3rd Time Success
Well on my 3rd trip to the new water, I succeeded in catching a carp! My 2nd trip despite lots of confidence for success in catching a carp by not using sweetcorn/ spodmix and only using boilies; had been a failure primarily due to the fish spawning. I had however prevented a blank by giving in with only a few hours to go and using the dreaded sweetcorn on the inside rod which had given me a 4lb bream.
Friday and Saturday the weather had been heavy rain, putting me off fishing Friday night and nearly succeeding in putting me off Saturday night. However determination and a slight break in the rain saw me at the new water around 5pm. There was another chap fishing there who advised me that the largest carp a 36lb one had come out that morning, hurrah! I had a look around trying to spot the carp but was unable to see them anywhere and consequently settled on the NE end swim, since the slight wind was blowing from the SW. I started getting my 3 rods set up first, always liking to get fishing before setting up bivvies etc! I did however pay the penalty for this with bit of a soaking from a shower. Get bivvy set up!
My plan of attack was the same as my second visit with a predominantly boilie only approach. Two rods fished to the far bank one with a 15mm boilie over a scattering of 15mm boilies, hookbait being a pop up (due to the weed) and the second rod having a 20mm boilie with a cork core to give it a more neutral buoyancy fished over a scattering of 20mm boilies. The 3rd rod was fished on the inside line with peperami as hookbait, over tiger nuts and peperami. My previous visit I had fished tiger nuts on the inside line. Not long after this the other chap fishing the water called me over to take a photograph of a carp he had caught, quite a nice 18lb 6oz common. Interestingly caught on tiger nuts!
The remainder of the evening passed quite quickly, sorting out the bivvy and moving gear into it to avoid the showers with some line-bites on the right hand rod. The night was spent with numerous line bites having me leaping up in anticipation of a run developing. Around 5am I woke up and checked the baits, since I get a bit neurotic about them being tangled up or not fishing properly, and then recast back out. The rods being clipped up to prevent me from going into the far bank while landing reasonably close to some bushes. Unfortunately the second rod seemed to have come unclipped and I consequently put the terminal tackle smack into a bush on the far bank. Arggh! I walked round hoping I might be able to free it, only to discover this was a pointless exercise. Fortunately a boat was moored in the next peg and after bailing out the accumulated rainwater, I was able to paddle over and recover the terminal gear from out of the branches. Back into bivvie for some sleep.
Around 8am I decided I needed to change something since the fish were plainly moving around, yet weren’t taking my baits. I switched the bait on the right hand rod from the Nash squid boilie to a Scopex barrel boilie and threw around 25 freebies around the hookbait area. Around 9am I remember thinking that it was looking like no carp again and I would have to resort to fishing sweetcorn again for a bream or tench, when the right hand rod with the Scopex screamed off. I picked up the rod and was immediately in! The carp veered off to the left, before being turned, then seemed to come in more tamely until about half way back when it decided it was no longer coming in quietly and fought like mad until netted. Success! Was I pleased, the fish was a common of 17.25lb and had broke my duck for carp on this water.
Certainly shows never give up, and for my money also shows that it always worth changing something if not catching.






4 Comments
Click here to sign up now.