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Carp Fishing Catch-Up – Michael Stewart
Following on from the previous weeks successful session, I was eager to get back on the banks of my Cambridgeshire syndicate. Friday arrived and I was soon traveling westwards on the A47.
On arrival I was greeted with a busy car park so I was already planning on being in one of the less popular areas, at least for the night anyway.
I grabbed some gear from the car and went off to secure myself a swim before anyone else turned up, there were 6 others dotted around the lake but surprisingly the swim from last week and the one on the other end of the island were both vacant, Bonus!
I scooted round to last weeks pitch but after a few minutes watching the water I got the feeling that it was just wasn't 'right' for it and was soon heading for swim option No.2 at the opposite end of the island. Birchy was in there doing his surface thing, the man is a relentless machine when the weather warms up and fair play to him, but they weren't having it at all and he was soon back off to his main swim, enabling me to drop in.
I got a much better feeling in this area and soon saw a fish breaking the surface just off the island point. The swim seems to do me a bite when the lakes busy or when the fish are moody, which they evidently had been with only a handful of bites the whole week. With the swim secured I fetched the rest of the kit.
I had three spots noted so it was just a case of wrapping them out, adding some rigs and hookbaits then putting them out to the marks.
The middle rod went out to the point of the island just under the overhanging branches on a short chod with a 12mm white cork plugged Crave hook-bait, this was accompanied by 4kg of the 10mm Dynamite Baits Crave Boilie, Boilie crumb/pellet/particle mix laced with plenty of Krill and Crave liquids.
I always start off with a kilo of each part of the mix, dowsing the pellet and 10mm's with liquids and allowing them to soak in before I add one bait scoop of particle (approx half a kilo) and then add the boilie crumb, again letting the particle juice soak on before adding another scoop of particle. I then top up daily with half this amount (2kg) or if I’ve had a fish off the spot .
The right and left hand rods were baited with a Crave Dumbbell/alf a white Source Dumbbell Pop-up, to create a perfectly balanced bait. A golf ball sized PVA bag of freebies was added to each rod and then they were cast out to the spots.
The first night passed without incident, which seems to be the norm for me! Then at first light the island rod pulled tight, fish on! It wasn't long before the first fish of the bank holiday weekend was in the net! After a couple of quick selfies, I slipped back a Common of just over 20lb.
I put the rod back out but opted not to re-bait just in case there were others still out there feeding! Nothing happened that morning so I reeled in at midday and went to fetch some more Boilie crumb from the coolbox in the car.
The rods were back out and that night and soon the island rod produced anther Carp, this time a Mirror of 25lb 1oz.
1am and fish were showing all over the middle rod, so it wasn't a surprise when it pulled up an hour later! The fish came in like a dog on the lead and was soon in the net sulking a very yellow looking leather carp of 27lb 5oz topped the session off nicely!
