what fishery is it Galps?

Have you had a word with the locals? More than likely all the best anglers are the most friendly ones.

I think you have just partly answered your own question for yourself. Your scared to blow it by feeding to much and so your never putting the carp in your swim and in a feeding mood. Your blowing it by not feeding enough feed or the right types of baits to pick out the carp once they do arrive. Your not giving yourself a chance to bag up with carp and win!

Remember, you cannot win every match. So, you have to be aggressive enough to push your weights up on the pegs with a chance of winning. If your peg is not good enough to produce a winning weight. You where never going to win anyway. So go for it!

You can still be controlled in your feeding but still be aggressive. You can also use baits better suited to catching carp. A 5lb carp is a big fish and will have no problem in eating a 10 ml pellet or large lump of paste.

You can also target areas of your peg/swim that are more likely to hold mainly carp especially in the second half of your matches. You seem to be fishing for bites from any fish in your swim. The carp need to be targeted as they are the main match winning fish! Its ok picking up the odd smaller fish but the carp are the match winners. So, target them with the right baits and in the right areas of your peg! The margins or up in the water shallow are goo areas to target. The problem with both areas/methods is that you often need to target these areas for several hours before you start to get a good response! Catching a few silvers can be useful if the carp are late feeders. Thats where knowing the habits of the carp comes in to play in getting a good plan together for the venue!

Finally, dont follow the in baits and methods. Find what works for you and become the best you can be at it. Develop things with each match that you fish on your venue. Feeding patterns often appear that put you on to a winning way of fishing the venue your fishing.

GALPS, this might sound counter-intuitive, but I have often found that feeding more can actually draw more skimmers in and spook carp that are wary of big piles of bait. This is particularly the case if you are cupping in. In addition, carp are far more attracted to noise than skimmers, so feeding by catapult rather than by pole cup can also help to draw in carp rather than skimmers.

One other point I would offer is that I have often found that you will catch carp in a swim when you first feed it, but after catching one or two, the carp will clear off and skimmers will move in. As such, it is sometimes worth starting a new swim and accepting that you might only catch one or two carp from each spot before the skimmers move in.

A lot of this is venue specific though, so I think the most important thing to do is practice and get your head around what works on any given venue. Big (hook) baits can sometimes help, but if you have got a swim full of skimmers, you will not catch carp, regardless of what you put on the hook.

Galps if carp are winning then you need to draw carp into the peg, i think true blue is spot on aggressive feeding is essentila to create noise and pull in enough carp, lots of fisheries that don,t hold enough carp still have to be fed aggressively to get them to move in, where you have a large head of skimmers it may be better to either fish shallow or at least off bottom, even if you try to feed less agressively as Gary has intimated I would still come off of the deck until bites from skimmers become less troublesome and hopefully a few more carp are responsive.

Fred, would you agree that how you feed is (at least) as important as how much you feed? Putting two large potfulls of pellets in at the start and fishing over it may be agressive feeding, but I do not necessarily think that it will draw in carp and feed off skimmers.

Fishing shallow is obviously a good option, if conditions are appropriate.

totally agree with that Gary, you also have to know the boundary and how it responds take my recent match at colemans cottage if I had fed as John brennan did next peg with a couple of big pots of feed it would have been game over, as he said I think I fed too much on the day,for me kinder cupping just enough was the way, however with not many other species dominating my feed area it was the right tactic to get a win on the day,maybe if i had adopted a different feed stratagy more fish would have been caught who knows! however a few pegs away rob pottinger was plagued with tiny f1’s and small carp a recent stocking that had shoaled up tight, he ended up spraying really heavy and eventually the better carp moved in, so it depends on the circumstances you find when you fish the swim, lots of variations to the situation you find yourself in will, or should help you make the right decisions on the day, in the main when fishing shallow I would feed very regular, catapult rarely leaving my hand once the carp arrive I then cut down on,or at least monitor how the fish are responding to the feed working on the scenario that normally once you have them in front of you they very rarely move and any feed fed is dead once it goes passed the catching zone, feeding slightly least although constant should get you more bites, like all things in life nothing comes easy you have to work at every aspect and think about it as you go through the match, if in a match lads around me were catching carp and I was catching skimmers and this was happening on a regular basis you have to change your tactics, now whether this is spraying and fishing shallow, or using bigger baits on the deck or whatever i would be ringing the changes to find out what it is that makes the difference, those that don’t stay as pools fodder simple as that.However what the factor is in why this lad is not catching the carp and others fishing the same pegs are definately revolves around feeding tactics or hook baits, either that or he’s unlucky ~think

The key thing to remember in this situation is that you have to be CONTROLLED but AGGRESSIVE. As Fred has indicated. This does not mean dump feeding with 2 cups of feed and waiting for the carp to appear. Building the swim up by feeding little and often is more often than not the best way of feeding. However, feeding little and often might be as much as 50 10ml pellets every 5 minutes. Or as little as 1 pellet every 15 seconds. The key is to build the swim up until you get the response your after. In this case. Enough carp caught to reach your target match winning weight. It does not have to be 10ml pellets. However, your feed needs to be substancial enough so that the carp are interested in feeding in your swim but the skimmers have problems eating everything quickly. Also, target the areas that are more likely to produce more carp than skimmers. This is usually up in the water and in the margins. Set those catch areas up by feeding for at least 2 hours before having a go. In the case of margins. I never dump feed. Build the swim up carefully with regular feeding and the carp will often line themselves up in the last few hours on many venues. Feed, feed, feed is the answer but in a very controlled way! If you dont win. Then at least you have given your peg every chance of winning which is the aim of match fishing.

Some great points on this thread ~clap