Success on the new lake!

 

It’s my first season fishing on a members only water, and certainly my first time targeting Carp in a water notorious for being hard going (the water is around 15 acres, containing only ~70 fish, full of weed, making it hard to catch the fish, but that’s the challenge i was looking for!!!).

 

After several blank sessions ( a ‘blank’ is a session where no fish are caught) I’ve finally started making some progress.

 

I had a really nice 16lb Common Carp a couple of weeks ago on a mid-week overnighter:

 

 

 

This was caught from the deeper water fishing over a patch of shallow silt surrounded by deep silt and weed.

 

And then earlier this week I had a brilliant session landing 4 fish (I had 5 bites but lost one when it got into the heavy canadian pond weed that has choked the north end of the lake), of these 3 were my target species (Carp) and one Tench.

The main thing was that one of the fish was very special (to me anyway). Only last week I managed to finally bag a UK “twenty” which was also a new UK Personal Best (PB), and now I’ve done it again!!

 

 

 

This is the 23lb 12oz Mirror Carp (a fully scaled Mirror Carp at that!) that graced my landing net at around 7am

Was packing up to leave for work and as i was winding in the left hand rod the bite alarm on the middle one started beeping, thinking I had either knocked the rod with my leg or crossed lines I just carried on winding, until the baitrunner went nuts! It took a good 20 minutes to get it in through the weed...

The photo isn't very good. There was a dog walker passing who insisted on taking the pics and just wouldn't take ‘no’ for an answer, if i wasn't already late I'd have just slipped the fish back into the retainer sling and taken some myself after he'd gone, I wish I had, but needed to get to the office for a meeting (and shower etc beforehand).

 

There was a wonderful sunset the evening of the session, the iPhone managed to get some decent pics too:

 

 

 

Anyway – I’m delighted with the new PB!!

 

Next target is a 25 pound Carp, or a “thirty”