This time of year can be a welcome relief after the hot summer temperatures. At this time many fish can become more interested in eating natural food than the baits you have been offering most especially in the case of carp! But now with cooling air and water temperatures, more winds and dropping air pressures, things can become far more productive. By applying lots more bait to your fishing situation can really pay-off now as fish tend to turn to eating more proteinous foods to sustain their bodies over the winter.

At this time catfish and carp have ideal conditions in which to truly binge feed on your free baits and ground baits of all descriptions, and really supply you with catches to remember. In the case of catfish in the States, an easy method is to simply locate the spots where the bigger fish reside and feed and apply regularly bags of catfish pellets, or trout pellets, fermented corn and so on, or any of a legion us range of proprietary readymade dough baits, pastes, pellets, particles, boilies, bait dip and soaks etc, in many flavours especially designed for catfish and carp.

In the UK and Europe, it is at this time that the baiting programme you and your friends may have been undertaking can seriously pay-off! It seems to me that with the amazingly fast alterations going on with the weather due to global warming, that the usually keenly anticipated October pre-winter feeding binges of fish have shifted forward into September and it might even be missed by those not realising how things are changing!

I used to ‘swear-by’ roughly the period around the last week in October to produce many of the very biggest fish of the year. But this seems have been brought forward for many waters, where September is now the month to get it right for those personal best captures. It also appears that the weather patterns can produce an instant change in feeding behaviour where previously fish would have carried on feeding well into November, but now may reduce their very feeding dramatically by the end of October even though the weather still does not appear to have been cold enough to create such a change.

At the other end of the year, in the spring, the period going through February, March into April has recently been hard for very many fishermen’s’ results. It seems that despite warmer weather in this period, many waters just did not ‘wake-up and respond in the way they previously might have done in the past. I’ve hear many anglers complain that they can see carp active and showing at the surface in this period this last year, but  even using baits fished at the surface or top layers does not produce anywhere near the numbers of fish expected.

It’s as though the fishes’ bio-rhythms and body clocks and cycles are out of synchronisation with water densities and temperatures favourable for feeding and they have not ‘caught-up’ with the recent big weather pattern changes. This past year for example, things were extreme again in the UK we’ve had very dry periods, periods of great flooding and temperatures in reverse for months of the year such as those in April and May, where April was more like early summer and May was more like October conditions and dominated by flooding and heavy rain.

In Some areas of Eastern Europe and in the States, the effects of snow and ice on lakes lingered longer than is normal, with fishermen stuck indoors unable to fish their still iced-up lakes. Happily September is a month that is still pretty much the same as normal so far so good! When you feel those oxygenating Northerly winds blowing at the start of September, you just know that they will soon turn round to Westerlies and South Westerlies and the fishing will behave in your favour and go mad. Right now at the beginning of September 2007, I notice we have cooling Northerly winds here in the UK and a friend tells me it’s the same in Austria.

Providing you are fishing regularly enough or watching the weather keenly enough to exploit the situation as the weather systems change around back to warmer winds you will get the best from the ‘change in the weather’ as it works in your favour. Ground baiting very heavily and consistently can have massive effects on catches at this time – so watch the weather; why miss out?! With the added variables of changing currents and water temperatures and densities, a bait with ‘variable’ buoyancy might just be the edge you’re looking for to depend on. This takes us slightly out of this article however, so watch the weather patterns, prepare your bait and test it in advance and you can be assured of excellent results when September and early October weather brings that ‘binge feeding’ behaviour!

By Tim Richardson. 

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