Plenty of cover may be the first feature you look for when pencilling in a margin line on a commercial fishery, but I believe the contours of the bottom are far more important.
As temperatures begin to creep up and, while others are pinning a rig tight to large beds of reeds or lilies, I prefer my plummet to make the decision about where to fish.
Some margins have a very steep slope that doesn’t give you anywhere to lay down a bed of bait, which can lead to fish at various depths leading to foul hooking and difficulty presenting your hookbait.
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Depth decisions
If I can find a depth in the region of 2ft-4ft, I’ll feel confident that I can catch, but the bottom must be flat. You may find this tight up to the bank or slightly away from it, and you may need to spend a while moving your rig around with the plummet attached to find it.
Many swims have a small area where you’ll find such contours, and you’ll definitely catch more if you can create that dinner table.
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Bait choices
The margins used to be seen as a ‘last chance saloon’ area of the swim, but it’s now recognised that you can fish shorter for much longer. This is because big carp were once the sole target at close quarters.
However, modern commercials have a diverse stocking policy and, by fishing maggots in the margins, you can catch everything that swims including big skimmers, tench, ide and F1s, while you wait for the lumps to arrive.
The presence of those species speeds up the arrival of the carp, as all that activity triggers their curiosity. I will take three or four pints of maggots and feed aggressively, introducing sizeable handfuls every few minutes to make plenty of noise and draw fish in.
This builds up the bed of bait quickly, drawing in a stamp of fish that will bully out the small silvers.
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Balanced tackle
Fish that inhabit reasonably shallow water will feed quite cautiously, and the more they thrash about in the target zone once hooked, the longer it is going to take to get the next bite.
At the start it’s important to let the fish bolt out of the area quickly, without much resistance, so that the rest of the shoal isn’t disturbed too much, so I opt for a 10 Preston Innovations Hollo. This elastic is very soft initially, but once a fish pulls a few feet out of the pole-tip, it gradually tightens up, especially when a side puller is used.
This allows me to use lighter terminal tackle. My choice is 0.17mm mainline to a 0.11mm or 0.13mm hooklength and a size 16 SFL-B hook, and this will land anything that I encounter.
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