Continued bait application has been the key, not a huge amount and only a couple of times a week, but it has kept the fish feeding. Pinning down the areas where the fish feel comfortable and recognising where they want to be given the prevailing weather conditions and temperatures has been of great benefit.This involves a lot of trial and error hence the odd few blanks but some good bonus fish have been coming to my own net as a result of the hard work. The vast majority of the stock are double figure fish with a currently unknown head of Twenty pound plus specimens. So far I have been lucky enough to capture three of these anomalous fish with a fourth brought to the bank with the hook through it's pectoral fin which of course isn't counted as a proper capture, however the fish had a strangely formed mouth caused either by previously bad angling or more likely a genetic deformity and as such is unable to close it's mouth in the normal way which must cause it to feed in a weird way and we believe this led to it being hooked through the Pec whilst attempting to feed on the bait..... Shame because other than that it's a clean fish in good condition.
So my last fish of 2017 was a twenty pound specimen and my first fish of 2018 was also a twenty. I count myself very fortunate to have made such a good start to the New Year, I just hope it continues!
Yesterday was my first session of the year, arriving at the venue we found a strong northerly breeze blowing across the lake which didn't bode well for the days possibilities. A very unusual direction for here making swim choice difficult. We settled on having the wind on our backs, far from ideal from the point of view of accessing areas where the fish may be occupying but a comfort choice took priority on this occasion as the wind was bitterly cold.
A couple of early strange occurrences on my rods where the alarms signalled takes and yet I connected to nothing had my hopes for a good day climbing but it soon became apparent these were seemingly anomalous and the alarms remained silent for the rest of the morning.
Around 1pm whilst my fishing buddy and I were engaged deep in conversation the left hand bobbin suddenly slammed into the rod, dropped all the way down and then smacked violently into the rod again and the tip of the rod surged round signalling a fish had made a mistake! The violent nature of the take suggested a very angry fish and the fight also reflected this with the Carp charging all over the lake. Early into the fight I suspected a better fish but we have been fooled before by these fish as they really do fight above their weight.
Slowly I managed to bring it into shallower margins and a few glimpses in the clear water confirmed that it was indeed looking like a decent fish. And so it turned out to be as a lovely scaley low Twenty slid over the net cord.
The weird thing is the conversation my fishing buddy and I had been engaged in was about this very fish! The owner had previously described a fish just like this to me as it was likely the biggest of the batch of this strain that was in the lake, and we were discussing the likelihood of one of them being over Twenty pounds by now. I guess you could say we talked it onto the bank....
Anyway a good result on what turned out to be a bitter day and this fish turned out to be the only visitor to the bank for both of us. I think you'll agree it's a cracking looking fish though.
First fish of 2018 at 21.02lb
My last fish of 2017 at 23.11lb
