Well, a lot has happened since my last update, but for once it’s been in a short space of time! Anyway, so the whole story makes sense I’ll start at the beginning….
In April, or thereabouts, I got the urge to find a different water to fish for carp. I was becoming slightly disolusioned fishing my usual syndicate, and despite having nabbed a couple of good fish over the years, I was increasingly finding myself fishing against other anglers, rather than the fish. The pressure on the lakes this season has been pretty constant, and even fishing midweek there are plenty of swims taken and lots of bait going in. Now regular readers know I love the lakes, and of course I’ll carry on fishing there, but I suppose I needed a change of scenery….
I’ve had a certain Berkshire pit (Berkshire pits; gotta love em eh?!) at the back of my evil mind for a while now, and the lack of spring joy at the syndicate made me take a look round. Now this place is no circuit water, nor is it unfished, but enough is known about it’s contents to get me interested! The pit is pretty weedy (aren’t they all?!) so I raked a margin swim in a deep part of the lake and basically forgot about it until I had got back from Thailand. Now I may make my swim selection sound very rushed, but to be honest it’s the only bit I’ve got access to, so I would have to fish there or not at all!
On my return from abroad, as you will know from my previous piece, I didn’t really get back into my fishing. I’d been working hard to get some cash flowing and also the syndicate was closed as the fish were close to spawning. When I felt like a trip I thought I could do worse than an exploratory visit to the new pit. I planned a trip for a weeks time, and went over every evening to bait up. The fish wouldn’t be there just because there was a nice big gap in the weed, so I needed to fill the gap with goodies! I decided on sweetcorn as bait as basically, it’s a great bait for uneducated carp! And these days there are some huge carp around that have never seen the stuff because people always use boilies from the off! Crazy!
On the scheduled day, a Sunday to be precise, I had my gear all ready in the car, and I rushed over after work. I already had a romantic vision of how I was going to fish there – none of the two rods, buzzer and boilie stuff from the syndicate, but I wanted to fish simple methods and short sessions. (I then made a mistake: I opted for 8 lb line. I cannot stress enough how stupid this was; I new the lake was weedy, but with hindsight I also now know it’s full of snags and that the fish go like nothing I have ever hooked. I should not have used 8 lb line!) I decided on the lift method, a deadly and very sensitive margin tactic. It took a while to get the depth and shotting correct, but eventually I had it so that when a fish sucked in my hookbait, the float would rise out of the water. First cast the float did just that, and I simply wasn’t prepared for the savage fight that followed. The fish tore down the margin and realising that I had to do something before the fish found sanctuary in a nearby tree, I tried to slow the fish. The line went slack, the hook had come out. Still buzzing with adrenaline I made my second big mistake – I still didn’t change my line to stronger stuff. I don’t know why, but I just felt like I needed to get a bait out there again. I cast out again and watched the float settle in position. 20 minutes later again it rose from the water. I found myself attached to another manic animal that wasn’t happy at being hooked! Somehow I hung on and quickly bundled a huge carp into the net. This was more than I could take, and I sat with the net at my feet just staring at the size of my first fish from the lake. When I eventually got my act together I weighed her at 37 to 38 lb. I was shaking too much to get an accurate reading, and got on the phone to my Dad to come and help weigh and photograph her properly. We did this, 37 lb 12 oz being her proper weight, and got her back straight away. She was a huge framed fish, and believe it or not, completely empty after spawning. Even three months before she would have been a forty, but I didn’t care! Another thirty, this time on my first visit to a water! Who could complain? Not even me.
With that I decided to get serious, and sorted out a more suitable carp setup. 15 lb high abraision resistance mainline and a more beefy rod being the main ingredients. Within 30 minutes the old setup was replaced with a stronger one. I had been lucky with the big girl, but given the weed and how the fish fought, I knew my luck wouldn’t hold. My Dad sat around for a few minutes and amazingly I had another bite. Again the fish went off like a rocket, but with more suitable gear I thought I had more of a chance. But the fish had different ideas – every time I gained a bit of line it would tear off again, with me just letting it run and run. After a few long runs I had enough and put my hands round the spool and stopped the fish dead. I started pumping the fish in, and it seemed to give in, letting me get it back to the margin. My Dad was muttering in my ear about playing her out, but I knew I couldn’t let the fish run again, and so kept on with my hardline tactics. I actually got the fish on the surface and then got very anxious as I was attached to a huge common, a fish I so desperately wanted to land. I almost backed off the fish, instead of bullying it into the net, and my Dads continued “Play her out Fred, don’t bully her!” didn’t help! Needless to say, this drawn out story has a bad ending, and the common scraped together enough power to go on another run. This one ended quickly as the fish found an unknown snag to the left of my swim. After a brief stalemate the hook flew back at me. Even the beefy steup hadn’t been good enough – my playing skills had to be better. I stayed on but the swim was dead. I felt elation and depression at the same time, and I still can’t get over losing that common.
When I left I put out more bait as I planned to fish the next evening. In fact I fished the next three evenings after work, each night baiting up as I left. Those evenings followed a similar pattern of hooking unstoppable fish, and of the three I hooked, I landed one mirror of 21 lb 4 oz. The others all made one run too far and found sanctuary in the weed. I also had a male tench of about 6 lb. I’m not having trouble getting runs, in fact I’ve had more already than a usual seasons worth, but they just go and go when hooked. Also the extent of snags, weed and floating weed doesn’t help! So now I’ve gone from landing a 37 lb 12 oz beast on 8 lb line to losing several fish on 15 lb line! Madness. Anyway I decided to give the fish a rest for a week, keeping the bait going in, but not fishing. I’m putting in 1.5 kg of sweetcorn an evening, using Safeway economy bags, about £1 a kilo, which conveniently sit in the freezer and defrost quickly when needed.
During the break I also spoke to mates about playing carp – I hate losing fish when you know there are hardly any fish under 20 lb! The main advice was to keep the rod low, apparently it helps knock them off balance. So my plan was to keep the rod low and bundle them into the net quickly, before they could go on any long runs.
The weather went from stable hot clear high pressure to nasty wet low pressure – a good sign to get back on the water! So I went for an after work Saturday night session. I now fish two rods – one on the lift method with sweetcorn, and the other on a 1.5 oz semi fixed pear lead, snakebite hooklength and popped up sweetcorn. The fish have definite patrol times, and I was saying to myself, “Should get a run or bite about now”, when a carp stormed off against my tightened up clutch. I struck sideways, and keeping the rod low gave the fish stick right from the off. It worked a treat, and the fish didn’t know what was going on. Five minutes later a gorgeous 28 lb 3 oz mirror carp was in the net! Sorted. Hopefully I’ve found the key to getting these nutty fish in the net!? Whatever happens I’ll let you know soon…
I’ll be following up this article with photos of the two twenties, and a more tactical piece including some rig diagrams and ideas for you to try out yourself. So whatever you do, keep it logged to Anglersnet!
Tight lines,
Fred – 2001
P.S. For even more up to the minute details of what I’m upto, log on to the Anglersnet Forum, and I may have posted the previous evenings catch on there!
