Watercraft is something that every carp angler should learn and it can take years to become proficient at, there is enough evidence to suggest that people who spend more time developing their watercraft will often outcatch people who focus more on the technical side of carp fishing. watercraft can be as difficult or as easy as you want to make it

Looking for natural fish holding areas

Just having a walk around a carp venue you can often find areas likely to hold carp just by looking around. Reedbeds and marginal shelves are normally areas where carp are likely to feed. Finding clear silty spots in weed is often a good indication that carp have been feeding there. These are not always obvious so i've made myself look quite silly before by climing a tree to get a good view over a swim or two and find clear areas. Silty areas often hold a lot of natural food sources for carp so dropping a bait into the mucky stuff can be quite effective.

Finding features you cant see

Now here's the bit that costs some money, to find underwater features you will need a marker setup, you can get rods specially designed for use with a marker stup but these tend to be pricey and we have found that just using a fairly cheap heavy TC carp rod can be nearly as good, a marker setup consists of a marker float and a heavy lead or preferably a feature finding lead. Below is a typical feature finding kit:

Now its worth mentioning that for a feature finding setup it would be ideal to have the reel loaded with a braid rahther than a monofilament line as monfil has some stretch where braid has very little and as such is better suited to transmiting the "feel" of the lakebed back to the rod. The normal setup would have the lead slipped onto the line and the float tied on which means the float is fixed but the lead is free to move. Now we've explained the feature finding setup lets talk about how to use it. You cast out the setup to an area in your swim, then sturn sideways with the rod so you have the rod sideways on to the lake, pull back on the rod and you should feel the lead dragging along the lake bed, the feeling transmitted back to the rod from the lead will let you determine what the lead is being pulled over and this is the bit that takes some practise to get used to but is quite straightforward, for example if you feel the lead getting prgressively harder to move its likely to be picking up weed, if its consistently bumpy its likely to be gravel, on a silt bed it will kind of feel like your pulling the lead through treacle. This gives you an idea how to find different areas, another important feature to look out for is gravel bars, when gravel pits are dug out shelves are often left which can become great areas for catching carp, these are obviously identified by finding the edge and then measuring the depth. To do this you will need to make a mark on your rod, I have two marks spaced 1ft apart marked with tippex (correction fluid) on the butt section, this allows you to pull agains the lead then measure out the line 1ft at a time until the marker float surfaces. You can then build up an accurate picture of the lake bed in your swim. You can also let the marker float surface and then use it to cast your rig to. If you're only fishing one rod then you could leave the marker out and use it for subsequent casting, spodding and baiting up.

If you are lucky enough to own a baitboat then these can often be retro-fitted with a fishfinder so you can use this to get an idea of the lakebed and depending on the accuracy of the echo sounder and display these can often show more detail than just depth i.e fish location, weed, gravel bars etc. There are also portable fishfinders that can be attached to your rod and cast out then retrieved to do the same job but i would be a bit dubious as they cost excess of £100 and look to be quite easy to cast into a tree and loose.

Well, thanks for taking the time to read this and we hope that you decide to develop your watercraft as this is really a key part of carp fishing and can really give you a good edge over others that are of the plonk it in and hope for the best method.