The final trips of 2009 – part 2

Our second 24 hour trip to white springs in October was to be our first attempt at the specimen lake. We arrived a bit late and were setting up as it got dark so it made it a bit difficult to locate exactly were we wanted to fish. I attempted to cast towards the islands with torch light while Barry fished in the margins.

We hadn’t had a touch when dawn came and so we decided to move. I set up on the corner of the pit pond and Barry went back to the Canal. We were joined by Ben later that morning who had come down to catch his first carp. He joined Barry on the canal and we set him up with a maggot feeder.

Although they didn’t enjoy the same success as our previous visit they did land a few fish and Ben did manage to catch his first carp some pictures of which are below.




On the pit I had a big rod tip knock and a couple of bleeps on one rod fishing in the margins. I grabbed it instantly and felt a resistance on the other end and thought I was into a fish. After a second or two I realised that something strange was going on as there was no fight. As I brought it in I then spotted the tesco bag full of mud and water! I’m still a bit baffled as to how I had such a quick and aggressive knock from a tesco bag; perhaps it was a line bite or something?

I re-baited and put it back in the same spot and later in the afternoon I had a screaming take on the same rod. This time I knew it was no tesco bag as the fish charged off into the lake. Barry came over to help net the fish which turned out to be a partially scaled mirror. I can’t remember the exact size but I know it was a low double around the 12 lb mark (pictured below). Barry joined me on the pit late afternoon and landed a couple of single figure carp fishing to the islands.

The final trips of 2009 – part 1

I’m currently snowed in and work is closed for the day so I’m finally getting around to updating things. In truth there isn’t a lot to talk about as I’ve only been out a couple of times since the last update, to white springs on both occasions.

The first of these was a 24hour trip to in October with Barry. We arrived in the evening and began to set up on the pleasure lake where there were still some people fishing including some kids. Unfortunately these kids weren’t being too well behaved and their guardian wasn’t much better. We put up with the shouting, swearing and clowning around for a bit as we set up until one of them cast right across Barry’s swim from the opposite bank missing him by about a metre. He walked off in disgust and sarcastically commented that “this should be renamed the kindergarten lake”, which I found a bit amusing.

Luckily it wasn’t too much longer before they packed up and left by which time the light was fading. I had heard that the carp went to somewhere around the 20lb mark so I set up with larger carp in mind. Between us we were fishing a couple on the bottom and a couple on the surface. The carp could be heard all over the pool slurping and surfacing and it wasn’t too long before Barry had one on a dog biscuit at about 6lb if I remember correctly.

Not long after he landed another of similar size on a boilie but I think our tactics were overkill for the average size of fish in the pool. I had lots of rod tip knocks and the odd bleep or two but it as a few hours before I actually had a proper take, resulting in a carp about 4lb.

At some point in the night whilst I was asleep Barry switched to float fishing worm (with a starlight). He got a lot of bites and landed a few small carp up to a couple of a pound before getting his head down. In total I think I only managed 3 carp before morning came. We were both in agreement that our tactics were overkill given the average size of fish even thought there might be one or two bigger ones.

In the morning we packed away all the carp equipment and moved to the old canal lake with lighter tackle. Barry was on the opposite bank to me and was float fishing and feeder fishing maggots and worm; I was using a maggot feeder and a method feeder.

Things started slowly and I was trying a few different baits such as pellet, pepperami, sweet corn, and mini boilies. I can’t remember which one of us caught first but I think my first fish was a small carp on pepperami. As the morning progressed our catch rate began to increase by regularly feeding the areas we were fishing. Both of us were getting more bites with maggots so I began using maggots solely and by the afternoon we were each catching almost a fish a cast!

Although I was using two rods things got so hectic at one point that I would hook a fish on one rod whilst re-baiting the other. After landing the fish I would re-cast the one I had just re-baited and so forth. Between us we must have landed a large weight of carp all ranging from 1-5lb or so. We also had a few skimmer bream, roach, and Barry had a 2lb 8oz perch to top things off. So we were delighted with our session on the canal and neither of us wanted to leave!