Matthew Fernandez decided to take a break from the busy carp fishing scene around Ringwood to spend time targeting crucians from a local farm pond. 

“When I first arrived at the venue, I walked around to observe what tactics the other anglers were using. To my surprise, they were all using bolt rigs with bite alarms and after speaking to a few anglers, they all told me the venue was fishing very slow.

“I opted to use my 13ft Drennan Acolyte Plus rod coupled with a centre pin reel loaded with 4lb monofilament. Float wise, I opted for a Drennan Carp 1 pole float as this offers great bite indication and as I don’t need to cast, I can get away with a 0.5g version. Instead of fishing with a hooklink, I like to fish my mainline straight through to a size 16 Super Specialist Barbel hook which is baited with double caster.”

Matthew chose a quiet swim away from the other anglers and carefully baited a small area just a rod length out, allowing him to lay his rig in with great accuracy over the baited area. His groundbait consisted of a fine fishmeal mix with 1mm micro pellets added to keep them rooting around in the swim for longer.

After spending half the morning in one swim getting plagued by tench to around 5lb, he decided to move down to the other end of the lake where the wind was blowing into. He chose a swim with plenty of lilly pads and after spending a few minutes plumbing the swim he decided to fish just down the shelf in 3ft of water, just off the lilly pads.

“All was quiet for about an hour, I was beginning to doubt my approach then the pole float shot under and I was into my first crucian. A minute later there was a bar of gold laying in the net. I quickly got the float back out, and sure enough, I was into another crucain. That session proved to be a productive one,  with plenty of bites resulting in four crucians and ten tench.”

Matthew has carried on using the same tactics on a few more sessions this summer and has now upped his crucian tally to 13, along with 30+ tench.