Thursday, 8th.November
Giving some thought to feature-finding and I think there is a definite technique to it on The Back Lake. I don’t think the technique will work in all situations because it is dependent on the sharply variable shape of the bottom - in this case, the very steeply rising ‘humps’ which are characteristic of the ‘eggbox’ my pals described. Because the bottom rises so sharply (and then goes down again) it is possible to feel these humps when drawing the lead back (whether it be marker or rig lead). This is the familiar ‘jaggedy-jag’ you get on the rod-tip, or as ’T’ calls them “the knobbly-bits”.We reckoned that the hump was at 7 wraps; this was determined by over-casting a random distance, gradually drawing back and ‘feeling’ the bottom until there was a ‘jaggedy-jag’ on the rod-tip. This indicated the beginning of the slope; popping the marker float up we found about nine feet so this meant the hump was three feet shallower than the rest of the bottom which felt smooth on the ‘draw-back’. With the marker float on the surface, 6-10 boilies were catapulted around it.
The technique then was to wrap the fishing rod up at 7.5 wraps; overcast the mark, taking care to land dead in line with a mark on the opposite bank (in this case the Summer Bay swim, and ‘feel’ the lead down. Once the lead has hit the bottom (you can see the line slacken, and remembering to un-clip) gradually tease it back until you find the ‘knobbly bits’. Trap set.
My braid arrived today. ‘Spectra Extreme Braid’ from Amazon here
The good thing about this braid is the price - £8.33 including postage and packing for 100m. ‘Branded’ braids are more than double the price; I ordered 40lbs. Breaking strain. To begin with I thought it might be a bit thick and stiff; would the marker float be buoyant enough to pull this line through the marker kit rings? Only one way to find out.
I hastened me down to the tackle shop to buy a new Kit, the choice being between the Korda and ’30 Plus’:
Korda ‘Drop Zone’: £12.50
Kodex ’30 Plus Centium Marker’: £6.99
They both looked exactly the same to me, in fact the guy in the shop said they are made by the same manufacturer in the same factory and are just packed in different packaging!
Ummmmmm… £12.50 or £6.99? In fact the shop said I could have the ’30 Plus for £6 so it was a no-brainer in the end.
As far as I could see, the only difference between the two was that the Korda came with two leads and a couple of beads and the ’30 Plus’ had none. £6.50 for leads and beads? Even the ‘weed stem’ looked identical. Come on Korda what are you on!?
Down at the lake I was back in The Lifebelt swim for a trial plumb-about. I knew where the spots were so out went the marker float… and up she came no trouble at all! Knobbly-bits? Plain as a Pikestaff! Depth? Nine feet on the money!
This marker lark is a doddle with the right kit.
Wednesday, 14th.November
The Back Lake, ‘The Hidden’
09.00As ever, the first job is to map the swim:
11.00
All rods out and fishing on ‘the spot’ in eight feet of water…
I saw ’T’ yesterday on my daily walk-around - I’ve been doing daily visits to scope things out - seeing who’s fishing where, what’s been caught, that sort of thing. It’s been quite busy mostly although in-between times when it’s been quiet I’ve seen fish in ‘The Pads’, rolling just a few yards off the lilies. I was in fact planning to fish there until I saw ’T’ yesterday; he persuaded me that although takes are forthcoming, a high percentage of fish are lost. They pick up baits and get down and around the lily-stems so quickly they snag you up irretrievably. However, I have no appetite for fishing ‘locked up’, right on the rods and I have decided to concentrate on the open water spots.
Fishing ‘snags’ or anywhere where there is a high risk of leaving hooks and line in fish is a highly contentious issue. I make no moral judgement on the rights and wrongs, ethical or unethical nature of it other than to say that I personally prefer not to. What other anglers do is their affair and as far as I am aware ‘snag fishing’ is not currently punishable by death for those who chose to do it.
’T’ has put me onto a ‘spot’ in his favourite swim on the whole of the BL. If ‘The Hidden’ is free he makes for it every time and is always confident there…
11.25
Sorry to break off but I’ve just been ‘done’ - very sharp take that pulled line from the clutch! Looked for all the world as if the fish had shaken its head and spat the hook. Action at last!…
So to resume what I was saying. ’T’ had told me about a spot in this swim and after a good hour and a half I managed to find it - dead in line with the Pylon as ’T’ had said.
(On second thoughts, I think what I had was a line bite as the bobbin dropped back down).
Getting side-tracked here. Sorry.
The spot is only an under-arm lob out and I plumbed to the left and right of it. I reckon it’s about half a wrap long so I can afford to overcast a bit, but it’s only just wide enough to get three rods on. Wide enough though. Using the marker float to aim at I have catapulted 12 Cherry Carp KMT boilies right on the spot, all within a yard square.
My current baits and rigs are something I always fall back on when the going gets tough and I’ve run out of ideas - Solid Bags. I don’t know why it has taken me so long to get back on them for they are my ‘go to’ method I have found successful everywhere I have fished (except where there are Bream and Sturgeon present).
Nothing fancy in use here. A Korda solid bag stem passes through a 3oz. Flat pear lead, the line terminating in a size eight Quick Change swivel which fits snugly into the rubber of the bag stem. Completely safe; no leader or knots to create a ‘Death Rig’. Business end is four inches of supple braid (cheap stuff rather than branded. Why pay more?) I don’t bother with putty on the hook-length to pin it down as I don’t think carp are intelligent enough to realise what it is, plus, it’s concealed by the pellets in the bag anyway.
A size four ‘Combat’ Chod hook completes the rig with a screw-in hook swivel to attach the pop-up to of which I am using two types: a pink ‘Sticky Baits The Krill’ to go with the KMT boilies and a ‘Northern Special NS1’ pink and yellow. I’ve got some Cherry Carp ‘Tarby Specials’ which Stuart Kindly sent me and I shall certainly be giving these a try at some point. For the moment, just getting any kind of a take is a priority so I’m sticking with what I know.
11.50
There’s another sharp pull! Line bites?!..
Five minutes later there’s another, shorter pull this time. There’s something out there!..
14.00
Those early signs of activity in the swim have gone now and all seems quiet. The only signs of life are occasional small fish ‘flipping’ at the surface; only the Coots keep up a continual to-ing and fro-ing, indicating there is always something going on in Nature. All is well…
15.45
There’s a psychology associated with carp rigs and tackle and this psychology is exploited by tackle manufacturers who have no other motive than to persuade anglers to buy their products and make lots of money. Create a need for a product by making it a ‘must have’; then make it disposable so the punter has to buy even more. Take carp leads for example.
They retail at between £1.60 and £2.00 apiece depending on what size you buy and from whom (Korda, Fox etc.) The myth of ‘dumping the lead’ on the take was created for no other reason than to make leads a disposable item that needed replacement every time one was lost.
If you dump five leads in a session, that’s a tenner in replacements. In ten sessions that’s £100 in leads alone! Multiply this by the total number of anglers following this folly and it amounts to many tens of thousands of pounds! Yet we are told this is a vital tactic if we are not to ‘be done’ by carp shaking the hook out. Initially, the sales pitch was that keeping the lead on would result in fish being lost in weed and the best way to land them would be to drop the lead. Experienced anglers didn’t buy this rubbish so the strategy was altered to prick the angler’s conscience about using ‘safe’ rigs. We had to dump the lead in order to make a ‘safe’ rig - one that if a break off happened then the fish was not towing a ‘Death Rig’ around.
It strikes me that the only actors in this pantomime ‘getting away with it’ are the lead manufacturers, specifically Korda who promote this unnecessary practice.
That’s my rant for the day…
Thursday, 15th.November 2018
07.00
At eight o’clock last night the buzzer to one of the rods sounded and I was out of the ‘bag, up, and on the rods in a flash. It was the left-hand rod, the same one that had been giving me the ‘liners’ previously. The bobbin was jerking up and down and I immediately felt a great wave of disappointment. “That ‘ain’t no carp!” And as I lifted into it, sure enough, the dull, disinterested and feeble resistance of a Bream came up the line.
Hauled to the bank rather unceremoniously I am ashamed to say it was a fish of about five or six pounds, returned to the water as hastily as it arrived.
This was the only action of what was an extremely damp night with a dew so heavy everything was saturated, both inside and outside the bivvy.
I hate the mud of winter. Of all the drawbacks to winter carp fishing, it’s the mud I detest the most. It gets everywhere. Although it could not be said I am particularly tidy at home (just ask Christine!) I do like to keep an orderly bivvy and the mud trodden in from the Bankside irks me no end. It is everywhere! And don’t talk to me about packing up muddy, soaking wet groundsheets! Ugh!
07.30
So it looks like blank number 3 looms large on the BL. Added to the disastrous run of blanks this summer on the reservoir it seems I can hardly call myself a carp catcher - more a carp blanker!
To be fair, I expected a fish by now. Both ’T’ and ‘M’ had said that whilst the BL is not an easy water, it’s certainly not hard and talking to other anglers fishing on the lake there’s certainly enough being caught to give rise to a fair amount of optimism.
So what to do? I am deeply aware of ‘chasing my tail’, going round and round in circles trying different things in an effort to try and find something that works. The truth is, all the tactics and presentations I have been using do work - just not yet on here. Like every carp angler I know, I have a small stash of rigs and tactics that I am fully confident in because they have caught fish before. The common advice when you are struggling is to “stick with what you know” and I have stuck with this religiously, swerving any new-fangled ‘fandango’ rigs. Basic, functioning, efficient fish-catchers are the order of the day and in the end I am sure they will win through.
The element missing in my fishing has been that I just do not seem to be able to find the fish feeding or in the swim where I am plotted up. On a water as small as the BL you are never far from the fish and by sticking to the known productive areas a carp must turn up sooner or later… Except that so far, they haven’t.
So it looks like it’s back to the drawing board once again. With Phase Two of our house renovations about to start I hope I can find the time to get out fishing. I badly want a fish from here; it’s becoming a matter of personal pride - that my friends can catch them but I can not. I’m already thinking about the next session and developing a simple, rational approach.
Simplicity is the name of the game. I think even if I were catching at this point (which I’m obviously not) I have long desired to try and find a way of fishing that is very minimalist and completely without complexity. The very best anglers I know seem to have rendered down the business of carp fishing to a very limited number of principles, which if applied correctly, give consistent success wherever they go, both home and abroad.
I shall be trying to do the same…
[PS
At the end of the session I did a check on ‘the spot’ with the marker rod, distance-wise and depth. ’T’ had said the spot was right on “the third cross-beam of the Pylon out in front” although I reckoned it was a little further than this.
Turned out ’T’ was right. I had been over-casting by about half a wrap. The correct clipping distance is 3 + 1(yd) and the depth eight feet. My baits had been not in eight feet as I thought, but ten to twelve, some way down ‘the hump’! Dooh!...]
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