A Thursday night soaking at the HRPs

After checking the weather on both the met office and BBC websites and watching the forecast on TV I managed to convince Barry that Thursday would be a “clear dry night” despite the miserable day. We headed down to the HRPs for about half seven and began to set up in the rain on the central walkway.

We got set up just in time as the light was fading and the rain eventually eased and the skies cleared as expected. On previous trips we had targeted mainly the lily pond and so this time I wanted to focus on the other pond and so I put both rods into that pond whereas Barry hedged his bets with a rod each side.

It had been dark for maybe an hour or so when a car came down the track and stopped in the turning circle and turned its lights off. They hung around for maybe an hour before heading off and to us it looked like a young lad and a girl. I have seen cars come down at strange times in the night at the ponds before when I’ve been there. Lights go off and they hang around for a period of time. They must come down to chill out and smoke or something as they have found it to be a little hideaway. I have no particular objection as long as they aren’t there to cause trouble but this behaviour could be a bit unnerving if you are night fishing alone. One night three cars and a moped turned up and carved up the track a bit wheel spinning as they left.

After our visitor had left we carried on chatting for a while and were beginning to wonder why we hadn’t had any action when we were alerted by a couple of beeps on Barry’s rod. We were stood over it as the fish bolted and it developed into a run. As I waited to net the fish for him I could see that it was a common carp which I’d never seen from the ponds before as all the carp I have caught there have been mirrors. After deducting the weight of the sling we agreed that the small but chunky common weighed in at 11lb 6oz.

Barry's HRP common carp

Having photographed and put the fish back we were chatting for maybe another half an hour I had the same scenario on one of my rods. There were a couple of beeps that caused us to dash to the rod then a short wait for a couple of seconds before a run developed. This time we landed a mirror carp of 11lb 8oz just slightly heavier than the common. I chose not worry about photographing this fish but to get it straight back in the water. If it was daylight I would have but my camera is a pain in the arse to use at night as it just shows a black screen when focussing, so it means taking a few photos and looking at them and adjusting to get a half decent shot.

I’m guessing it had gone 0100 am at this point and we went to get our heads down. We were both on a bedchair out in the open with a sleeping bag thrown over us. I was alerted a couple of times to the odd beep on one rod and eventually I jumped up as it developed into a run. I shouted to Barry but he didn’t move. After a few seconds the fish buried itself in weed and for a minute the line was solid and I thought the fish was lost. I moved up the bank to change the angle and began to gain some line very slowly. I grabbed the torch and I could see that I was towing in a huge clump of weed but in the middle of it I could see the back of a fish.

I shouted to Barry a couple more times as it was proving a bit of a struggle but he didn’t wake up. I struggled with the torch and net and eventually had a net full of weed with a fish in there somewhere. I pulled away handfuls of weed and eventually found a mirror carp of an estimated 9 lb. Eventually Barry was woken by the torchlight and got up to ask me what was going on just after I had returned the fish.

After re-baiting etc I was back lying on the bedchair but not yet asleep when I heard Barry get a take. I went over and netted a mirror carp for him. I can’t remember what we weighed it as exactly but it was of similar size to the one I had had at around 9 lb. Barry is more keen to document all of his fish and requested a photo so I am therefore able to supply one for the blog.

Barry's mirror carp

Barry had another run sometime later which I must admit I slept through. He told me that he was into the fish for a matter of about a second and didn’t even get a chance to get a feel of how big he thought it was before the hook pulled out, or so he thought. When he went to re-bait he noticed that the hook had actually snapped on the lower shank just where it started to bend just leaving the hair and hook shank. This is something I’ve never known before possibly the hook had a manufacturing defect?

It was soon after that I felt a drip on my face. This followed by a few more drips that soon became a downpour. So much for the “clear dry night” that was promised. We each had an old umbrella but they didn’t really cover the bedchairs and the intensity of the downpour meant they leaked slightly also. The bottom of our bedchairs got a soaking meaning I was soaked from the knee down.

The rain eased off and I tried to get comfortable again. I was nodding off when I felt another drip and another downpour began. All in all I think we had four big downpours and got absolutely soaked. It was actually hailing at one point! This made the rest of the night very uncomfortable and we didn’t get anymore sleep. I will never trust the weather forecast again and I don’t think Barry will trust me again!

I had had some knocks on one rod that stopped after a while and normally I would have checked it but it got left as we were too preoccupied cowering from the rain. When we checked our baits in the morning we found that three out of four rods had no bait. This was also a bit strange but I’ve known it happen with the Vitabaits boilies as they are quite soft. We headed off by 0830 giving me just enough time to get back unload and grab a shower before getting to work for 0930.