Steve Clarke has been having lots of success with a Drennan Pellet Feeder filled with groundbait, rather than the more usual pellet feed. 

Recently I’ve been using the Pellet Feeder to great success, but in a slightly unorthodox way. As the name would suggest, the Pellet Feeder is designed for mainly fishing small pellets and in generally deeper water. This particular design helps retain bait well while falling through the deeper layers. The reason why I love this style of feeder is for the same reasons, it holds and protects your feed to ensure you offer a perfect presentation when it counts. Its unique shape only allows fish to feed from the one side and it conceals your rig completely, leaving just your hook bait for the taking.

Now not every venue is the same, but at Flaxland’s the island banks are undercut. This offers a free run for the carp with covered tunnels and island holes that are naked to the human eye. I try to fish extremely tight to these, casting through the grass-covered holes wherever possible.

Why the unorthodox method, you may ask? I use Hinders Just The Ticket groundbait to provide an extremely attractive cloud while providing little food and, as mentioned, fishing that tight across it’s extremely shallow. Another plus would be by concealing your feed and rig when you are fishing venues with larger numbers of roach and other small nuisance fish. It keeps a better presentation for longer periods of time, which hopefully turns into bites from your desired species… in my case the carp!

Another top tip is to feed continuously over the top of your feeder. Only three or four pellets at a time, but with hungry carp this certainly leads to more takes.

To test my theories I recently took two mates out on separate trips to get some outside feedback. Both lads are extremely capable anglers with a great insight into match fishing on a competitive level. Both Chris and Kev were extremely surprised on how the carp reacted to the Pellet Feeder setup with groundbait and a White Plum Boosted Pellet hook bait. The more we fed, the more that tip went round!

The Pellet Feeder is a truly awesome feeder and an extremely productive style of fishing, especially when fishing tight to islands. Fish tight, feed tight!