Snowman version of the Beausoleil big carp rig delivers great results for lake owner Matt.
Last October, I had a few nights’ fishing at Beausoleil when the weather allowed, and instead of my standard double bottom bait rig, I fished with a snowman presentation with a dairy cream popup.
See the video of my session here:
My fishing tactics
As per usual, I set my goal at one fish per night and out of the 8 nights in total that I did over 2 sessions, I got 7 fish including 4 thirties. When I started, I was going to fish from Point A but there were too many leaves at the time on the water so I changed plans and moved my gear in the channel swim and spread the rods from the bridge to the end of the island. I put a lot of distance between my rods and what I was trying to do was spread the angling pressure. Plus, the channel is only 30 yards wide and these are big fish that can move a serious distance so you need the space to play the fish. So, individual bank sticks is the only way to go here.
I always fish with a tight clutch. All clutches are set so that they’re tight enough that the rod won’t go in but the fish can still take line if necessary. It provides much more solid hook holds and by the time I get to the rod, if the carp is on, it’s on and it’s staying on. You don’t want these fish charging on in the distance on an un-tight clutch, it’s too risky, you just loose fish.
I kept my approach simple and mobile and dropped rigs over showing fish. I moved swims a couple of times when they were beyond safe angling range and that proved to be a good tactic as well. The carp were very active in the mid upper layers and I suspected they were feeding on Daphnia. This was confirmed when, despite carp crashing out over rigs all night long I didn’t even get a liner on some rods. I did found Daphnia in the landing net while weighing fish which confirmed this theory. I believe that fishing over a very small quantity of bait in this situation is much more likely to produce results versus fishing over bait. I would never apply bait when the fish are obviously preoccupied on naturals as I believe it would reduce my chances.
In between the two sessions, I baited up with just 3 kg of Blue Oyster baits and scattered them over the different marks I’d been fishing. The last fish came when I saw a carp roll just 35 yards in front of point C and simply cast to it. After spreading 20 baits over the spot I had to wait 12 hours before I got the pickup which turned out to be The Big Apple.
My snowman rig
All carp were taken on 22mm homemade Blue Oyster baits tipped with a 14mm dairy cream popup on my 8” Beausoleil bottom bait rig. I used a size 4 wide gape hook, 25lb Super Nova, a 3.5oz groove lead from Avid with the insert removed and a Korda anti-tangle sleeve. Then, along the line, every foot, I’ve got a blob of putty which helps pin the line down and keeps everything nicely on the bottom of the lake. It’s a really simple rig, it’s also very effective. The hook holds I’ve had this session have been excellent, a lot of them have been 3/4inch to 1inch back. And I had another one in the middle of the bottom lip. I’ve had no fish losses so 7 fish out for 7 pickups. I’ve had a few liners and I can tell it was a liner because the “telltale” line was still in the lead. And, as always, hooks were super sharp.
