Hi, My favourite story and capture goes back to 2004.I had fished a small gravel pit the previous year without any real big captures. The lake was approx 6 acres and I was the only angler fishing it at that time. The majority of the fish that I had caught where small commons up to mid 20’s. It was early march when I wanted to try some of my new bought gear.
New rods .new pod, everything had to be tested and looked at on the bank. Because it was still very cold and early in the year I decided that I would give the particular gravelpit a go. I arrived in the early morning, just at 1st light. Everything looked dead..the reeds..the lake..all in their winter sleep.
After installing my gear I set up my new tackle I baited the rigs. 1st rod was cast to the left hand side…just in front of some dead reeds, a few freebies where scattered around it..that should do the trick. When I was preparing my 2nd rod..the 1st rod already signalled some bleeps..the hanger was moving slowly up and down.. (more…)
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 mirrorcarp. Everybody wanted to catch that monster.Fishing was fairly easy, days of 5 fish or more where 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 targetfish 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 allot of anglers, but nobody catching anything.. All the anglers complained, they did not feed..weather was wrong..etc I just started using questbaits at that particular moment, and it was a good option to test quest them on these no feeding, weathermoody fish. After the 1st session , using fruitly trifle and smokey fish I blanked.(more…)
Steve Vaughan wrote:
I have just started fishing a new water with a large head of carp to 28lb. It has seen little carppressure and hardly any boilies, however it does get fished for the large bream that live in the lake. The depth varies from 5ft to 18ft, could you give some advice as to how the bloggers would go about fishing for the carp.
Shaun Harrison replies:
Good question this one and one which could be answered in many different ways.
My approach to any new water if the waterclarity allows is to put small traps of bait in likely looking areas then keep walking around the venue until either I am lucky enough to stumble upon a few fishfeeding or until it becomes clear that the carp don’t particularly visit the margins during daylight hours.
If I’m lucky enough to find fish I can then experiment to find what sort of baits the fish prefer rather than going in with the bait I want to use.(more…)