Sorry – We Are Now Closed

‘So you arrive at the bankside and quietly set up your rod and tackle and soon you have cast out and have settled down to wait. But do not expect the carp to bite very early in the morning (I am thinking of July). You may not get a run until the sun is up over yonder elms and his bright rays have dispelled the last of the smoking vapours. But the important thing is that you will be there before the carp are looking for their breakfast, they will not feel you walking along the bank.’

BB – Confessions of a Carp Fisher

I was quite buoyed by my success and how easy it had been to catch at my last visit. The next day, I returned as the weather was sunny and the weather front unchanged. As I waded round to the secluded north-westerly corner of the lake that is marked by the array of fallen tree stumps in the shallow, sandy shoreline I thought back to my initial visit and my first capture almost exactly two years ago.

After my capture yesterday, the carp had promptly melted away. This was predictable behaviour; however, less so was what occurred when the carp had briefly become stuck around the narrow stump. Upon watching him flail about a little, before promptly deciding all was lost and proceeding to lie, gasping, on his side near the surface in a rather dramatic fashion, five or six of his smaller brethren then swiftly swum over to see why he was making such a fuss. They arrived in a procession, largest first, and proceeded to circle around him whilst I was rotating the long rod overhead and thus unwinding the line from the snag. Unable to assist, they were reluctant to leave until he was free and started to make little runs again in a bid for freedom. At that point I had gently handlined him in and scooped him up with one big hand onto the top of my thigh high waders, placed the rod down and unhooked him.

I have seen carp act like this before, and chub too, when they witness one of their number get hooked. It is quite endearing really and the bond that carp enjoy must be quite strong. They will normally stay in the same year groups for life and, even in the wild, this may still be well in excess of sixty years. In fact, the oldest carp on record died on July 7, 1977 at a grand old age of 226. Born in 1751, Hanako, as she was known, was born in Japan in the first year of Horeki in the middle of the Tokugawa Era.

As the years progress, natural selection takes its course and these year groups are whittled down to a few survivors; in less forbidding waters where survival rates are greater, the year groups may split up, coming together solely to spawn or for occasional socials which generally revolve around food or sunbathing. It is interesting that in gravel pits, different year groups, or shoals, will find their own ways around the place and once these paths are set they are used routinely. It is this fact that enables us to trap them quite easily, given sufficient time and an understanding of how the weather usually affects their behaviour within that specific lake. Where these paths cross, you may have a ‘hotspot’; the equivalent of a busy junction that sees regular traffic.

I have often found it easier to set a trap on a route or junction I have discovered, than within an existing feeding area. This is because carp can become quite single-minded and will often visit a specific area to feed on a specific item, such as bloodworm. Although you can entice them here – because they are feeding – after a while the larger specimens tend to become wise to your intentions and may enter the area, feed solely on what they came for and then depart, leaving your hookbait, and even your free offerings, completely untouched. This is part of the reason that many carp anglers search for baits that will trigger the fish to pick them up and this has been achieved to some extent. Carp are also extremely curious and, in that way, remind me of cats. Many a big and wary carp has been taken down on a single, pineapple pop-up whence before they have ignored all efforts to entice them on the conventional favourites, many of which I have mentioned in my post on bait. I have little time for turning the art of carp fishing into a biology lesson however and privately feel that the endless quest for the holy grail of carp bait, something the carp simply cannot refuse, is truthfully more about a finding a means for the poor angler to compensate for a lack of watercraft. Tench, however, can be quite impossible and some will simply not eat bait at all. I have watched them feed on mud all around a baited area and ignore everything: maggots, hemp, breadcrumbs, casters, luncheon meat. Nothing will they eat. After sifting the mud all around, I have watched the same specimen sized tench shuffle on, still feeding, apparently oblivious to the banquet laid on for their benefit. Quite maddening in truth. My quest for a double figure tench continues… Carp, on the other hand are not that difficult to catch. In waters that have seen little bait, prebaiting is the key. Once switched onto a food source, they will eat it until they learn to associate it with being caught.

Wading on round to the scene of yesterday’s success, I could not see anything at first. Ten minutes later, I concluded that was because there was nothing to see. There was nothing here today. I pondered if this was possibly because it was now afternoon; perhaps they warm up here in the morning and then head back out to the middle, or elsewhere, during the daytime. I waded back round to the main swim. There only is one swim on this lake really, other than the one I have dug out, and this is where I first caught Dimple two years ago.

Main swim view to the tree stumps…can you see the deer?

I put the rod together and checked the depth again out in front of me where a few tree tops break the surface and was reminded that it is still extremely deep. I counted fourteen feet off the float I used as a marker, but when I leaned right out with my 13 foot rod, tightened down to the waters surface and pulled the float up vertically, I saw it was closer to twenty feet deep as the length of line I pulled up leading to the lead below it was far, far beyond the length of my 13 foot rod. I checked the depth again a few times randomly, feeding off the line in one foot lengths until the float appeared and it stubbornly remained uniform at about fourteen feet – I have never really trusted this method of mapping the bottom and I still don’t – despite people’s assurances to the contrary, I remain convinced that it is wildly inaccurate!

The bottom of this old sand pit, which was later an open landfill site, has since been filled and levelled out. It is flat and uniform and sandy and barren. Truly, I have no idea what these carp eat.

I threw in some bait to the left of the treetops and fished for a while. I had intentionally waited for the promised thunderstorm, willing to suffer it if it would switch the carp onto feed and I could find out where that might be. The drop in barometric pressure can cause them to get their heads down, a phenomenon I have written about in a previous post on thunderstorms. Well, it rained all right, in fact it absolutely chucked it down. I saw nothing. I caught nothing. Upon returning home, I had to have a hot shower to rediscover my hands – it is still March after all and lots of that rain was actually small hailstones.

Today, now two days since my capture, I returned to the lake this morning. For the purposes of brevity, I fished today over my prebaited spot, saw nothing and caught nothing. Waded round, twice and visited the tree posts – nothing has returned since I slipped the little fella back there. How do they communicate? I don’t know really; I know that they secrete a pheromone of sorts when in distress through their skin which lets other fish know that there be a problem, but I thought that just dispersed in the water fairly quickly and then the carp would be back within a day, or two at the most. They are not back and do not appear to be coming back either. I reflected on the fact that although I caught Dimple twice in short order back in 2014, the second time it was from the swim I had dug out, in other words, right on the other side of the lake.

I packed up about midday, drove around the lake and went back to my dug out swim and walked that bank. Nothing. I also saw how appallingly open the main swim is. You are like a lighthouse standing up on that bank and I just cannot fish it regularly or it is inevitable I will get snitched on, leading to me potentially being fined or even arrested. In any event, the fence I have to nip through to get there is almost bang opposite a busy road junction where cars queue almost non-stop to turn either right or left. I have to wait around for ages for a break in the traffic before getting out and there is a steep and slippery muddy bank to scramble up and over at the fence approach (coming from the lakeside); it is just not practical at my age anymore. Now too old to plead ignorance (or even just youth) and far too young to plead senility, I would get arrested for sure if my timing was unfortunate. I had the fright of my life as I left today, scrambling out directly opposite a van belonging to a man who, having apparently missed his vocation as a police officer, has since decorated his vehicle accordingly – although, judging from the look on his face as he swung past, my fright was nothing on his as I leapt suddenly out of the hedgerow, rods and pole in hand.

I have taken stock of a few things:

Once I caught Dimple, the carp started appearing at the other end of the lake and, to confirm this fact, so did he. Although to potentially confound the theory the carp are so spooky that they promptly emigrate to other side of the lake for a year after a single capture, there was nothing visible at either end today. However, once I have caught a carp in one spot, it goes dead and my experience on the place tells me this may last for some time. Although I did have two carp out from the dug out in 2014, they were a long distance apart and Dimple is a bit of a mug anyway, I think he is actually part bream.

All my captures have been in the morning, around 8am. Once the suns rays have dispelled the misty morning vapours…

Prebaiting has been necessary for a few days, but an overkill on prebaiting (albeit this may have been due to it being far too cold for any sane person to be out there, prebaiting, last year when I commenced my campaign) has been the kiss of death for all time. I am fairly sure that I effectively killed my own swim last year.

I cannot fish this lake except from where I dug out my swim and that is the reason I dug it out. I wrongly thought it was due to spotting carp there. That may even be true…but the fact remains, although far from ideal, it is the only viable option.

This lake is incredibly hard and is making Wraysbury, and the other lakes round the Colne valley I grew up fishing, look like a picnic. I thought they were difficult. This is nigh on impossible.

People have clearly fished the place – or tried to – in the past. I was idiotic not to have taken the big girl when I could have two days ago; although I did have my reasons, the enormous tree stumps everywhere being a fairly primary concern at the time. It was also just a trifle too easy and the carp not that pretty and not THAT big – but now it is once again almost impossible to see, let alone catch, anything at all.

I guess that’s fishing for you. Once again, the lake gives up one fish before the shutters come down.

 

Sorry – We are now Closed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

A good start to 2016…

Yesterday I revisited the forgotten lake for the first time in a year. The weather was windy and wet when I was out in the daytime and it continued to get worse throughout the night, as storm Katie smashed through from the south west on winds recorded as exceeding 100mph past The Needles on the Isle of Wight. I am no meteorologist, so I have no idea when a storm becomes a hurricane, but judging from the devastation that was spread around the surrounding roads as I drove to the lake this morning, the wind had lost little of its momentum when the gale hit here. The severe weather kept us both up half the night and I had to clear the track that leads up to our cottage of fallen branches just to get out to the main road this morning; fortunately, no damage has been done.

Once the weather had blown through this morning the sun peeked its head out as I headed down the road. A tree had come down onto a power line that, strung up on wooden posts, straddles the narrow road. Half the road was blocked, the remainder of the tree dangling overhead on the steel cable running between the two supports. Dodging the tree, I drove on, soon passing another obstacle that had collapsed blocking my side of the carriageway, in the form of part of a tangled hedge of stunted trees smothered in ivy. Often I will get out and clear the road, but today I was going fishing.

I had prepared some hemp and tiger nuts the previous night and was ready to pop down to my prebaited spot. Pulling up at my usual parking spot, I realised I had forgotten my unhooking mat and a chair. As I only live ten minutes down the road this was no more than a minor irritation and I thought I would go and have another look around for now.

I spend a lot of time looking at lakes, far more than I do fishing them in truth. Last year, despite starting too early, I saw nothing in the area where before I had succeeded. It occurred to me that I had only dug out the swim in the first place because that was where I had found the fish. For some reason, since my capture of the 27lb mirror back in the Spring of 2014, they had apparently never returned. I had seen nothing at all last year in this area, partly why I have not written up my blog over 2015, although I only went down for a short period. I saw nothing and caught nothing. The carp were simply not there.

I felt the same way today when I scrambled down the bank, shinned up the lookout tree and stared into the murky water. The wind was still blowing hard into this corner of the lake, but it just felt wrong. I have decided to leave this corner alone until I see some signs of life appear here again. I returned to the car and drove around to the other side of the lake, where I first caught Dimple back in 2014 and where, last year, I had seen so many juvenile carp appear in the flooded trees.

The sharp drop in water level has transformed this side of the lake and it now looks completely different. The once flooded bank side is now dry and the affect of the area becoming far shallower has been to create a sandy, beach-like zone. The lake now has something it never had in 2014 – a sunny, shallow margin. Reed stalks are poking through the sand and this corner is sheltered from the strong, predominately south-westerly winds. Given the myriad of tree stumps that still exist over here, there are no awards for guessing where the carp may be warming themselves at this time of year!

I wonder where the carp are…

I had a shimmy round the bank, as I was wearing walking shoes which are only ankle high and not waterproof, keeping my eyes peeled for carp…and I soon found what I was looking for.

Kinky Mirror with friends

I watched them for ages, stood not three feet from where they lay. One was really quite large, albeit slightly dumpy and very kinked. It was kinked about three times and, from the back, its body looked like a misshapen W. It also had a very curious front end; rather than being rounded, the forehead and top jaw appeared inverted and elongated, almost like a pike. Still, it has quite a considerable girth when viewed from behind and is all shoulders at the moment, the gut apparently empty. It swam with another that was slightly smaller but a far prettier specimen, with big apple slices spread evenly along both linear lines, coupled with a nice netting effect along the topsides. A number of smaller carp of different sizes were spread about with them, all dark in colour and very pretty. Normally I would leave them alone as I only really chase big carp these days, but I decided I wanted to try and get a closer look today…they just looked so beautiful in the water under the sunshine. Besides, the sad truth is that they really need to learn that a big man stood there peering at them is unlikely to be a friend, before somebody less scrupulous comes across this lake and these carp are caught and not returned…

I returned home and gathered up my waders, a long, 13 foot carp rod and my roll up unhooking mat. Back at the bank, I waded down the bank side and set up a rod. Well, I threaded the line through the rings and tied a hook on – tricky stuff I know. I have never dared to fish the lake so brazenly in broad daylight, but over the past two years it has become apparent that nobody ever comes here. In the event a passer by was to see me, I decided today that I really didn’t care. Do your worst. I am sure the police will be flying down here with the blues and twos in the event you report me for wetting a line on a Bank Holiday. In any event, I plan to move from this area fairly soon and therefore I care less about blowing my cover. I was pondering how many carp were actually in this lake. The shoulders on Kinky, as I have called the misshapen beast, could be the dark figure I saw hugging the bottom a few years ago. I am, admittedly, useless at judging the weight of carp in the water, for some reason I am usually well off and the carp are nearly always bigger and heavier than I thought. Even at close range, I am afraid my skills are little better. Carp are all different shapes and depths and until you haul it out and stick it in a sling, there is no way of really knowing what it weighs in my experience. That carp is, even in the water, a good five or six inches across the top of its back and that is generally indicative of a fair sized fish, even a slightly misshapen and dumpy one. But it could be anywhere from mid 20s to high 30s, I am really not sure and its gut looks empty at the moment anyway.

On the other hand, I don’t think these carp are the same as the ones I saw before at all. They look a bit smaller, some are very small, and I simply don’t recognise any of them. Maybe there really are loads of carp in here, the whole lake is so inaccessible and difficult to fish properly that it really is difficult to say. Despite the height of the approach, the lake remains like a mirror, the polaroids great for the small window of vision directly beneath you and slightly out in front, but leaving acres of water all around consistently impossible to penetrate.

Anyway, back to the fishing. I had brought a bit of crust with me and I thought I would see if chucking that at the big girl would yield any joy – you never know! Unsurprisingly, it did not. Kinky moved a little, irritated. Not fooled but now on guard, I realised that this had been foolishly optimistic and the carp were now notably less tolerant of the big man standing on the bank side…so they have been out before. Then the strangest behaviour began.

The smaller carp, of which there were probably seven or eight under 15lb, started getting really agitated, no, animated would be a better word. They just switched on and started cruising around with their mouths out the water, gulping for food and clearly quite excited – it was bizarre. I had chucked one bit of crust out on my hook. (Incidentally, never try and ‘get them going’ on floaters – idiotic waste of time, they will either have it or they won’t – often they will have the first one, maybe two, and then ignore the rest, so always make sure the first one has a hook in it).

Was somebody secretly feeding them as pets? Obviously not – but it was that sort of behaviour, like fish in a tank when they know it’s time for food. Anyway, it really irritated the big girl as they kept swimming up against her and pushing her about. Spooked, or just annoyed, she meandered off a bit to the right and I read the signs and promptly went the other way, looking for her friend, the other bigger specimen I had seen in the morning who was currently nowhere to be seen.

Wading slowly and quietly along the dead trees, I thought I could make out the other big girl on the far right and on the edge of the stumps. My line then decided to fall all about the base of the reel and I spent five minutes stood out in the water removing the spool, then the line from round the pin and reassembling it all, before looking up and realising my floating crust was now a sinking crust. Not bothered, nor particularly fussy which of these beautiful carp I was going to catch today as long as it was not too small, I chucked this out a few feet ahead of the three shapes still out in front. I watched the bread sink slowly and, as it dropped out of my sight, a black blur suddenly shot across the water and the line came alive.

I was on heavy gear in these trees – 15lb line, tight drag and an old 13 foot Nash 3lb test curve rod – as I had figured that a long rod and waders would enable me to reach over and behind any of the posts in front of me and unwind the line in the event a hooked carp started doing a pole dance. This made them less snags and more obstacles really, although there were areas of the snags I was not willing or able to fish. There are many ways to play a fish and I have fished in snags, when necessary, for many, many years without incident. You can slacken the line off when you see the carp heading in the right direction, scoop up Mr Carp before he knows he is hooked (cheating really but it saves a lot of time, the big ones can be a bit slow on the uptake when they have not been hooked before and I have had them out, weighed and put back before they have known what’s hit them in the past)…but you do need a plan and I am prepared, if necessary, to get wet, as I am a very good swimmer. If you are not prepared to do this and you are just going to watch a snagged up carp die in front of you as you stand there wringing your hands, then please just don’t fish in snags. Anyway, he wound himself round a thin tree stump and I popped the rod over and past it, unwound him from the maypole and he soon played out. I lifted him out gently and took him back to the mat.

10lb Leney Mirror Carp

Such a pretty carp, even the photo barely does it justice. Just over 10lb, never caught before and undoubtedly a pure Leney bloodline. Now this one looked about 7lb or 8lb when I popped it gently back and it swam off slowly, even turning broadside for a good look at me, before meandering off quite calmly. So if that one is 10lb, how big is Kinky? And another thing, the carp I caught at 27lb a few years back was definitely absent. How big do they go in here? This year, I plan to take a few more risks to find out because I am fairly sure these carp, completely unpressured, just feed in the daytime…and that there be monsters here.

Bait

A brief post on my favourite baits for unfished and neglected lakes, as that is where I fish most of the time. Pressured and busy lakes each require a different approach. Although I enjoy river fishing, the signal crayfish have decimated my river and their huge numbers have been eating all the fish eggs for years. Now starving, the crayfish eat each other. Since some numptie introduced otters in a (private) stretch of the river, virtually nothing lives in there now and I tire of catching crayfish. Back to bait…

Tiger Nuts

Put in a pan, cover with boiling water, leave for 24 hours. Then boil for ninety minutes or so with brown sugar / black treacle and a dash of sea salt. Test one by biting through – it should be cooked through, not still raw in the middle. It can take a long time to cook them up sometimes, but just keep boiling them and they will continue to expand.

Carp, in particular, simply love Tiger Nuts. Nobody knows why they like them quite SO much, but they do. Recently, an angler on the bankside of one of my club lakes (which I rarely frequent) asked me if he could see some tiger nuts, as he had heard of them but never seen one. His face was a picture when I gave him a small handful. He was clearly not impressed. ‘Is that it?’ he asked.

‘That’s it,’ I replied. ‘I know what you’re thinking, they don’t look much, right? Trust me, they work.’

Back in the 1990’s, many a rock hard pit was suddenly bust wide open when the magical secret of tiger nuts finally became widely known. I mean places like Sheepwalk, Ellis, Priory, Wraysbury and a host of other pits up and down the Colne Valle – many are less well known and remain very difficult. Nowadays however, most have seen (a lot of) bait but back then, most had not.

Hemp

I find it best to buy the seeds uncooked. You can soak and then boil them until the kernels split and the white stalks pop out, however there are other things you can do with hemp seeds. If you cook them, chuck in a handful of sea salt.

Try sticking them in a blender raw and grind the seeds down to powder. Then add the juice that you used to cook the tiger nuts and / or hemp seed to the blended seeds and use that as groundbait. It’s lethal.

Luncheon Meat

One of the best baits of all time. Not many fish that swim will refuse a chunk of luncheon meat. Personally, I have caught more carp on luncheon meat than anything else. With so many anglers now using boilies, luncheon meat has just got better and better as the years have rolled on. Never be afraid to rip off a large chunk, the size of a small matchbox is fine. Big bait often does equal big fish.

Luncheon meat also accounted for my PB barbel (10lb 8oz) which came in mid-afternoon on the hottest day of that year.

Halibut Pellets

An amazing bait, particularly if you need to pre-bait for a while.  I always buy the big 22mm size. The great thing about halibut pellets is that they attract just about everything – so even if the fish do not find them in short order, the creepy crawlies (snails love them) soon move in and create a natural larder, thus getting the fish feeding on the pre-baited spot sooner or later. I often use them in conjunction with luncheon meat, which I usually prefer on the hook.

Barbel also love halibut pellets and I took a break from carp fishing back in 2012 to go and try my local, crayfish infested river that holds a (very) few, big barbel. I baited up with a 22mm halibut pellet and sat back, having laid a little trail of them downstream (I call it the Hansel and Gretel tactic, it is also how I caught my PB barbel). Six hours later when the rod hooped over, I was not expecting to pull out this dark, 11lb river common carp! He fought like fury on my 8lb line, breaking water twice! I think he thought he was a sailfish!

Years ago, I cracked a particularly hard gravel pit pre-baiting using halibut pellets. The carp in that pit would not have anything until I started to pre-bait with these, in conjunction with luncheon meat of course! I finally caught an 18lb common carp that was jet black all over, mouth, fins, everything. Just a few scales at the belly were tinged with gold and it was clearly very, very old. Sadly, I never got a picture of it which I still regret now. Since then, I have always taken a camera when I go fishing.

Maggots

Another neglected bait nowadays and just as effective as they always have been. They emit ammonia underwater and the fish hone in on the smell from some distance. The sand pit I am currently fishing only started responding when I began to use maggots. Something about the wriggling, smelly little critters can trigger the fish to begin feeding at almost anytime of day.

Bird Seed

Yep, bird seed. Cook it up like any other particle. Virtually everything that swims loves seeds and the variety in a bird seed mix keeps them happily picking around for hours. I usually add some frozen sweetcorn, layers pellets and molasses and cook it up for half an hour. If you do this, stir it now and again or it will stick to the pan base and start to burn, even in the water! And use enough water as the layers pellets act like little sponges and will absorb all that oily, sugary goodness.

The water that first cooked tiger nuts, with a spoon of black treacle, then hemp seed with a dash of groundnut oil and, finally, bird seed with sweetcorn and layers pellets. Add blended hemp!

 

Other things…

Sensas groundbait – either the one pictured (black, fishmeal) or the red (original) both work extremely well. The green, betaine groundbait mix is also good, but I forget who makes that.

Weetabix – buy a box of value Weetabix for virtually nothing and use as a binder for ground bait. Fish love Weetabix.

Bread – Obviously a good bait. I use it mainly to pad out groundbait though, as it absorbs flavour and oils so well and it is so cheap!

Boilies – I make my own and I would recommend you do the same if you need/ want to use them. The shop bought (shelf-life) type are often not much cop to be honest.

Boilies were designed for lakes with nuisance fish and where nuts had been banned. They still rarely outscore luncheon meat in my experience, unless the fish have been caught on meat before and/or recently – which is not often nowadays as most anglers do still prefer to use a boiled bait. If you make some, I would recommend you keep the ingredients to a minimum and use fresh ingredients that are a bit different.

My twist is the juice from freshly pressed oranges and my Spicy Chocolate Orange boilies are very simple and work well. I do know a bit about making boilies; amino acids, chemo-reception, trypsin inhibitors and so on; however, the range over which these signals can be detected in reality is very small. You really don’t need to be that subtle unless the carp are very, very cute and this is very rare. It has been said before that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing: I would certainly think that expression may apply to the carp scene and the fascination with boilie creation these days.

 

Apart from my boilies, all these baits are fairly cheap and easy to prepare. Most are not used that much anymore (in comparison to the 1990’s) and are definitely worth trying if you are up against carp that have not seen bait. Good Luck…

 

 

Rock Hard

Having baited up my spot for the past three weeks of February, every four days at a minimum, I was keen to get down to my swim over the weekend and do a couple of dawn starts.

Saturday morning was dreary and overcast, a gloomy increase in visibility the only sign that the dawn had broken at all. The rain was so fine as to be almost imperceptible; however, within an hour or so my trousers were once again soaked through, clinging limply to my legs in the damp, still, cold air. It was then that I looked up to the grey sky over the body of water to my right and noticed the fine mist of rain for the first time, blowing in the gusts of wind high overhead.

Over the past weeks I have baited up with more than just hempseed and tiger nuts this year, including various additions such as large halibut pellets and some homemade boilies. I have rolled some boilies in four separate batches using the same (homemade) base mix, but using slightly different ingredients to vary the break-up time, solubility and the taste. In addition, I have raided the local pheasant feed posts stationed around my house in the surrounding fields – as the local Estate sees fit to send folk trampling across my garden fence in their various hunting pursuits I have no qualms about doing this whatsoever – and this free grain, mostly wheat in truth, has been boiled up with some layers pellets and molasses and thrown in at intervals over the month. Different visits have seen me depositing different meals in the same spot. I have also mixed up some black shellfish groundbait, some Weetabix (definitely a great ingredient, not only for the betaine, but also for the additional vitamins and mineral content) and even a little sweetcorn, the varied diet covering just about every possible dietary requirement a carp could require: protein, carbohydrates, lipids, vitamins and minerals. I deliberately covered all the bases in the hope of luring in the largest residents of the lake by offering them some form of sustenance that they could not find elsewhere.

SANDY BANK SWIM

My affliction, an annual occurrence in the Spring, has been worse than usual this year and I have read extensively on all things carp. I have recently learnt that a lack of ascorbic acid (vitamin C) is the usual cause of ‘broken back disease’ in fish. A number of carp I have seen over the years have this condition, often Common, rather than Mirror, carp for some reason that I can only presume is co-incidence. They are usually known in their respective haunts as ‘The Kink-Backed Common’, or something similar. One of the Common carp I declined to catch last year at The Pallisade, due to it evidently being in a state of recovery from three recent stab wounds along its back typical of a cormorant attack, had this characteristic. With this deficiency in mind, I had rolled my boilies using freshly squeezed orange juice – not only do carp love oranges, they are acidic which causes a noticeable pH change in the water (assisting with chemoreception) and the pepsin within the juice reacts in spectacular fashion with the albumin in egg whites. By using certain choice ingredients in the base mix and preparing and mixing the components in a certain order, I had hoped my boilies would achieve an effective reaction underwater that would entice even the largest and most wary of carp to investigate. Building on previous experiments, I tested all four boilie batches in glasses of water. The results were much as I had anticipated.

The evening before, on Friday, I had sat and watched my spot for a little while prior to baiting up. A few bubbles and small slicks of oil had surfaced, implying that something or other had found the food and was having a go at it. Buoyed by this sighting, I had re-baited and I had done so once more upon my arrival this morning. After an hour or so, there was a very large oil slick, covering almost a foot or water. These slicks are not caused by the carp themselves, but usually form when the oily pellets, hemp seeds and so on are being shuffled about on the lake bottom. However, they can be very misleading as I have discovered on previous sessions on gravel pits over the years, where I have seen oily slicks materialise for no apparent reason whatsoever.

Suffice to say, nothing took my baited hook, my hair-rigged tiger nuts remaining on the lakebed undisturbed. I switched to a homemade boilie after a few hours, but nothing happened. About 11am, wet and cold, I headed off home to meet my better half and do the shopping run.

Sunday was a very different day, bright and cold, the dawn breaking in spectacular fashion over the hills. A burning globe of fire in the pale light greeted me, as I hurtled back towards my chosen fishing spot. Upon arrival, the place looked completely dead. Nothing stirred, anywhere, and I soon discovered the weatherman had been right after all.

For some reason, Accuweather had forecast 8am-9am to be the coldest part of the forthcoming day or preceding night, with the temperature dropping to sub-zero levels. I had found this hard to believe whilst reading it the previous evening on my laptop; however, in short order I could certainly believe it. Despite being extensively layered up and donned in my usual two pairs of trousers, fingerless gloves, cap, woollen hoodie (ultra-warm) and green anorak, I soon became painfully aware that I was sat in the equivalent of a freezer. As the nature of the place means that remaining still and quiet in a small space is a necessity, I soon began to lose feeling in the exposed tips of my fingers and nose, before the numbness started creeping into my upper legs. I soon began shivering like an addict in withdrawal.

Nothing stirred in my baited area. About 8am a crash in the centre of the lake caused me to glance over sharply. Nothing but rings of water were visible, spreading out in perfect circles across  the still surface. The tufted ducks were trilling across the water, whilst a pair of ducks were keeping to themselves over on the left bank. Three coots are living on the lake at present. This is clearly one too many, as the male of the paired couple spends much of his time with his head lowered, chasing the other male coot around the lake in circles.

The temperature of the lake water has risen about one degree since last week, the thermometer now reading 6 degrees Celsius after resting for half an hour in the waters edge. I realised on Saturday when the huge inlet pipe suddenly began spewing discharge into the lake, an event which appears to occur at completely random intervals from my observations, that there was no possible way any stratification could occur in this five acre body of water. I wondered if the discharge entering the lake was possibly warmer than the current water, but despite holding my hand against the metal pipe I could not determine the fact one way or the other. The general water visibility is slowly increasing as Spring starts to unfold and it has now increased to about three feet.

Although I have yet to see a carp this year, I already have a target fish, the dark coloured Mirror.  I doubt that there are more than six or seven carp in the lake over twenty pounds and it is certainly possible that the carp I glimpsed one day last year really is only the one carp worth targeting in the five acres. With such a very small head of fish to target, the lack of visibility underwater and the huge limitations caused by the dead trees sticking out of the water all around the banksides, it is currently proving quite a challenge during the coldest month of the year. Last year I did not catch anything notable until mid-April and I feel that I am currently too early.

Arriving at dawn, spodding out a lot of bait and sitting on it for the day is not a strategy that I want to adopt. The depth of water will spread the particles across a large area and there are no ‘nuisance’ fish of any kind to hoover up the bait. It would be very difficult to judge how much bait to use – bearing in mind I want to catch one carp from about six whilst their metabolism is still very slow and not to feed the entire population for a week. Another difficulty would be to get the correct amount of bait down on the lakebed in a sufficiently small area at such great depth – enough to draw the carp in from wherever it may be but not to leave bait to go mouldy on the lakebed.

As it proved last time, it may be maggots that prove to be the solution. Not only did they trigger the fish to get down and feed, they also have a habit of burying themselves into the lakebed in short order which is a fact I may be able to use to my advantage.

I think my current tactics of baiting up my spot regularly will ultimately pay off and catch me the big girl, but at the moment the lady of the lake has completely shut up shop.

 

Madness

‘It is a sinister place yet powerfully fascinating…It was a great square of dark water of about four or five acres, surrounded on all sides by high banks which were clothed on the right by oaks and on the left by magnificent beeches which came right down the steep sloping bank to the water’s edge, their knotted and snaky grey roots protruding from the soil…The sloping walls of this gigantic well dived straight down into the black water – one slip upon the path in several places would have precipitated the unwary angler into unknown and terrifying depths, indeed it is said that in the middle this strange pool is two hundred feet deep. Not a fish was visible that first time I visited Beechmere; an utter stillness brooded over the place and I felt the strange and sinister atmosphere which, so the story goes, has been the cause of several suicides.’

BB – Confessions of a Carp Fisher

I had decided to create myself a swim by the tree and returned to my chosen area last Saturday afternoon, armed with a spade. As I approached the particular tree I had in mind to dig behind, I saw a great, dark shape suspended deep in the water. It was certainly an old carp, very dark in colour, almost black and dwarfing anything I had seen previously. I estimated its weight at around 35lb, maybe a touch heavier; but it was windy and the fish was deep, suspended approximately eight foot under the waters’ surface. The wind and depth made it difficult to judge its weight with any accuracy and within a few minutes the old carp had meandered off, back into the depths. Although pleased to have finally seen a carp over 30lb, I was not honestly that surprised. I had already seen smaller, dark carp, I knew the lake was very old and had been left undisturbed. Spawning had evidently been successful, judging from the range of sizes and year groups in the carp I had already seen. Should anyone have told me that there were no large fish in the lake, I would have been very doubtful. Monster carp can stay hidden for years.

With regards to this lake, it was reassuring to confirm that no pollutants or oxygen crashes had wiped the place out, as this has happened to a fair few old lakes over the past decade. I have a feeling there may even bigger carp present, but that carp looked big enough to be going on with. One curious thing I noticed was that it seemed to have an abnormally huge, wide, black tail but this could have been an illusion created by refraction and the wind. I doubt this great carp has ever seen the bank. Curiously, despite its size, it still looked quite small in the context of the lake itself. From the waters’ edge (and wearing polaroid sunglasses), it is possible to see down to a depth of about ten feet, a fact I know from plumbing the water in front of me in my previous location. From my vantage point here however, my foot supported in the cleft of my adopted tree, it was possible to see far a little further out and much further down.

Standing up on that tree and staring down into the abyss beneath you, the obvious depth is quite eerie. Previously unnoticed, submerged trees become visible further out, their feet still rooted somewhere in the darkness. The span of the branches suggests that once they had towered overhead, maybe fifty feet high, maybe more. As the breeze ruffles the water it creates ripples, distorting  and fragmenting the picture, in the same way a digital television programme may suffer temporary interference. As the wind dies down, the picture is restored. I began following the branches down into the depths, descending down, down, as far as I could see. The initial clarity soon gives way to a light green tinge, which gradually darkens. As it deepens the dark green fades finally to a deep hue of darkest blue, until nothing can be seen at all. I have experienced a similar feeling of awe as a child when I first stared over the handrail of the car ferry before leaning right over, staring down into the sea. I remember wondering how deep it must be, as I could see so far, so clearly.

I saw a few more carp as I dug out my swim, evidently patrolling up and down the bank. It gave me a great deal of pleasure, watching them go about their lives and they seemed oblivious to my presence; although I made no attempt to hide myself as I was not fishing, but digging. A beautiful, almost fully scaled mirror seemed to be resident here, dark backed with bright orange and red colouration in its tail and fins. In common with the majority, it was likely under 15lb. A pair of little carp also resided here and puffed up and down in ten minute intervals, round and about 1lb a piece. As they made their way through again I threw out the bait I had brought with me. Some big halibut pellets, corn, luncheon meat and a few of my own boilies, all mixed in with a fishmeal groundbait (dark in colour) and some hemp water, saved from the last batch I cooked up. Into this mixture I added the sweetcorn juice from the can as well. I lobbed this without any great care into the margin spot I was planning to fish tomorrow and carried on digging out my swim. It was easy work, the banks being soft and fluffy, which for some reason reminded me of a freshly baked sponge cake and I felt hungry. I hacked through a few tree roots and created a decent sized, flat patch that I hoped would serve as a comfortable seating area. I completed the swim by digging out a few footholds into the bank, as my swim was set behind the tree about five foot up from the water’s edge. The footholds were to enable me to net a carp and carry it back up to my flat area, should the need arise. It took a while, but it had to be done as the bank was otherwise so steep it was difficult even to stand comfortably, let alone attempt fishing the area. I now had a virgin swim in my chosen location and, as it was getting quite dark, I returned home.

I could not sleep that night. I closed my eyes but the enormous carp I had seen kept me awake for many hours; when I last glanced at the clock it was 02:00 and my alarm was set for 05:30! I think I got about three hours sleep in the end. When I finally arrived bankside it was about 06:30 and the signs of feeding fish were everywhere. They had evidently ripped the bottom up over my groundbait and I tackled up as fast as I could. Once again, however, soon after I arrived the fish stopped feeding. Although a little frustrating, it confirmed to me that the carp here seem to feed in the small hours, before sunrise.

I left about 10:00 and went home. The fishing would have to wait until the forthcoming Easter weekend, which I was to have to myself as my fiancé was going away.

---

I did a little preparation for my next trip, both in terms of bait and tackle. I considered my maggot and hemp approach had been more successful than the sweetcorn, halibut pellets and meat I had tried the second time, although the carp had evidently cleared up both areas overnight. It seemed to me that, after daybreak, it was likely that the ‘little and often’ maggot trickle had persuaded the carp to get its head down. I have also had a bit of luck on gravel pits that see little bait using tiger nuts, so I prepared some of these, soaked then boiled in brown sugar. I also added a bit of rock salt to this boil as I felt that the carp would be attracted to the chloride, given the time of year. It would also do them a bit of good, as Spring is when their immune system is at its lowest point.

I found time to sort through my tackle and prepare some more hemp on Thursday, keeping the water used to boil the hemp, for mixing with the groundbait bankside. I went to the tackle shop on Good Friday to buy some fresh maggots, a finer baiting needle and some strong hooks, which I wanted in a specific pattern. I soon found what I wanted which was a very strong, forged, wide gape pattern with a slightly in-turned point. Once home, I tied up some simple rigs with these hooks, just 15lb supple braid to the size 6, micro-barbed hook with a hair rig. This was for the tiger nuts. I tend to favour light leads and simple, running rigs with a hooklink of about 10” if I am presenting on a hard, clean bottom.

Bankside on Friday afternoon, I tackled up and added a tiny bit of heavy putty a few feet behind the running lead, just to keep all the line flat running towards the business end. I had not been sure whether to go down to the lake, given I had the whole weekend ahead of me to fish the lake, but swiftly decided that I had nothing I would rather be doing and that a bit of bait in the swim was overdue anyway. I soon arrived at my swim and got myself set up.

Hours ticked by, as they do. I had thrown in some hemp and tiger nuts but that was all I had decided to give them. I do not like sweetcorn or bright baits in these kinds of situations as, having watched carp for many years, I am sure it can spook them and it certainly seems to make them more suspicious. I had not seen very much, bar the usual two suspects, the baby carp that had made a home at my feet and saw no reason to leave it. After about three hours I saw a mirror carp enter the swim; but it looked like another pale fish of more recent stock and it was not what I was after, only a mid-teens size fish. A little later, a bigger common carp cruised through the area and it had wounds on its back. It occurred to me this was the fish I had seen before and presumed to have fungus. I could see it far more closely now and it looked like cormorant injuries, three stabs along the length of its back. I did not want to catch the common in that state (although I had taken some malachite green with me in case a fish needed treatment) and the fish looked old and was slightly kinked. It did not interest me as I have caught bigger and better common carp in my time. I fished on, waiting and watching for many hours – but there was no sign of the big, blacker mirror with the jet black tail that I had seen before. The pale, stockie mirror was happily cruising in and out of the area but no friends appeared to keep it company.

The lakebed beneath me was not as steep as the bank I was sat upon and, although it sloped away sharply, the water was still slightly shallower and the lakebed less inclined than most of the margins. Combined with the snags underwater and overhanging trees, it was a natural holding area for the carp. I mixed up the black fishmeal groundbait with the hemp oil and maggots and started to throw it in at intervals, whenever the stockie mirror was not around. When the stockie carp next re-appeared, it came up towards me from the bottom and evidently the groundbait combo was having the desired effect. Although this stockie was not the carp I was really after, you can only control what you catch to a certain extent. Whereas the hemp was holding at least one carp in the area (which often really means it keeps the carp returning to the area or circuiting it), it seemed that the groundbait combo was now persuading the fish to get its head down.

At some point the bobbin rose and fell a few times and I picked up the rod, felt something on the end and struck. There was little resistance, even less than before although I was on much heavier gear now, tackled up with 15lb line straight through to the 15lb braid hooklink. It was a stockie mirror, the same one I had seen earlier and it came in without fuss, wallowing over the cord like a big bream. Pitiful.

I was pleased to have caught something but not really that thrilled. I weighed it in at around the same weight as the only other carp I had caught, a touch heavier at 14lb 6oz. The carp was evidently a male, as he had spawning nodules on his head.

After the sun had set, I packed up and went home.

I am glad that I did not know at that point what I discovered the following day. Upon closer examination at home on the laptop, I confirmed that this is the same fish I caught the week before at the other end of the lake! I shall call him ‘Dimple’, as he has a dimple in his side, but really ‘Muggins’ would be a better name! Fortunately, I did not realise this at the time and later returned home, arriving back in the dark to an empty house reasonably contented.

I did not set my alarm. I was a tad disappointed that both carp I had caught had given such a pitiful account of themselves (being the same carp, that mystery is now solved) and wondered if maybe it was down to low oxygen content or something else I had not considered. Anyhow, as it happened I awoke about 05:15, as I often do when there is an opportunity to go fishing; clearly my subconscious brain decides I am going and kicks me out of bed. I ignored it for about five minutes before getting up and dressed. Everything was ready, the car was still packed. I could just grab the keys and go. Time for one cup of tea, or half of one, and I was back on the road. ‘This madness must end’ I thought to myself, as I pounded down the tarmac, bending round the narrow country roads, deserted except for the rabbits and a wood pigeon that nearly lost his game of chicken with my car.

Back at the lake – it was dead. Not a ripple or bubble broke the surface. The weatherman had said it would be near freezing overnight and it was cold in the early morning light. Unimpressed, I baited up as before and tackled up a rod. I wondered why I kept bringing two rods as this was clearly a one rod swim. A slight splash and a big circle told me the carp were a good few acres away down the bankside, on the inside corner of the dog leg bend to my right. I got my rig in the usual spot and started with my golf balls of groundbait. A stockie, pale mirror appeared by about 07:45 and I did wonder at that point if it was the same one I had caught yesterday. It was difficult to tell but it looked suspiciously similar. I began to realise that my assumption, that there was actually a decent head of carp in the lake (probably twenty to thirty fish), might have been wrong after all.

Another carp, smaller than the stockie, became briefly visible and at some point later on the bed of hemp and tigers started fizzing away, telling me that something was down there, feeding. I had no way of knowing what it was but I had a suspect in mind, until I saw that the stockie was under my feet and the feeding fish was not him. Probably the other little mirror I had seen. This was not really why I was here.

I had a bite which I struck at but it was just a liner, the circling carp had done this before and I recast a little deeper and threw out a big handful of the groundbait combo, tightly packed, to make sure it got down to the bottom. If there was a chance of drawing anything in from the deeper water, I would happily risk scaring the stockie away. It did not discourage him however and within a few minutes he was back, circling around again like a shark. This is a good thing, as this sometimes attracts the attention of other cruising fish and, hopefully, bigger ones.

Clouds parted and sunlight suddenly streamed onto the lake for the first time that day. A glance at my phone told me it was 07:57 and I reached for my camera to take a snap of the lake in the early morning sunshine. As I raised the camera to do so, the spool started to turn, all on its own. The bobbin was up, line streamed off the reel, my bite alarm was set to be faintly audible and it was a straight one toner. I had my first proper run. In the words of Jeremy Wade, ‘Fish on!’

One thing I did not want the carp to do was run. There are simply far too many snags, in the form of outstretched, underwater tree branches snaking up from the depths, to allow any carp to run at all. I put the camera down gently in front of me, for some unknown reason wasting another second trying to simultaneously turn it off, before grabbing the rod and striking hard. A big mirror came briefly to the surface and it was evident it had run out deep and right, before cutting back in towards the bank; it had obviously run round one of the submerged tree branches further out. As I tightened up into the carp a familiar, awful creaking sound began and I pulled back as hard as I dared, knowing I had to get the carp free, back around the snag, before things got any more confused. The clutch was set correctly, which is almost as hard as you can without busting the line, and I hung on. Something very heavy pulled back extremely hard. I had to get it out from that branch and the line creaked terribly, grating along something unseen and immovable. Then the carp changed direction and went deeper, even on a tight line the depth gave it a lot of leverage to play with and it used its weight. My rod, which is an old 13 foot Nash with a 2.75lb test curve, was bent almost in half. The fish drove deep but I gave no quarter to it until I was forced to and then the line was just angrily ripped off the clutch. Something was furious. The weight had shifted back and the fish was swimming out and deeper, the right way, away from the snag and I scrambled down the bank to enable me to get the rod out further. I inched some line back.

It was deadlock for a moment and I pulled back harder. The line sang but the carp moved and then I knew it was crunch time. It was going to get stuck the wrong side of the branch, permanently, if I did not get it back round while it was still fresh and so I leant the rod right over the water, using its length as best I could and heaved. The carp seemed to see my side of the argument and headed out into the lake, away from the branch and into deeper water. There was a terrible pinging sound and the rod shuddered. I think the dead branch finally broke under the strain, which was considerable, but I was back in direct contact. I thought this would make things a bit easier but the carp was now really deep and it started to pull like a runaway bull. Caught with my arm out-stretched and off balance, I staggered a bit and had to shift my weight back into the bank, digging my feet into the sandy step I had made. It was nowhere near tired and it bored again, harder, the clutch did not slip this time and the sandy earth beneath my feet started to give way. That carp literally made the earth move! This thing was absolutely pulling my arm off and I had to hold onto her! I kept thinking it must be tired, it will be done in a minute, but I was proved wrong. It then shot off up to my left and tried to bury itself into the bankside vegetation and floating logs, but I managed to get them out, tossing them up the bank with my left arm whilst hanging onto the rod with the right. Thwarted, the carp swung back into deeper water with such pace that the weight shift almost threw me again but she was finally tiring, a little. The net was made up, pole hanging down the bank from a narrow bankstick I had bent and stuck into the bankside for this purpose. This morning, however, I had forgotten to extend the pole so when I neatly unhooked it from its stand and swung it round for the netting, I only had about six foot to play with. Under tree branches, with a 13 foot rod and big angry carp on the end, this is not ideal. No possible chance of trying to lengthen it now and I failed to net the fish first time, the tree branches overhead getting in the way. I nearly lost my cool but managed to stay calm. ‘Stay calm, stay calm…’ I told myself. ‘Just get the taught line out of the overhanging tree branch, bring the rod back and to the left, let out some line, get the timing right…’

A tense few minutes followed before she came towards the net a second time and I realised it was quite a big carp, even bigger than I had expected. In fact, I had never seen this carp before at all. I leaned out with the net, I could see the hookhold bang in the bottom lip again, she made one last bid for freedom to the left but finally rolled over the cord, caught, and for a moment I just stood there; frozen to the spot. She was in the net. I had her! I negotiated the tree branches, put on the baitrunner in case of an accident, unclipped the net and rolled it down on the carp. I was careful as I got back up into my swim and laid her down on the unhooking mat.

It was a lovely looking carp, big scales on the shoulders and lots of small, pearly scales along the flanks, good oak colours. Certainly, what I would call, an English carp. She was full of spawn, absolutely busting and this was another reason I was taking extra special care of her. I weighed her in and set up the camera for a self-take. This was really difficult, even with my little flexible tripod that can ‘cling onto anything’, as I had very little room, but I managed a couple. Carp never really look the same on film anyway.

She went 27lb and, once back in her element, took a while to recover. She had given a hell of a fight, one of the toughest I have ever had and it had gone on for quite a long time. I think she really must have thought that she was fighting for her life, but a few minutes saw her gathering strength and a minute later she waddled back, drunkenly, and went into the side of the bank to rest. I watched her and within a few minutes she was on her way, melting back into the gloomy depths from where she had materialised.

The whole episode was a massive buzz and I had to move my beanie mat and sit down afterwards. I have read tales of people shouting and jumping about when they catch a big carp, but it has always had the opposite effect on me. Fuelled with adrenaline, I tend to sit down quietly for a few minutes just to try to calm down.

When I next glanced at my phone it read 08:30.

Time to get out of here before the whole world wakes up…

Pastures new…

Many anglers search for hidden lakes and most can only dream of finding such a place. A few people do find such a place, but often they fail to realise it. The lake is unlikely to look as they had fondly imagined that it might. Fewer still may initially see the potential; and of the few that may, most of them will ultimately fail to grasp the opportunity.

With the advent of the internet and the map tools available it is fair to argue that there are no ‘hidden’ lakes left to find. But even today such lakes do exist. They are likely to be almost inaccessible and even harder to angle. Most will involve a degree of trespass, although there is a distinct difference between the grounds of a private house or estate, compared to a disused old pit or quarry that has been fenced primarily on safety grounds and is long since abandoned. Every angler has their own moral compass and must make their own decisions. For my own part, I would never trespass on private land that is clearly in use; but abandoned lakes hold great appeal to me.

How many people are actually willing to sit and angle in a lake that could hold nothing? Almost none I would wager. Yet still they seek such places out, fondly imagining their own private haven. I would imagine that many who seek and find such places wind up enduring a similar experience.

The lake comes into view and there is initial excitement and a brief exploration. The water is crystal clear. Already the realistic difficulties in potentially fishing the venue are being re-evaluated, as the lake is nowhere near to a convenient road or layby. There are no defined paths to the lake and the terrain is inhospitable. Now tired from his trek, the angler finds a vantage point and sits to watch the water which is as clear as glass. Nothing stirs. As time drags on, the angler continues to reason with himself that the lake has never been stocked and is entirely land-locked; therefore it could not hold any specimens worth the potential aggravation. He completes a circuit of the water and sees no sign of fish at all. He visits a few more times, just to satisfy his curiosity, but after careful searching through the crystal clear waters determines that his initial hunch was correct and that the lake is indeed completely devoid of fish, in fact it looks quite dead. Dead that is, bar the frog in the margins, which had initially made his heart skip a beat when it had surfaced under the twisted tree branches at his feet.

Some will go further and consider it ‘worth a go’. They turn up and fish the place for a short session with more traditional baits, something that they consider it reasonable to assume any fish will readily accept. Maggots are popular for this type of reconnoitre. Yet after many hours, nothing bites. The float sits listlessly and the angler starts to wonder why he is wasting his time. Six hours pass, dusk falls and eventually the angler is forced to depart. After a few trips the angler is yet to see any signs of life. He is now convinced the lake is actually not ‘worth a go’ and chaffs at his own stupidity. Ofcourse if there was something worth catching in the place then there would be signs of people fishing it! He packs up, never to return.

The angler has missed his opportunity.

–

The humble worm has accounted for many captures of specimen tench but I have never rated it highly for other species, with the exception of the perch. Worms come in various guises and it always wise to know your worms. The best worms for tench I have found to be the redworms which can often be found under damp objects that have lain untouched for some time. Old wooden planks and cardboard seem to be a particular favourite. These are not to be confused with the brandling worms that are usually found in hotter places, such as the depth of the compost heap, as these ooze a yellow substance when handled that the fish find unpleasant and they are consequently ignored.

In 2013 I did find a lake that was abandoned and of a reasonable size, being around five acres. Having ascertained who owned the place I was happy to fish it. The company involved clearly had no intention of doing anything with the site and it was evident that the lake had lain untouched for many, many years. Access was through a fence (which had been broken a long time since and never repaired) and down a sharp embankment which was slightly perilous, but manageable. I found the lake very appealing, although is not beautiful. The water is crystal clear and it reminded me of the gravel pits I had fished when I was a teenager. It was early Autumn when I first looked into the water and it looked devoid of any life at all. From my high vantage point on an embankment I could see a large area of water and my polaroid sunglasses revealed everything very clearly. It was evidently reasonably deep but there was no weed growth visible and it did look very barren. The lake was surrounded by various trees and these extended down the sheer banks that encircled the lake, hiding it from view. Beyond the waterline all that remained were dead stumps, bleached white by the elements, their splintered trunks protruding from the crystal waters like the remnants of an ancient palisade.

These tree stumps ran the entire length of the steeply shelving banksides and continued around the whole perimeter of the water for as far as I could see. They extended into the water to a range of ten to twenty feet and the lake thus appeared to be completely unfishable. Nobody can play a fish of any size through a forest of dead trees, especially when the trees are still continuing out for two rod lengths from the bank and are now stood in over ten foot of water! I walked around the lake as far as I could from this embankment, which offered a great view across the lakebed. I saw nothing but a deep, clear, lifeless bowl of water.

It was the following Spring before I returned for a better look at the place. Courtesy of the internet I had gained an invaluable aerial satellite view of the lake and I could see that much of the lake was shallow – but the end I had not visited was clearly much deeper and this deeper area still covered a good few acres. When I was still at school, I had gone tench fishing a few times in the small hours at a huge pit and caught some good tench (I regret I never weighed any of them back then or took photographs) until first light, when they would swiftly vanish. It was pretty safe to assume that for the rest of the time they retreated to the deeper areas of the pit and rested. However, in the few hours prior to dawn, action was frenetic and worms had been the bait of choice. I learnt quite a lot about tench from that experience; such as they are terribly shy and dislike noise or people, that they can feed with gusto if they sense no threat and, most importantly, that they do really like redworms.

To cut a long story short, I explored the lake again and found one spot from where I could potentially land a fish. A tree stump had broken and fallen back into the bankside and this offered a potential opportunity to angle from one spot at the deeper end. Fortunately this area was also the northern end of the lake, where our predominately south westerly winds will blow most of the natural food. My first visit with a rod revealed it was extremely deep. This was a real ‘drop-off’ and my float rod revealed it was twelve foot deep less than a rod length out and it kept going down sharply. After fourteen feet I stopped trying to plumb the depth with my float rod and sliding stop arrangement and just fished the spot I had been pre-baiting for the previous week. The main purpose of this trip was to explore the swim, watch the water and put in some more bait. I fed mainly with hemp and maggots but also chucked in a bit of meat and a few grains of corn. After a few hours I thought I saw my float twitch but it was windy and my line, having to lie partially between the protruding dead branches of a submerged bush, was proving more difficult to control than it had looked. Annoyingly, it was so deep within a few feet of the bank that anything not within grasping reach was impossible to remove without seriously disturbing the swim, so I had to put up with it. Casting was also severely hindered from this position due to my sliding float arrangement, the depth of water and an overhanging tree branch that hovered over the spot from a sprawling bushy tree to my left. This was one of the few bushy trees round the margin however and I felt sure it would be a good holding spot for any carp that may be present. When I learnt it was already nine feet deep, and rapidly descending, within four foot of the waters’ edge I was even happier with my swim. I would say choice of swim, but this spot was the only viable option. The bankside tree was becoming completely over-run with wild honeysuckle and it would serve as an excellent screen. I was delighted with the feature that this little tree offered in this barren looking water, the depth and the general in-hospitability of the place. Having skulked around various gravel pits in the past, I felt quite at home and I hoped that some tench may have found their way into the place over the years.

Tench are fascinating creatures and can survive in lower oxygen levels than any other freshwater fish in England. They have been recorded as being able to survive when the water content is just 1/5000’th part oxygen (a river is 1/100’th part oxygen), a truly incredible feat. In the event of an algae bloom, the humble tench is often able to survive when everything else has perished. They are notoriously difficult to catch at times, even when they are actively feeding, yet at other times I have had specimen tench virtually throwing themselves on my hook without a second thought. Tench that do not see anglers’ baits can be extremely slow to change their habits. I have pre-baited and watched them in the waters of a pit for some weeks and observed them, hovering over and feeding around the baited area – but eating none of the actual bait. I have concluded that some never seem to sample bait at all. Fishing within the gravel pits as a youngster, one of the first lessons I learnt was that big red beds of groundbait do not encourage frenetic tench feeding activity, as the first tench that passed over the spot bolted in abject terror, a pattern of events that was repeated by other tench and even a bream! But this was on a water that had rarely, if ever, seen groundbait before. In time, at least some of the tench can usually be persuaded that baits such as hemp, maggots, sweetcorn and luncheon meat are actually edible!

To make reference to the imaginary angler investigating his abandoned lake and considering it ‘worth a go’, my first fishing trip did not inspire me to return either. I saw absolutely nothing to suggest there was anything in the lake at all. I had also learnt, through a lot internet mining, that about twenty years ago the lake had been used as a run-off for effluent and, despite the stipulations the council had apparently insisted upon regarding water treatment and quality, I had my doubts! In simple terms, who knows what potential poisons they had been pumping into the place or for how long? It was possible that this lake really was dead and this newly acquired knowledge was not helping my confidence. I had fed maggots for over six hours and only left when it was really quite dark. Not so much as a baby perch had pulled my string. The rest of my hemp was going to go off anyway, so I chucked it in before I left and debated whether or not to return again as I drove home.

Three days later it was Saturday and I found that I had been thinking about the lake, on and off, all week. I collected a tub of redworms whilst gardening on Friday and concluded that it was highly unlikely that there were no tench in the lake at all. Drawing on my relevant experience, I decided a dawn start was really the only way to find out. After all, if fish are present in a lake they do have to feed at some point in the day and my afternoon/ evening session had not been a great success! It was still only March though and tench, especially in deep waters, can be slow to emerge and start feeding with any enthusiasm.

I arrived at dawn and found the water level had risen by about a foot in the past few days which was quite surprising. Some rain had fallen, but nowhere near enough to raise any normal lake by twelve inches. My swim was more like a perch really and, had it been on higher ground, would have been reminiscent of the sort of crag upon which a large bird of prey may like to set up home. It consisted of a small area of flat ground which was set into the cliff-like bank and nicely obscured by the afore-mentioned honeysuckle tree. It was apparent that this area had once been cleared by an enormous digger, as it was straight and flat. It ran on for eight feet or so in parallel to the almost vertical bankside. It was possible to wade round a few steps on this man-made plateau, up to where the digger had obviously once run, before it ended and a riot of brambles and overgrowth made the steep banks impassable. This plateau, my swim, was now mostly flooded and I had forgotten to don my wellies (wearing waders was far too dangerous at this venue in case one fell in). This left me stuck further up the ‘path’ I had made and made casting my float rig (yes, still on the float rig) even trickier. I set up my chair on the uneven ground, trying to remain calm and silent as I wrestled with numerous creepers, thorns, brambles and all manner of spiky vegetation. The end of March sees nettles just large enough to sting anything at ground level, often catching out the unwary angler as they absent-mindedly reach for something and miss, such as a drink or sandwich. A wild look and clenched jaw is often all the emotion that flickers over the face of the silently seated angler as he feels the instant, searing pain that is imparted when accidentally grasping a young nettle in this relaxed, distracted state of mind. The effect may be compounded by the subsequent refusal of the angler to utter any noise for fear of disturbing hours, or even days, of pre-meditated, often painstaking, preparation. As he retrieves his hand and looks away from the water, only to see the raised, white, spotted welts across his palm courtesy of this previously unnoticed and innocuous looking plant, the angler may then vent his spleen by grinding it quietly into the ground with a boot heel, before turning his attention to retrieving whatever item it may be that he was initially seeking.

Back to the matter in hand, I attempted to cast whilst wedged in between an assortment of bramble bushes sticking into my right and the bankside tree on my left. I was still unsure if this scraggy tree was alive or dead, but I could see that if I slipped and grabbed it for support then it would be completely incapable of holding my weight from any of its branches. It also obscured the drop off a bit and was now the only thing between me, one wrong step and a vertical drop into Iceland. I fed my maggots, now frothy and smelly and starting to turn. At the peak of their powers in my mind. Time ticked by. Nothing happened, nothing showed and no bubbles or fizzy apparitions emerged from the depths. When I had arrived it was only just gone dawn and I was now becoming a little dis-heartened. I really should have seen something, some sign of life, by now. I went for a brief walk in case my instincts were wrong and I was fishing in the wrong place. I got halfway round the lake before returning to my rod, none the wiser as I had seen nothing at all. I had flicked on the baitrunner but left the float out with a couple of redworms still attached. I had 8lb line tied to a swivel direct to a 6lb hooklink and a size 12. All very simple. I figured that any potential tench were likely to be large and had brought my lightest float rod so that I could enjoy a good run around with them. I had a bit of clear water and a good depth in front of me and I felt my barbel rod to be unnecessarily heavy at 1.75lb test curve so I had left it at home. Whilst debating in my mind, I had reasoned that the float rod was designed for the job in hand after all! It has also landed a few carp in its’ time, to low doubles, so I know the rod can take a bit of punishment and it has a nice through action under pressure.

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More to follow…