It’s New year day, and as some regular campers will know, during the summer I get little time to fish the lakes, I haven’t been fishing at all over the last year so only renewed my annual rod licence in December. I’m out of practice and keen to improve my fishing skills once more.
I needed to catch some carp just to view weights and current health conditions of the fish. It was also a good excuse to use my new Preston innovations pole that Michelle bought be for Christmas, along with my new Preston Innovation suit (if Preston are reading these, feel free to sponsor me!)
I started fishing at 10am and finished at 2:30, it was sunny but extremely cold day in Cornwall, as there was frost in the morning and a little ice on the lake to start with, therefore I was expecting fishing to be difficult.
Fishing on the first swim on Mayfly lake I was feeding two areas, the corner of the lake and to the right a small lily bed, both spots were about 4 feet in depth, and only about 9 meters out from the bank. The water crystal clear. For the 1st hour, not a bite.
I tried varying depths and varied pellet sizes. But still nothing. I then changed my rig and allowed 2 feet of line from the pole bung. Straight away I had a bite. My first mirror carp on my new pole was 8lb, although initially slow, not a bad start. I think the problem was the water was so clear they could see my pole and it was spooking the fish. Adding the extra 2ft of line, helped hide my pole from where the fish were feeding.
From then on, I kept loose feeding small pellets (only 5 or 6 at a time) every few minutes, as the sun warmed up the fishing improved:
I kept to the same tactics all day and in total caught 15 carp all between 2lb to 10lbs. I only lost 1 which isn’t bad considering I’m out of practice.
The carp were all in good conditions with great colour.
For the purposes of fish monitoring, I kept my catch in a keepnet during my fishing session. But please note if fishing on our lakes during your holiday we DO NOT ALLOW keepnets for the overall well-being of our fish.
