Recap: June in St Austell (Penvose Farm)

The next place I tried on my own was a place called Penvose Farm near Newquay. This is somewhere I had fished a when I was younger and a new lake has been added since I was last there. I arrived at about 11am and started on the bottom lake where there were already people fishing. My decision was influenced by the number of carp I could see cruising about. I put a boilie on one rod and put it in the margin almost right under my feet. The other I set up to try and cast a surface bait (floating boilie) to the island where I could see several fish. This however proved very frustrating as I had some almost take it but then think better of it.

At about 2pm I moved to the next lake (not the unfishable one with all the weed). Here I fished a boilie with a pva bag containing one or two boilies and pellets. I could see carp under a tree and they began to take biscuits so I tried to dangle my floating boilie near them. As with the bottom lake it proved very frustrating as they would almost take it but not quite.

I tried using a method feeder for a bit and was getting several bites on sweetcorn but I think this was only from small roach as I kept missing them. Eventually I had a run on the boilie and I had the fish on for a minute before the hook pulled but I don’t think it was a big fish. Every so often I would notice fish taking off the surface and I kept picking up the rod I’d set up for floaters but I was having no luck at all.

At about 6pm I heard a carp taking off the surface in the margin near me so I decided to the floater one more try. This time I put a dog biscuit in the bad rather than a boilie but as it was smaller I thought it would make the hook look more obvious. I dipped the biscuit in the water whilst holding the hook shank up ever so slightly to make the hook look less obvious. I held the rod and set the freeruner on the reel. After a couple of minutes a carp grabbed it and I landed my first fish of about 4 lb. I thought that would be it but I tried the same tactic at the same spot and another took it about 5 minutes later. I kept gradually feeding the biscuits and they began to feed more and more and I was landing fish after fish. I couldn’t believe how well it was going; when I packed up as it began to get dark I had landed 16 carp. The biggest was only about 8 lb but it was awesome fun and what looked at one point to be a bad day had turned into a great one.