Catch Reports
Looking back on my captures in recent years, they largely fall into a few different categories. There are those where I have been plain lucky, those when I have gone with the crowd and caught, some that I have really had to work hard for, and then those from which I’ve learnt different things...
As I turned it on I was met with the sight of a big mirror carp just sat upright under my feet with a tiny mask of weed over its head and a 15mm pink wafter hanging from its bottom lip, so I hastily grabbed my net, that happened to be caught in a bramble bush due to setting up on dark!
After seeing The Big Common getting caught several times form out in the main body of the lake it appeared I needed to change my approach. In fact, I can remember one of the old members saying to me “bait heavily and The Big Common will come”...
Saturday morning was quiet, until around mid-day when I had a screaming take from the 30 zone! Wiggy heard the bite and strolled round just in time to net a good common along with loads of weed. It was not until we removed the weed that I realized that the common in the net was probably the biggest in the pond...
I thought things couldn’t get any better, but how wrong was I. The very next bite came on the same rod and tactics, rattling off the next morning at 4.30am. As soon as I picked the rod up, I knew it was a good fish, as it was staying deep and just plodding about very slowly despite applying consistent pressure on the fish with the GR60...
The capture of ‘Smithy’ was almost textbook carp fishing from start to finish. I woke early, whilst it was still dark. It had been mildly moist in the night, but not nearly as wet as the night before. I made a very early coffee and sat watching the light lift from the eastern corner of the lake...
Back to the summer of 2016; I had just received the email that I had been waiting for, for a very long time. It was confirmation that I was finally being offered a ticket on the Wasing Estate’s Cranwells Lake, and with it the opportunity to fish for The Parrot...
With my net in hand, I charged out past the reeds into open water, following a very angry carp that was trying to put some distance between us. The next few minutes were spent trying to get the fish under control and within netting distance, but somehow she managed to find the only snag in the swim...
There is an assumption that carp approach a bait always come in a line, opposite the lead. It’s classic positioning in any rig diagram and it’s utter twaddle! If you have, for example, a six inch hooklink lying perfectly straight as the manuals say, a fish sucking from opposite the lead has almost no movement of the bait...
One September afternoon Andy and I were in our usual position, namely bellies to the ground and noses poking out the marginal greenery. On this occasion Andy’s small bottom bait was so close to us that, if he had held my feet, I could have picked his rig up by hand. Sitting over the top of the bait was a mirror carp, well over forty pounds and utterly exquisite...
At first, I thought it was indeed a barbel, but after a heavy thumping battle in the flow, I saw the brassy flanks of a big chub surface. A couple more nervous minutes followed, before I managed to slide it over the drawstring into the net. Straight away I could see it was probably a '6'; a target I had been chasing for years.
From the first time I saw pictures of the Big Lin I knew that it was the one I would really like to catch. Little did I know that it would start a five-year quest for me to finally hold it up in front of the camera. I’d been fishing the Roach Pit for a couple of years, slowly building up a picture of the lake...
The next morning came and went, and nothing happened. The whole lake looked dead, as an easterly wind had picked up. I decided to sit it out in my current swim and was rewarded on the third morning of my session with an 8lb 14oz female. Then on the last morning, I managed a 6lb 6oz female tough going was the word, but I went home happy.
I had also started pike fishing in the November, and this started off with a bang, with the capture of a scraper 20 already and then only a couple of weeks later a dream fish came into my net. At 47” long and so close to my target weight she weighed in at 29lb 3oz!
After a pretty lacklustre winter, this March has already proven to be one of those magical once in a decade wonderful Marches, where the weather, water temperature and daylength come together to kick start an early flurry of carp feeding and happy carpers...
It came in like dog on a lead with steady pressure, then as I gained line the fish came up towards a shallower bar and suddenly the beast awoke and stripped 50yds of line off me, charging along the far margin and then powering out into the open water...
I was being treated like a VIP, rather than a slightly portly and mildly eccentric carp fishing tackle employee, I had choice of which lake. Go in the drawer on The Commons Lake that looked good for a bite, or man it up and fish ‘Mirrors’ with a chance of a monster; and with the big harvest moon due on Saturday night if ever the big one was coming out, this had to be a good window...
Only two hours after re-casting, which was entirely spent questioning if I had made the right decision, my middle rod was away. After a short ‘ploddy’ fight I was holding up another banging 42lb chestnut mirror in the mid-afternoon autumn sunshine. As I was playing it, I noticed two more subtle rolls up to my right...
I had to work so hard to try and keep up with the young’uns (who never seem to even miss a fish fart) that by the time I had clocked the carp’s whereabouts, and went to move on the fish, the younger, keener and super talented nippers would already have had one of them in the net.
It’s impossible to try and encapsulate in words, just what a special time I enjoyed during my three years, on what I truly believe will one day, rightfully be considered one of the greatest UK history carp waters ever. Since moving onto pastures new from 1st June 2019, it’s been like going through an ugly and bitter separation from a loved one...
