We ask Gaz Fareham - We’re at the end of February now and spring is just around the corner. For many the reality of a new adventure on their newly acquired ticket is almost within touching distance. With this in mind how do you approach a water which you have never fished? What kind of tactics do you lean towards when starting on a new venue and what would your advice be to others who are about to embark on their latest campaign?

Spring is always filled with a huge sense of anticipation for the carp angler, whether it is embarking on the challenge of a new water, or settling a score on an old venue. For me this year, I do have a new ticket starting in April, a pressured, large, rich and relatively low stocked Oxford gravel pit steeped in history, and despite only in being January now, my mind is already ticking over with ideas and thoughts about how to approach it. Starting on a new water can be a daunting prospect for lots of anglers, but personally, I have always tried to embrace it and I actually find it one of the most exciting things about carp fishing and have rarely fished a water for more than two seasons - by the third season, I'm usually starting to lose interest and my mind is already wandering away to new places. Fishing in Europe has accelerated that process even further, and on most trips in the last few years, every trip has seen me fishing a number of new venues each time. Sometimes just one or two, sometimes it has been three, or four new venues. So that experience of not knowing anything, not knowing spots, not knowing about the make up of the lake bed, the depths, the habits of the carp, the best angles to fish areas from, where they are at first light... where they are at last light - those are all considerations I face most trips these days, and I thrive off that and the prospect of having just a few nights to make it count and get a bite or two. It is challenging in so many ways and the ability to think on your feet, make decisions and assess a situation are vital tools in your kit.

For UK based waters where you have a ticket, and are likely to spending a significant amount of time over the period of a few seasons it is a much slower game, you don't have only two nights to make the most of it and therefore the approach is different although that said, much of my thinking is the same. The first thing I do is to do some homework on the lake. I'll try and speak to a few lads that I know and respect, and trust and find out about their experiences on there. How did they approach it? Who did well on there during the time they fished it, how were they approaching it? What was the weed like during those years? And the clarity? The lads that did well, were they 'midweekers', or were they weekenders or working lads doing overnighters? Were results confined to just a few areas? What time of year were they getting caught in certain areas? Are they getting caught over bait, or just opportunist traps? There are so many pertinent questions you can ask that will help inform your thinking. What I always try to avoid doing, is slavishly following what other people have done - rarely is that a good idea. The conditions, pressure, situation and how you execute a plan will never replicate what someone else has done, instead what I try to do is build all that knowledge into a plan based on the time, resources and skills I have available myself. If it was the midweekers that were catching over big hits of bait, on the third night, then that information is valuable to me, but it is not something I can tap into because I can't fish like that. What would be far more valuable would be the lad that caught a couple on the overnighters from the margin spots, because that might be a tactic I could more successfully employ. My point is that it is all relative, and the context is any information is everything.

Spring is always filled with a huge sense of anticipation for the carp angler, whether it is embarking on the challenge of a new water, or settling a score on an old venue. For me this year, I do have a new ticket starting in April, a pressured, large, rich and relatively low stocked Oxford gravel pit steeped in history, and despite only in being January now, my mind is already ticking over with ideas and thoughts about how to approach it. Starting on a new water can be a daunting prospect for lots of anglers, but personally, I have always tried to embrace it and I actually find it one of the most exciting things about carp fishing and have rarely fished a water for more than two seasons - by the third season, I'm usually starting to lose interest and my mind is already wandering away to new places. Fishing in Europe has accelerated that process even further, and on most trips in the last few years, every trip has seen me fishing a number of new venues each time. Sometimes just one or two, sometimes it has been three, or four new venues. So that experience of not knowing anything, not knowing spots, not knowing about the make up of the lake bed, the depths, the habits of the carp, the best angles to fish areas from, where they are at first light... where they are at last light - those are all considerations I face most trips these days, and I thrive off that and the prospect of having just a few nights to make it count and get a bite or two. It is challenging in so many ways and the ability to think on your feet, make decisions and assess a situation are vital tools in your kit.

For UK based waters where you have a ticket, and are likely to spending a significant amount of time over the period of a few seasons it is a much slower game, you don't have only two nights to make the most of it and therefore the approach is different although that said, much of my thinking is the same. The first thing I do is to do some homework on the lake. I'll try and speak to a few lads that I know and respect, and trust and find out about their experiences on there. How did they approach it? Who did well on there during the time they fished it, how were they approaching it? What was the weed like during those years? And the clarity? The lads that did well, were they 'midweekers', or were they weekenders or working lads doing overnighters? Were results confined to just a few areas? What time of year were they getting caught in certain areas? Are they getting caught over bait, or just opportunist traps? There are so many pertinent questions you can ask that will help inform your thinking. What I always try to avoid doing, is slavishly following what other people have done - rarely is that a good idea. The conditions, pressure, situation and how you execute a plan will never replicate what someone else has done, instead what I try to do is build all that knowledge into a plan based on the time, resources and skills I have available myself. If it was the midweekers that were catching over big hits of bait, on the third night, then that information is valuable to me, but it is not something I can tap into because I can't fish like that. What would be far more valuable would be the lad that caught a couple on the overnighters from the margin spots, because that might be a tactic I could more successfully employ. My point is that it is all relative, and the context is any information is everything.

"What I always try to avoid doing, is slavishly following what other people have done - rarely is that a good idea"

"What I always try to avoid doing, is slavishly following what other people have done - rarely is that a good idea"

Prep and some recce trips can be incredibly useful, and whilst it isn't always an option - some waters don't allow it, or might be too far away for you to utilise it well, they can be invaluable. Being at a water at first and light, and seeing shows or sheeting and fizzing is priceless information, climbing trees and looking in snags is also useful, but really, I want to know where they are feeding at bite time, which is often first light on many places and so the early shows are often the ones that will give away the most useful info - a causal mid-day wander will rarely tell you much useful information. On my walks I'm always looking for clues, not just shows, but also clues as to which are the most heavily fished areas, which are the most worn swims, which ones see the traffic.. is that because they're genuinely the best areas, or is it just because they're near the car park and lots of lads are lazy? Or is it because they cover the most water and lads doing bigger sessions like options? I'm often looking to avoid the main swims as my time and resources don't allow me to fish like that, so I'm usually looking for lesser fished areas I might be able to bait, or areas that are might intercept them between the main spots, or areas that are tight and awkward and get ignored because of that. I'm continually looking, continually assessing and trying to figure out some kind of game plan based on what I'm seeing - it is a big chess game in many ways, there's no point focussing on the quiet corners if the carp never visit them, sometimes you need a different plan. What I will do if I can is try and do some spot finding, ideally in areas I have seen feeding activity, with a lead rod and keep all the info noted and marked for future reference. Arriving in a swim with fish showing, and already knowing there's good spots at X, Y and Z wraps towards this tree and that reed can be invaluable and stops you ruining situations through not having the information you need to get rigs presented well with a minimum of fuss. You build that information up over time, but you have to start somewhere, and ideally not from zero the first time you are there to fish.

The European situation is very much the same, but all that thinking and all those decisions are compressed into the first day, or even just a few hours. Everything is accelerated and becomes far more pressing. Often I'm not likely to ever go back to a lake I might have travelled 5, 6, 700 miles to get to, so I want to make it count. In this situation there is no time to be complacent and play the long game, you simply have to do everything you can to make it happen there and then. Location is absolutely everything, and when at a 2000 acre water that might not have any carp at all in the 400 acre bit you have in front of you, you have to do everything you can to find them. Your eyes, assessment of the weather, the time of year, anything you've heard, anything you know... any little glimmer of info can be latched on to and explored. Once you've found some fish, getting rods into position, on good spots, with the minimum of fuss and disturbance is the name of the game and if you do that well, I've found you will usually catch. Plot up simply where looks good is usually a recipe for failure.

When it comes to tactics, that is an entirely water and situation dependent question, and I try to tailor my approach to the water, time of year and situation in front of me. If I think it needs loads of boilie, that's what I'll use. If I think it needs hemp and tiger, and delicate hook baits, that's what I'll use. If it needs to be range, I'll kit myself out to fish like that, if it's edge work, I'll adapt my approach accordingly. What I do often try and do though is do something just that bit different to what everyone else is doing at any given time - waters tend to have pressure cycles that the majority of anglers fall into. Some years it's big licks with boilie, others it is particle. I'll try and avoid what everyone else is doing and tweak my approach accordingly. The one thing I do almost always do is to start small. Singles and an opportunist approach in the spring is almost always the best way to go, until you have a clear picture of the rhythms of the lake, the fish and the other anglers and then you can start to formulate a plan.

Once you've started, the rest is just down to how you use the information and observations each week. That mate that told you about that amazing autumn string of captures he had from that quiet area, that might come in useful one day, as might that realisation that everyone on boilie is struggling so a switch to tiger, or caster, or maggot might be just what is needed. Being adaptive, and responsive with your thinking is what successful carp angling is all about, rather than just going through the motions and doing as everyone else does. There's a great quote along the lines of 'change is the only constant' - that is carp fishing in a nutshell.

Prep and some recce trips can be incredibly useful, and whilst it isn't always an option - some waters don't allow it, or might be too far away for you to utilise it well, they can be invaluable. Being at a water at first and light, and seeing shows or sheeting and fizzing is priceless information, climbing trees and looking in snags is also useful, but really, I want to know where they are feeding at bite time, which is often first light on many places and so the early shows are often the ones that will give away the most useful info - a causal mid-day wander will rarely tell you much useful information. On my walks I'm always looking for clues, not just shows, but also clues as to which are the most heavily fished areas, which are the most worn swims, which ones see the traffic.. is that because they're genuinely the best areas, or is it just because they're near the car park and lots of lads are lazy? Or is it because they cover the most water and lads doing bigger sessions like options? I'm often looking to avoid the main swims as my time and resources don't allow me to fish like that, so I'm usually looking for lesser fished areas I might be able to bait, or areas that are might intercept them between the main spots, or areas that are tight and awkward and get ignored because of that. I'm continually looking, continually assessing and trying to figure out some kind of game plan based on what I'm seeing - it is a big chess game in many ways, there's no point focussing on the quiet corners if the carp never visit them, sometimes you need a different plan. What I will do if I can is try and do some spot finding, ideally in areas I have seen feeding activity, with a lead rod and keep all the info noted and marked for future reference. Arriving in a swim with fish showing, and already knowing there's good spots at X, Y and Z wraps towards this tree and that reed can be invaluable and stops you ruining situations through not having the information you need to get rigs presented well with a minimum of fuss. You build that information up over time, but you have to start somewhere, and ideally not from zero the first time you are there to fish.

The European situation is very much the same, but all that thinking and all those decisions are compressed into the first day, or even just a few hours. Everything is accelerated and becomes far more pressing. Often I'm not likely to ever go back to a lake I might have travelled 5, 6, 700 miles to get to, so I want to make it count. In this situation there is no time to be complacent and play the long game, you simply have to do everything you can to make it happen there and then. Location is absolutely everything, and when at a 2000 acre water that might not have any carp at all in the 400 acre bit you have in front of you, you have to do everything you can to find them. Your eyes, assessment of the weather, the time of year, anything you've heard, anything you know... any little glimmer of info can be latched on to and explored. Once you've found some fish, getting rods into position, on good spots, with the minimum of fuss and disturbance is the name of the game and if you do that well, I've found you will usually catch. Plot up simply where looks good is usually a recipe for failure.

When it comes to tactics, that is an entirely water and situation dependent question, and I try to tailor my approach to the water, time of year and situation in front of me. If I think it needs loads of boilie, that's what I'll use. If I think it needs hemp and tiger, and delicate hook baits, that's what I'll use. If it needs to be range, I'll kit myself out to fish like that, if it's edge work, I'll adapt my approach accordingly. What I do often try and do though is do something just that bit different to what everyone else is doing at any given time - waters tend to have pressure cycles that the majority of anglers fall into. Some years it's big licks with boilie, others it is particle. I'll try and avoid what everyone else is doing and tweak my approach accordingly. The one thing I do almost always do is to start small. Singles and an opportunist approach in the spring is almost always the best way to go, until you have a clear picture of the rhythms of the lake, the fish and the other anglers and then you can start to formulate a plan.

Once you've started, the rest is just down to how you use the information and observations each week. That mate that told you about that amazing autumn string of captures he had from that quiet area, that might come in useful one day, as might that realisation that everyone on boilie is struggling so a switch to tiger, or caster, or maggot might be just what is needed. Being adaptive, and responsive with your thinking is what successful carp angling is all about, rather than just going through the motions and doing as everyone else does. There's a great quote along the lines of 'change is the only constant' - that is carp fishing in a nutshell.

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