Carping on the Club Lake Pt 9

Before I get too involved in this I will be calling a few venues the club lake, this is so that should I start getting a few (Unlikely) it will be a little harder for people to figure out where I am actually fishing.  If you really want to know PM me and I may tell you though J.

Anyway to the fishing, as usual my Friday night trip started in London and ended by the lake in early afternoon, I moved my kit through the gate only to be met by sparky and even as we met and had a chat I could see it was going to be a rough one with gusty southerly winds forecast and a lot of rain to come in the morning I sometimes wonder why we do it.  Then I slap myself and crack on as there is no better feeling than that rush of hooking into an unseen fish that you have worked so hard to catch.

|I decided on a swim with the wind to my back that I have fished before so I could keep the disturbance to a minimum, 11 wraps onto a slit area on the back of some weed I dispatched two short stiff hinged rigs and then tried to put about 80 baits over the area using the smallest spomb.  I say tried but I had just swapped to a reel with only one spool which was of braid on my marker rod so dropping the spomb in nose first was troublesome to start. No doubt I will get used to it.

The night was uneventful on the fishing front, although I did meet a new face and we got to watch some fireworks go off. During the middle of the night the wind died down and I could hear fish crashing to my left but at 3 am the wind picked up again and with it came the rain.

Come the morning I decided to move one of my rods to a closer spot with a small pop up rig and a bag of oily pellets, this received a drop back at about 11 am but I did not connect with anything.  I will be back again soon and my dry spell has to finish soon as there were around 4 fish caught in the morning and all of them were from swims to my left!!!

Wadmill for my birthday next week and then who knows.

Video of Carp Lake pt 9

What would I do different?

Should have moved when I knew where the fish were crashing. I keep saying it but I SHOULD HAVE MOVED.

Tackle used:

Rods: Wychwood C 301 2.75lb TC

Reel: Shimano Ultegra 5500 XTC CI4

Line: 15lb ESP Syncro XT Loaded

Rigs: stiff hinged rig. Size 5 ESP stiff rigger to 20lb ESP stiff link. 20lb fluorocarbon boom, 3oz lead.

Wadmill Overnighter

To prevent my Blog sitting there and not getting updated for weeks on end I am going to start adding some of my carp fishing exploits, I have moved more to carp fishing of late due to time constraints and the fact that I have become more disillusioned with the whole match scene.

Anyway that may be a post for the future so back to the fishing.

On this occasion I was lucky, I had to take a day off to wait for a new kitchen to get delivered and they turned up nice and early so by lunchtime I was already in the tackle shop at Todber Manor getting a 24hr ticket for Wadmill lake.  I had decided to go on this lake as I have been struggling of late on my club lake and needed a confidence boost.  On arriving at the lake the first job was to drop my kit off in a likely looking area and then walk around to see what was going on, the answer was not really a lot and as I walked around I was hearing stories of up to 4 day stays for a maximum of a dozen carp I think it was.  However, I did notice a few shows in the same area and since the wind was hacking into that area of the I was soon setting up in a swim that covered it, I was aware though that if someone had turned up in the swim to my Left I would be losing half the swim so I had to strike early.  The guy in the next swim to my right had a 15lber whilst he was packing up so I pinged a couple of small stiff hinged rigs out one to the island and one down the edge to my left both with a loose scattering of about 50 boilies around them.

 

I managed a couple of carp from this swim both from off the island but the wind started to change direction and the fish seemed to move off with it, so I decided just on dusk that I would try to find some more fish. 

I went on 3 laps of the lake and finally decided on swim 2 above as I had seen a few fish moving in the gap of the island to my left and it had always been a good area. I dropped 2 pop ups short just off the reed line to the left and right of the swim and settled back for the night.

I had my first fish just after first light and a second at seven in the morning, it was then that the lake became really busy and it went from two of us on the lake to 10 and by the time I left at 1200 I counted around 20 people fishing the lake, there are 31 swims and it was October!

All this pressure had a detrimental affect on the carp and they seemed to almost shut up shop, although I did see one get caught in the morning to a guy chucking a bag of pellet into the open water.

Any way I dropped into the shop on my way out and Kia pointed out that 4 carp from Wadmill is equivalent to a blank!! So I will be back soon to sort that out.

I made a video of the trip and it can be found here on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2lxxXAIEEM

What would I do different?

I believe that if I had stayed in the first swim I may have had a few more fish throughout the night as I heard them crashing to my left all night.

Smaller hookbaits and pellet feed would have also got me more bites but I was after more quality than quantity.

I need to look at how everyone else fishes it as quite a few fish came to pub chucks whilst I was there!

Tackle used:

Rods: Wychwood C 301 2.75lb TC

Reel: Shimano Ultegra 5500 XTC CI4

Line: 15lb ESP Syncro XT Loaded

Rigs: Various, stiff hinged and multi rigs both produced fish