September catch up

Well it has been over a month since my last post and I thought it was only right if I caught up a bit with what has been going on and it has been a good month.

On the back of the Larford match I went straight back down to my local club lake hunting a few special carp, there had been an unfortunate fish kill over the close season, but I was hoping that there would still be a few fish left to target.  I was right and on my first walk around I could see numbers of bug fat carp moving all around the lake.  I set up in a swim that had a number of fish moving within it, in one spot I counted three fish feeding with another 3 fish cruising around them so that had to have a rod put on it, unfortunately I managed to spook the fish with a clumsy cast and they didn’t reappear.  I fed a spot on a clean bottom and the second spot where I had spooked the carp but no fish were forthcoming, I even witnessed fish spooking off my rigs more than once so something needed to change. 

Although this first session ended in a blank I had learnt a lot and I knew what I needed before my return to the lake in a weeks’ time.

Roll it on a week and after a walk around the lake, I found numbers of fish in the same area as the week before so it was an easy swim choice, this time to make my bait last longer I had decided to feed just one area and I did this as soon as I moved in with 10 spombs of hemp, corn and small boilie.

I had also changed to a fluorocarbon mainline that I was fishing naked style to a lead clip, both rods on the spot it took 40 minutes for my left hand rod to ramp off and I soon had my first carp of this seasons campaign in the net, at just over 17lb I was well happy.

Unfortunately that was the end to the action on that trip after an hour as I struggled to get the fish to go back onto the spot.  I did however, suffer from line bites all night on both rods and after a quick plumb around in the morning I don’t think that I was feeding away from the weed but in it and the liners were from fish feeding or moving through the weed.  I was not a blank but I felt as though I should have had more so the following week I was back for revenge.

This time I moved swim due to there being a meteor storm that would be seen in the north so I set up on the far bank to where I had caught the week before, due to the area that I fancied being stitched I settled for a swim in  the deeper water and went about finding a spot to put the rods on.

About an hour after feeding the swim I had my first bite and a large bream was the first to fall to the trap in broad daylight, this was not a good sign but one of the other guys on the lake took pity on me and told me about a good spot in the swim. Never being one to look a gift horse in the mouth I put a rod onto the new spot for the night with just a small stick on it and went to sleep under the shooting stars wishing for a chunk.

At 4am I felt as though something should have happened and since I was awake I decided to recast the left hand rod with a fresh rig and bag on, twenty minutes later I was landing a bream.  I put the rod back out and fifteen minutes later I was weighing this:

At over 20lb I was well happy but after this again no further Carp were forthcoming although a few bream did have a bit of a feeding spell on the shorter line.

I had discovered that I did not need tons of bait to catch since I had changed my boilie flavour so I had another string to my bow for the next week.

Which brings me to this entry, a week later after walking around the lake again I found some fish up the shallow end again and set up on them, I had hoped to fish in a reedy swim but there was a big snag so to save the worry I moved back into the open water.  This time I spent a bit longer plumbing up to ensure that I was nowhere near the weed and put two small pva bags on top of a gravel hump just beyond where I had caught 2 weeks before.  It was a good plan as again within an hour or so this was sat in the landing net at 16lb:

After that the carp seemed to move away from the area in which I had caught the fish so I set another trap on a gravel spot off to my right, again it didn’t take too long and soon fish number 2 was sat on the unhooking mat.

It weighed in at just over 20lb but its mouth was a mess and I was surprised that I had managed to hook it at all, it was an old injury probably from the days of bent hooks but fortunately it was not stopping the fish from feeding and it was proving the effectiveness of my rigs.

Unfortunately the weather changed that night and I should really have moved to stay on the fish as I only saw one other fish in my swim for the remainder of that stay, but who cares when you had managed two eh?

So to present day and I have not been out this weekend as I am up to something special this week, but more of that when I get back, my Vlogs can be found on my Youtube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCACf5q4fXGAZA5wI_P5Wn8w

I hope that you enjoy them.

What would I have done differently?

I need to become more active and be ready to move onto the fish when there is scope, and lighten up my gear!!  I am also going to go back to using my lighter rods as there is no need for the brutes on the lake.

Tackle used:

Rods: 13ft 3.5lb tc Free spirit CTX

Reels: Shimano 14000 Ultegra XTC

Line: 15lb ESP Syncro loaded changed to 16lb Fox Trans Khaki