I think we can safely say that winter has now arrived. The summer bird species like Swallows and Swifts have migrated to the warmer climes of north Africa, and have been replaced by their more recognisable winter counterparts such as Pied Wagtails and the ubiquitous Robins that sit on your rods cheekily begging for boilie crumbs or maggots.  

Fishing wise we can now expect things to slow up somewhat, and indeed this had been the case for me recently on the water I was fishing throughout the summer and autumn. Being a shallow water with an average depth of no more than 4 feet or so it responds very quickly in changes to the temperature, and so with the sliding mercury things have been very different to what they were a few weeks ago and I have experienced several blanks at this particular water. In contrast I have dabbled on another water that is much deeper and so is less directly affected by changes in temperature. With an average depth here of 10 or 12 feet it has taken longer for any changes to take effect, and thus I have had some recent success at this water. Fishing my usual short day sessions I have managed to land 5 fish, three of which have broken the twenty pound barrier and two of which are the largest known fish in the lake. I'll let the pictures do the talking and the weights are listed underneath each one. A simple and actually a bit of an old school fruit seed mix boilie was the successful bait, fished on a straight forward bolt rig set up, consisting of an eight inch hooklink, a two ounce custom made lead and around four feet of leadcore.

21lb 12oz Mirror

 

 

This beast weighed in at 32lb 3oz and is the largest fish in the lake

 

 

At 27lb 2oz I was over the moon with this stunning creature !

 

 

So as you can see, a bit of a result, the two biggest fish came during the same day session and is my biggest ever brace of Carp.

Although I may have caught the lakes two largest 'known' residents, they are not really my target for the water. These fish are all Mirrors and there are a few other nice Mirrors that I would like to see in the bottom of my net in the next few months, however there are also some very nice Commons which are my main target and these tend to be much more elusive than the Mirrors. One particular Common I have seen on occasion has caught my imagination, and whilst I think I may have a rough idea of what size it could be I can only confirm this by putting it on the bank....
Both the waters that I am dividing my time between hold some good looking, twenty pound plus Commons, so I will alternate between the two depending on weather conditions in the hope of achieving my goal.

I also have another water in the pipeline that I shall be dallying with from time to time, it's a water in it's infancy as it is a brand new syndicate, but it does contain some original fish that run to over twenty pounds as well a some stock fish that have been in there for about a year and were stocked at doubles, so it will be interesting to see how they have done. All in all I have plenty to do to keep me busy over the winter period and it should also take me through into the spring of next year. Each water has it's own little challenges and targets for me to go at and hopefully I will enjoy my time at each one even if I don't manage to achieve all my goals.