By Roy Von Goor

About 10 years ago I started fishing a local lake, a park lake about 8 acre’s in size.  At that time the stock level was massive, lots of doubles and twenties with the odd thirty plus fish.

The biggest resident at that time weighted 34 lb – a big mirror carp. Everybody wanted to catch that monster!

Fishing was fairly easy, days of 5 fish or more were standard. The fish loved the anglers bait and kept coming back for it.  At that time I did not land the monster, but sadly lost it in front of the net twice.

Last year I had caught my target fish from another lake fairly fast. With no direct other option I decided to take a ticket for the lake I fished 10 years ago.  After arriving I noticed alot of anglers, but nobody catching anything.  All the anglers complained, they did not feed, weather was wrong, etc, etc

I had just started using Quest Baits at that time, so this was a good opportunity to test Quest  on these no feeding, weather moody fish. After the 1st session , using fruitly trifle and smokey fish I blanked.

Hmm…

I had seen plenty of action in my swim – leaping, bubbles and crashing fish. Everybody fished the same way… all in the centre of the lake, using 15mm and 20 mm boillies. That 1st session I was fishing similar, 15mm bottom baits about 40 yards out.

After closely observing these other anglers I decided my tactic needed to be adjusted.

I would started fish under my rod tips, using 10mm’s smokey fish and 8 mm fishmeal pellets.

For hookbait I would stick to my pop-up bottom style fished rigs –  another chapter in this blog/

Well, to cut the story short, I landed 12carp in 4 sessions, including the big mirror. While only 1 fish was landed to rods then mine.

Just trying to fish int a different way brought me success.

Even at the moment I am still catching my fish on that lake on the same tactics.  In Holland it’s hard to get 10mm baits and a lot of locals only think of them as bream magnets… but let them attract bream, the carp will follow!

That’s my big advantage at the moment…things will probably change when Quest conquers Holland and the rest of Europe!

I love these small baits, and so do the carp!

Greetz, roy van goor

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