Hello all, Jake here and welcome to the first blog of 2016, We are now resuming the blogs on Bath Angling with entries from all team members across a 4 week period, meaning you will have 2 blogs a week to get your teeth into from now on. Due to my work and other commitments I do not get as much bankside time as some of the other team members or as much as I would like. I have got out whenever I have had the chance, which has led to 3 sessions so far in 2016. Later in the year, when the clocks go forward, a lot of my fishing will be consisting of short evening sessions where my targets are going to be; to beat my carp PB; to catch a 4lb Chub and to catch my first ever Barbel. In this blog, I am going to talk about a successful session I have had earlier this year and how I have been approaching the cold weather sessions compared to the tactics I use in warmer weather. Some people use the same bait all year round and have perfectly good catch rates but I feel slight changes can give you an improved chance especially on cold winter days. Between April and October I don’t tend to stray far from the above set up. I feel that ‘CC Moore Live System’ is a brilliant summer bait as it is a very sweet and from my experience always seems to stimulate a high amount of smell when exposed to heat and going by the catch rate, I’m sure that strong scent spreads in the water too. I also use ‘CC Moore Northern specials’ in 90% of my summer boilie fishing. I feel that these give me a great advantage and they again give off a strong sweet smell but also act as a great visual attractant to the carp as the colours I mainly use are white and orange-red. During the colder months I make a few changes to my fishing. Although my rigs hardly change throughout the year, it is the bait change at the business end that I feel gives me the advantage. During these months I tend to use baits that have more of a savoury smell as I feel that is what the fish are more switched on to at this time. I also often use a small piece of pop-up corn in place of a 12mm pop-up as I feel it still gives the same visual effect but means the hook bait is slightly smaller as the fish may not be looking to pick up big baits at this time of year. This year came the release of ‘Pacific Tuna from CC Moore’ this is the ideal winter bait in my eyes as I have found that any fishy or spicy bait really seems to give me the edge. On a recent session at Newton Park I was fishing the above set up on my left rod and I was fishing a 15mm Live System with a spicy squid pop-up on the right rod. I had one fish on each rod during a day that only 2 other fish came out of the whole lake. The right rod produced a nice mid-double mirror before the left rod sprung into life just after 2 o’clock. I was rewarded with a 19lb 2oz mirror. This is a great fish to catch at any time of year but to have it on a cold, wet and windy day made me a very happy angler. I hope this blog has given you an insight into how subtle changes can really help you in your angling. I would like to wish you every success in whatever type of angling you are pursuing and I look forward to writing more blogs in the coming months. Hopefully then I will have a lot more sessions to choose from and I will be able to share some exciting catch reports with you. Remember if you are to see me on the bank don’t be afraid to come and say hello. Tight lines Jake