When buying pellets, you may have come across bags of small 2mm expanders and thought ‘why would I use these?’.
It’s hard to argue with that in summer, when bigger baits do all the damage, but in winter slipping one of these tiny pellets on the hook can work wonders.
It’s all to do with the size. In the cold, finicky fish like F1s will ignore something that looks out of place, so if you’re feeding micros, dropping a much bigger 4mm expander over the top just won’t look right. Switch to a 2mm pellet and regular bites are far more likely.
Here's how to do it...
Use positive floats
I need positivity with pellets. I use a slim-bodied 4x14 pattern, but it has to have a wire stem to help it sit up quickly. I’m not after a slow fall of the bait with expanders.
Pick a thin bristle
F1s can pick up the pellet and not move the float at all, so you need a slim bristle on your float, say something that’s 1.2mm in diameter. Dot the float right down too.
Match the hatch
A 2mm pellet also mimics as closely as possible the micro pellets that I’m feeding, so there’s no apparent danger to the fish – you don’t get that with 4mm pellets.
Get the feeding right
My feeding is designed to get one F1 into the swim and to catch. That means a nugget of 2mm micros or crushed expander groundbait potted in on each drop.
Keep your hooks big
My hook is a size 16 Matrix MXC-5. This sounds big, but it’s actually a bit smaller than a classic size 16 and it’s very fine in the wire, but strong, making it the ideal winter pellet hook.
Fish light lines
I’m happy to use hooklengths as low as 0.08mm in diameter, although 0.10mm is my starting point. With green-grade Matrix Slik elastic I can land any bonus carp that show.
