when you do go down there, these carp are sort of swimming around that area. - Yeah that's a good tip, because quite often you see people that are reluctant to come off feeding fish. - But, it's worthwhile doing it to prime and swing through. - You've got to do it. I always say to people, you know, you fish in this swim, where's your next move going to be? It might be top five, or it could be down in the edge, or it could be shallow. - And if you've not primed it or fed it correctly. - Not primed it, you might not catch there. So, I would say a little often it'll start, go in, have a look, you know, and you'll get to a situation in a match where you might have an hour and a half to go, you've been in there a couple of times, it's not happening. That's the time to say, "Well, I need to feed some bait here." - Now I'm gonna concentrate on that. - Well, I've got to up me ante, I've gotta put more bait in, you know, leave it. Maybe not leave it so long. Put a big pot of bait in. Go on your long line where you've been catching, or short, you know, ten minutes, and then go. You'd be amazed sometimes, it's just like that. - Instant - They're instant. You know, so you've got two hours in. If you've been in there, and not caught, that's the time to start I think. You know, last hour and a half, I've got to start now priming. Sometimes you don't need to put loads of bait in. Sometimes they're just there, they're feeding, and you can cronk 'em. Sometimes you've got to put a volume of bait in to get the fish in your peg. Look to about two hours to go before you sort of start putting more bait in. - Other than an absolute red-letter day, you'd be looking at really concentrating in the margins for the last two hours. - Last two hours, yeah, yeah. You've gotta keep your eye like I've said. I say to people, always look around. If you see someone go in the margin. - Start to catch. - And they start a catch. That's the signal for you to think, I've got to go and have a look. It might not happen for you, but that's the time then you might have to make a decision to feed more bait to get the fish in your peg. Some days it doesn't happen at all, but that's fishing. - And it can, obviously, just transform your match. - It can transform your match. There are matches I've been nowhere, and then you can have the margin, you win the match. Or you get in the frame, you know. So, it's really, really important that you... the margin line, you never forget about it. Even in the winter. - So, prime it well and hopefully reap the rewards at the latter part of the match. - For more great videos like this, just subscribe to our YouTube channel. http:///subscription_center?add_user=UKInnovations

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