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Why you need to use hard pellets to catch more carp

With a few tweaks to your setup and feeding, hard pellets can still outcatch anything else as the water cools.

by Tony Grigorjevs |

Published on17th October 2025 at 5.17pm

There is a myth doing the rounds that hard pellets go out the window once temperatures drop – but this isn’t a way of thinking that I subscribe to.

Meat has worked for a while now on venues where it is allowed, and now that it is slowly losing its effect, it’s time to get to work with pellets again.

You’ll need to use them differently to what you did when it was the heat of summer, though, but if you adapt, your catches needn’t take a hit.

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Ideal set-up

Bites can be fickle at this time of year, and it’s important to dot your float down so that you see each indication.

If I am fishing in good conditions, I will use a 0.3g Guru MW Bobbie float. I love slim-bodied patterns with quite a thick bristle, and this ticks all the boxes. It will sit quickly when lifting and dropping the rig, which is something I often do.

There are a lot of occasions when the bite will come immediately after making this move, so you need to be ready to read the indication immediately. The thick bristle comes in handy, because you can dot it right down and still see it with ease.

It’s shotted with a loosely strung bulk of No9s, with the bottom shot 6ins from the hook and the rest spaced at 1.5ins intervals above this. This provides a slow fall of the hookbait which is vital in fooling wary carp. If I am targeting fish in the 3lb-6lb bracket, I will use 0.17mm mainline to a 6ins hooklength of 0.13mm or 0.15mm, and a size 16 Guru Super LWG hook with a bait band on the hair.

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Pellet choice

All my autumn hard pellet fishing is done with either 4mms or 6mms. I’ll often drip-feed the former and use the latter as a stand-out hookbait. That said, on days when the fish are really switched on to feeding, I will solely use 6mms.

It’s a case of staying on your toes and reading the response of the fish. On several occasions, when the water is clear, the only way to get bites is to match the hatch.

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Feeding strategy

Little and often is the key here, and I’ve had plenty of sessions in the past when a single pint of hard pellets would last the whole day. You can feed by hand, catapult or pot, but accuracy is vital.

A pot is a good option for most people, especially one with a sprinkle lid. This allows you to fill the pot up and tap a few pellets out at a time, giving you multiple feeds before you need to ship in.

I start by feeding eight pellets every 45 seconds to try to pull fish into the swim, and the noise of each introduction is all part of the attraction.

You must stay busy, as just tapping in a few pellets and sitting there for five minutes isn’t going to bring many bites.

Once I get fish in the swim I will vary my feeding. For example, if I start to get indications but not many bites, I’ll reduce the frequency of feeding to once every two minutes to try and settle the shoal down a bit.

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Pick your spot

I’ll be looking to use the short pole at the bottom of the near shelf and long on the deck when targeting an open-water swim. This puts both lines in deeper water, which is key as the temperatures slope off and the colour drops out.

I’ll usually start short to see if I can nick an early fish or two, before moving out long to keep the bites coming. Once the light starts to fade later in the day, I’ll come back short again for what will hopefully be a big finish!

Make sure you keep hard pellets in your armoury in the coming weeks and months, otherwise you will almost certainly come unstuck if you decide to dismiss these versatile, go-to baits during the cooler part of the year.

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Hit every indication

Keep your eyes glued to your float and strike at even the most subtle of dips on the tip. It’s amazing how the float just about registers the indication, yet once you get the fish in the net it becomes apparent that the hook is well and truly buried, and the carp had fully mouthed it.

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Minimise disturbance

White Daiwa Hydrolastic is my first choice, but I will have no hesitation in stepping up to the black version if required. Fish charging around your swim is a recipe for spooking every other carp, and slightly thicker elastic is sometimes required to control the fight.

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Just touch bottom

You can enhance the number of bites that you spot when fishing with hard pellets by plumbing up so that the hookbait is just touching bottom. Plumb up so that the bottom of the body is showing when the plummet hits the deck and a carp will find it near-impossible to dislodge the hookbait without you seeing it.

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