Carp Catchers Blog

The early period of 2009 proved to be a difficult time of year on the fishing front as I didn’t even manage to grace the banks at all due to being in the final year of my degree course, which meant a great deal of my time was taken up with studying and completing my dissertation. But luckily for me I had arranged to do my final work placement on the Cotswold Water Park at Watermark fisheries near Cirencester, this meant I would be working on the fishery during the day and fishing through the nights. I had handed in my dissertation the previous friday and was starting work at Watermark the following week, upon arrival I was told to take a walk around the smaller carp lake(Little Horseshoe) on the complex at 4.5 acres it holds around 450 carp into the 30s, to get an idea of where Id like to setup; after a walk round the pretty little lake it was off to work for the day. That evening I decided to set up in the swim between the Trout lake and Little horseshoe, this gave me the option of fishing to the island, the deep water directly in front of it and the various other features which this lake holds. The topography of the lake ranges from clear gravel areas to clay, silt and weed at a wide variety of depths, you are really spoilt for choice as to where to place your baits. The first night I choose to chuck them and chance them as the light was quickly fading and at least I could feel the leads down.

The following evening I got the marker out and found a few likely spots, one out to my right which was a big gravel area which rises from 12 feet to 11 and then up to 10 feet with an average depth of 13-14 feet all around it, the next spot was just of the edge of the island on the top of the marginal slope and the 3rd spot was out to my left towards to shallows which was a small gravel patch in the weed. During the first week I tried a range of baits and set ups to buy a bite but it wasn’t happening so after a trip to the local tackle shop for some maggots I came back with a fresh approach, the second night on the maggots produced a nice 15lb 4oz mirror. My maggot rig was tied D Rig style with Korda IQ Xtra Soft Fluorocarbon  with the maggots tied on with ESP baitfloss.After the 15lber fish I decided it was time for a move and after watching a lifeless lake for over a week I made the decision to move over to Bradleys which is a big pit at over 100 acres, with a lovely stock of old originals and stocked leney dinks there was a lot of beautiful fish to go for.

The first week on Bradleys was spent in a swim over on the far bank which produced a few good tench, a small pretty stocky and rather oddly a low double pike. I then moved over to one of the point swims on the village side of the pit for the remainder of my stay, the swim was pretty choked with weed and I stuggled to find any spots that felt worthy of a bait. So I came up with a plan, there was a reasonably firm patch of silkweed surrounded by canadian pondweed which I decided to stick two rods on although this at times turned out to be a bit of a nightmare due to the small size of the spot and the winds, which as you can imagine get very strong when taking a run up across such a big expanse of water. Over this spot I spodded around 1-2 kilo of  Dynamite Baits Frenzied Hempseed , crushed tigers, Atlantic Heat Boilies and pellet every night and a few spods in the morning before work and fished Atlantic Heat Boilies over the top which is what everyone seems to use when fishing Bradleys. I managed to picked up a couple of fish from other small spots using  Richworth Pineapple Hawaiian Pop Ups  on a withy pool and bottom baits on a line aligner the first couple of nights but then I started to see a bit of movement over the baited area, with the birds doing their job of clearing the spot while I worked during the day I finally managed a run off the spot which was another small stocked leney dink around 16lb. I managed another run that night but lost the fish, the spot then continued to produce a steady flow of fish including a few good tench to 7lb until it dried up a couple of days before my placement was over which was a bit of a relief as I was in serious need of a good nights sleep. So not a bad start to 2009 with no big’uns being landed but at least I know Im doing something right.

Tight Lines

Dave