Thursday, 30th.May 2019

Paddlesworth, Pollard, Peg 55

11.30

And so The Quest Begins…

So what exactly is The Quest? The whole reason for getting a Paddlesworth ticket was to a) break my personal best, and b) catch a forty pounder - both of which the water I’m now fishing (Pollard) is more than capable of doing. I have to be up to the task of course and that is the issue; you can not expect these aims to be achieved by merely turning up!

Recce walks have been more than useful - I’ve been fortunate enough to meet with many old friends and acquaintances from way back and this in itself has yielded lots of information. I am genuinely privileged to have this ‘network’ and I feel they are sincere in their hopes I shall be successful. All have shared what they know of the lake and have not hesitated in giving me their insight into how they fish it and how they have caught.

There is universal agreement on what the major problem is - that of Location. Location is always the number one issue in any carp-fishing situation for if you have no carp in front of you, you may as well not bother!

On ‘Polly’, the problem is compounded; not only in two dimensions (i.e. whether they are at one end or the other, or even in the middle) but in a third dimension - that of Depth. You’ve not only got to find them wherever they are, but you’ve got to fish for them in whatever depth their preference is and this can be in as much as thirty feet of water. It’s simply no good casting to showing fish with a bottom rig for they may only be hanging about in mid-water, your bait (or zig) may be up to thirty feet away from them!

I’ve been given lots of advice about walking the lake before setting up - blah de blah de blah… Yes I know all this; I know how important it is and I know it’s the ‘correct’ thing to do - to find them before setting-up and this would be all very well if I wasn’t physically limited in what I can do these days. I have a long-standing back problem. Even putting up a bivvy leaves me creased-up and in pain and as for the task of doing half mile barrow-pushes up and down slopes - forget it! I’ve missed fishing sessions recently because of the back injury and I don’t want to (can’t) risk some sort of permanent problem. For this reason I have chosen the East Bank which is flatter and more accessible than opposite and it is along here I trudged this morning.

No-one seemed to be fishing this bank although there were several cars in the car park. They must all be up the far end? I looked in several likely pegs, pausing to see if I could see anything when suddenly I heard a loud splash further up the lake. Stopping at Peg 55 a large carp launched itself out of the water not thirty yards out!. This was good enough for me! Peg 55 it is then!

Peg 55 Pollard Lake, Paddlesworth
I took a Bream net with me to save having to 'snot' up my carp net. I did have a big surprise on netting the first one however - the thing had gone rotten sitting in my garage and the Bream went straight through! Needless to say it was confined to the skip when I left for home!

So I’m using exactly the same tactics which have been successful on Burrows - Buoyant Corn Rigs fished over corn. One bait is under the tree to my left in ten feet of water,

My 'close-in' bait was under-arm lobbed under the tree to the left. Even this produced a Bream!

The other two are straight out in front at very short range (an underarm lob) in fifteen feet of water.

Further out I found eighteen feet and I’m sure it goes down even further than that. I thought fifteen feet a reasonable depth to fish so now it’s just a waiting game as it always is.

Laying in my bed to try and rest my back which is giving me grief (as usual).

13.00
One slight alteration to affairs is the inclusion of a little four bait ‘stringer’. This not only deposits a little parcel of food around the bait but helps to avoid tangles. It might help draw attention to the hook-bait in amongst the free offerings.

I thought I was being smart including these little four-bait pva socks ('stringers') - helping the carp home in on the hook-baits and acting as anti-tangle aids. They probably did more to encourage the Bream than of any use!

17.40
And England have just bowled South Africa out to win their first match in the Cricket World Cup. Foul-mouthed commentary on the ‘Guerilla Cricket’ radio station of which I do not approve. Why? It’s not funny, it’s not clever, and it’s unprofessional. Oh, and it’s just not cricket!

Waiting for evening so I can have a re-cast and a bait-up.

It’s such early days that I can’t make any judgement about the fishing other than I feel that at the moment I am fishing in the right way. Even on the biggest waters, carp patrol the margins and sooner or later fish will pass over my bed of corn and eat it.

The lake itself does not seem to be a particularly ‘rich’ water. It’s a clay pit with a very clean, soft-ish bottom although the marginal slope seems ‘stoney’. There’s a small amount of weed but not the sort of habitat for the sort of things carp eat in any quantity and I should think the major part of their diet (and what is enabling them to grow by all accounts) are boilies thrown in by anglers. There is more than one member on here involved in the boily industry and I have been assured they are being introduced in vast quantities. It doesn’t take a lot of working out that this is responsible for the good growth rates of the fish and the reason there are said to be between ten and fifteen forties in the water.

19.30
Slight change of plan; I’ve now gone five wraps on the rods fished straight out and curiously, found sixteen feet on the marker rod. This is shallower than close in where I was before - but is well within the depth range you can expect to find carp in. This was a common ‘catching depth’ at the Country Park Lake I fished during the winter. Corn out over the baits of course.

Friday, 31st, May 2019

06.45
I began the night knowing I was going to get Bream and I had to ‘embrace’ them rather than try to defeat them, and as night fell it was like throwing a switch - it was as if every Bream in the lake decided to come out and feed! They’d obviously found the corn and intended to eat every last grain - including my hook-baits! At times, I had all three bobbins going at once and had ‘double takes’ so often I lost count! I forget how many Bream I had; I lost count after a dozen or so and finally reached the point where it was getting silly - I just couldn’t keep a bait in the water for long enough! I was in and out of the bivvy like a fiddlers elbow! For no other reason than I was thoroughly fed-up with the whole thing, and desperately needing some sleep, I decided to change the rods to zigs.

With the bivvy light on and insects attracted by my head-torch and trying their best to fly up my nose, in my ears and in my eyes, I fought a running battle with both them and my kit to get eighteen-inch zigs with ‘Black Beetle’ bugs out over my feed. Ah!… silence at last. Finally managed to get at least a little shut-eye. Which brings me to this morning. The zigs are off and the corn rigs back on, with a top-up of corn over the top. Actually fishing zigs during the hours of darkness is not a bad strategy; at least the Bream leave them alone. I have often caught carp on eighteen-inch zigs when bottom fishing has produced nothing at all.

07.15
Yep; the corn rigs are out in the pond; it’s daylight and the Bream don’t seem to be troubling them at all at the moment. Zigs are definitely the way to go!

As ever, it’s a Confidence thing. Aside from the aggravation of having to deal with the blasted things, I just have no confidence a carp is going to get to the bait before a Bream does - they are such greedy so-and-so’s! There is also the thought in the back of my mind that zigs are an under-used part of my armoury - but on Pollard may well be the frontline method to catch the carp.

[Endnote: I have given much thought to the use of zigs since I got home and the more I think about it, the more I have convinced myself they are the way to catch the carp in ‘the Third Dimension’ - up in the water column. Not only do they circumvent the Bream problem, they are probably the best way to catch the carp].