Summer, Autumn, Winter Boilies: How to Manage the Transition

As the air temperature starts to cool in late September and continues to fall through the autumn months, the water temperature soon begins to follow suit. In time, the water’s temperature falls to a point where fishmeal boilies cease to effectively leak their attraction into the water column, making them much harder for the carp to locate. The cooling of the water also starts to affect the carp’s metabolism making fishmeals a lot more difficult for them to digest.

One proven tactic in the early autumn is to begin to introduce a limited quantity of your chosen winter boilie alongside the last of your summer boilies, upping the amount of winter boilies added to your loose feed each time you visit the lake. This process works to slowly wean the fish onto a more digestible winter bait that they will continue to eat right through the coldest part of the year, helping to keep them visiting the targeted area to seek out food for longer.

Towards the end of the autumn as the days grow shorter and less of the sun’s energy is absorbed by the water, depending upon the venue, the fish will often start to frequent the shallowest areas of the lake less and less, preferring to hold up in the deeper water where the temperature is more stable. As cold water naturally sinks, the fish start to spend much of their time swimming around in the middle layers within these areas where they find it most comfortable. Around this time, a spread of highly soluble, high leakage winter bait will often be the difference between success and failure.

By the end of December, most venues will have experienced their first ground frost and the water temperatures will have started to stabilise around their winter low. The fish will likely be close to their winter torpor, feeding for short periods at certain times of the night or day. With this in mind, it is often sensible to consider this in your baiting approach.

When it comes to catching carp in the winter, there are few winter carp baits that will continue to produce as consistently as our Cold Water Green Beast Boilies; and although they seem to work exceptionally well at any time of the year, they really do come into their own through the colder months. If you want to keep catching through the most difficult time of the year, Cold Water Green Beast has to be one of the best winter boilies available today.