After several months suffering with a serious algae problem the fish seem thankfully mostly unaffected. A couple of friends and I fished it last Wednesday prior to the match to see if it was worth holding the match there and between the three of us we caught in excess of 300lb of mostly carp in about 3 hours.
However, Sunday's match didn't go so well for me as I did what I could but ended up just sat waiting for something to happen for the first three hours before I finally lost confidence in my red ground bait choice and changed to a pale brown with a couple of handfuls of crushed hemp and halibut mix. With 90 minutes of the match remaining I finally watched as my rod tip swung round slowly and landed a 2lb bream. In the last hour my peg suddenly came alive and I landed 28.4lb in total and took second place in peg 19.
Karl the match winner blitzed the rest of the field landing a staggering 74lb in total from peg 17, so today I returned and decided to fish peg 17 for six hours for fun.
The following is a summary of the times and weights of the carp I caught over the 6 hours along with photos of most of the fish I landed.
Using one rod only.
11:35 started to put out an area of ground bait in the area shown in blue casting every minute.
11:37 second retrieve and I landed a twig.
Continued to put out an area of ground bait every couple of minutes in the blue area.
12:05 first carp 3.8lb
12:17 small carp of around 2.0lb
12:19 small carp of around 2.8lb
12:26 small carp approx 2.8lb
12:32 lost small carp from hook pull.
12:43 lost small carp when hook link snapped after being through the shorts reeds.
13:05 just over 3lb
13:17 lost approx. 3lb carp, kited all over the lake and then through the short reeds only to lose it right at the point of netting it when the hook pulled.
13:20 approx 4lb chubby carp.
13:27 small 2lb carp
13:31 small 2lb carp
13:39 nice chubby carp just under 4lb
13:49 carp just about 4lb
Tea break and mixed up some more ground bait.
Started to put out an area of ground bait in the area shown in red from now on casting 5-6 times in quick succession.
14:17 very nice 5.2lb carp
14:40 approx 4.8lb carp
14:51 best carp of the day at about 5.8lb
15:14 another chubby carp of about 4.8lbs
It suddenly went very quiet, no rod tip movements for a while after the geese decided to swim past slowly.
15:39 another carp of around 5lbs
15:52 another swim past by the geese.
15:58 another chubby carp of approx 4lb
At this point the action started to slow right down with just the occasional twitch and knock between takes.
16:24 approx 2.8lb
16:30 small carp of under 2lb
16:53 again another small carp approx 2lb
17:06 carp approx 4lb
17:20 landed a lovely 4 to 4.8lb carp only to lose it after unhooking it when it slapped its tail and flipped itself back into the lake before I could take a picture. Time to pack up very happy with the number of carp I had caught despite losing a few as well.
Number of carp landed = 21
Approx total weight = 70lb (+/- a few lbs)
