If you name the venue, someone might have solved the problem at the actual place.

Is this an open match? If it is i’m feeling drawn to have a crack at it 😀 Thinking maybe its ravenous small fish picking at your bait rather than liners if fishing shallow didn’t eliminate the suspected liners. I’ve fished a venue where the swarms of bit roach descending on your feed can move so much water that it looks like carp tails at work.

2 ways to go if thats the case, small baits & busy fishing or large baits that they cant feed from (corn, big meat, 8mm hard pellet).

I’d try worm and caster, loosefeeding caster or pellet, shallow or if all else fails, method!

where is it? sounds like you have got fish at all levels. this is cos of the meat wafting about. tried paste?

The question I would ask is why feed? it is obvious the margins are solid with fish why on earth feed? I would have just gone in with no feed to start with to see what happens if your getting linered out using a kinder cup just feed water or tap create a bit of noise to get a fish or two in the peg. If you get too many stop kinder cupping water or tapping. If you have to feed to get fish in the peg then feed and fish well away from where you have fed, lets face it it ain’t rocket science, sort it out or take up golf!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 😉

If your foul hooking a few carp. Then, silvers are not the problem. Im not sure feed is the issue either as the weights your looking for suggests very cute/clever fish that have seen it all before. Sounds very like the carp are aware of the pole over there heads and so refusing to eat until the pole is removed. No pole over there heads means time to eat. Seen this a lots this year. Answer would be to fish the bomb and hair rigged bait on rod and line in the margins. Drop the bomb tight in to the margin. Point the rod tip at the bank as close as possible to reduce line bites. HOLD ON TO YOUR ROD and make sure your reel clutch is set very light!. A bait runner is very useful when fishing in margin like this.

What I would say is at a recent match at Colemans cottage a fishery stuffed with fish mind most anglers had carp down the margins and suffered the same problems you describe, false bite liners foul hooked fish etc, me included, however the angler at the next peg to me put together a very decent weight, what he did was to move down from the top margin shelf into deeper water around four to five feet away from the nearside bank vegitation and found the fish ripping the elastic out of the pole, what he said was that due to no water in a lot of the lakes due to lack of rain on the southern part of the country although the fish still visit the margins there is less water over the fishes heads so the fish are behaving very iffy, he stated this was happening on a lot of commercials maybe it’s also happening on your local lake although not strickly a commy it sounds as if you are suffering the same problems we all encountered on the match, move out slightly from the margins ant got to be worth a try.

At my local fishing as tight to the margin as possible sorts this out.

I agree normally fishing tight does sort it out but in the match at colemans it didn’t, extremely frustrating, thats why the one angler who had it sorted on pathfield won the section by a country mile. Knowing ant I would think it extremely unlikely that he had not tried fishing very tight, as he is more than capable, but agree totaly with the comment under normal circumstances.

have you tried maggot?
Feed some dead maggot and fish live or dead over the top. Fish it fairly light as it is obvious from the weights that the fish are not exactly huge. 😉

Hemp fed with the meat if allowed……that generally gets them down at other venues I fish…..and keeps them there.

when you are getting all these liners just drop the pole method feeder in, hide pole over near side bank, and also use a back shot 18 inches above feeder.

seems like ya gunna have a few sessions trying to figure this out mate , just hope the guys who fish the same pond arnt on here they might be trying the same tacks…lol

I had something similar a few weeks back. I overcome this by dump feeding at 4 sections along the bank, and then drip feeding and fishing 6-10 6mm pellets every few minutes a section short of this. You bring less fish into the swim you’re fishing, as the fish are flashing all around the dumped feed, hence more proper bites. I then found that I’d start getting liners on the short line, but then dump feeding the longer line would take the concentration of fish back off the line I was fishing. This worked twice before I had to start another line up, but it should get you a few extra fish.

Antonywaters, dont use a float its defeating the object, you want your line nailed to the bottom so they dont bump into it & spook off.

What would the speci carp boys do if they had educated carp in the margins? Forget about the pole!

From reading this there seem to be 2 obvious conclusions.

Fishing tight in the edge with a big bait and very little feed.

However you mention you can catch a 1oz rudd every bung ? I bet they go even bigger too and with winning weights of 20lb I would be tempted to fish for the rudd, to hand with casters or maggot. I bet you could do 20lb plus in 3 hours if you stuck to it ! Might even get the odd carp too to boost that weight up.

Under arm cast in to the margins, Anthonywaters. There,s not many places you cannot drop a bomb in to with practice! If its impossible to drop a bomb in to a nice looking reses at 13 meters. Just fish as close to that nice little reses as possible and feed where you can drop the bomb. The carp will find your hook bait if the carp dont have a pole over there heads and feel safe. Those difficult to catch carp are looking for food. Thats why they are in the margins in the first place. Its almost curtainly the pole over there heads thats reducing your chance of catching them. Foul hooking a few on the pole also reduces your chances even more. Your just creating a trap to target individual feeding fish. 6 carp averaging 5lb = a 30lb winning weight! Thats one bite every 30 minutes!

Have you tried not having a float on your line , just a length of line , with say a hair rigged 8mm pellet or any other bait you choose and just wait for your elastic to rip out? You then have no issues with liners , can fish a longer length of line and hold your pole tip away from the area your trying to fish , thus not holding it over there heads?