Bank to the bank

Now that I am settled into my new role at JAG Products, I decided that I would start to squeeze in some quick overnighters on a Thursday night. I usually fish short sessions and fit in the odd day session as and when I can. Finding a fine balance of a social life, work and fishing isn’t particularly easy, I am sure that one isn’t a difficult to work out or should I say I am most certainly not the only person in this position. My main focus on fishing, as with all anglers is to catch fish. I am not fussed in the size of the fish and to be honest I have taken a bit of a ripping from friends in the past about the size of fish that I do catch.

I have been flitting from lake to lake on to many occasions. I have been fishing a small club lake near to the boarder of Essex, Walthamstow Reservoirs along with Wraysbury. Wraysbury is a lake which I have looked at fishing for years but being Cemex, this meant that it would be difficult to get a ticket and to be honest, a bit of a jaunt from where I live in deepest darkest Hertfordshire.

In my last article, I fished a park lake which I shall be setting as my winter focus. Fishing quick overnighters and feeling reasonably confident that I should get a bite. Doing quick overnighters on a water like this means I can toy around with rigs and baiting situations. I love using boilies but at the same time I love using particles. The first bait I caught carp on was good old corn. Corn will most certainly go in a mix of some kind although I am undecided on this particular lake as there is an abundance of bream present. The next on the list is hemp. This gets the fish grubbing around and most certainly pins them to the spot until they search out every last grain.

Anyway, this particular lake holds a good stock of fish which makes the winter all the better. In the past I have caught some nice fish, a bulk of them being over the 15lb mark up to 20lb. I am more than happy to catch this sort of stamp of fish throughout the winter. From October onwards, you are given access to using three rods. I used this to my advantage last winter. I first cast a lead out to have a bit of a search for something to fish to, I then did the wraps round the sticks and set all three rods to the same distance but fan them out. I haven’t as of yet managed to get three consecutive takes but it has definitely shown me which rig or rigs work well on the park.

After finishing work on Thursday 8th, I set off to the park lake. It is around 25 minutes from home and 40 minutes from work. Nothing too drastic in my eyes. I got to the lake at around quarter to five, had a quick stroll round with a set of Polaroids on and found fish almost instantly. The gear was loaded on the barrow and I was off to a peg which held a lot of fish. First I took the rigs of and just flicked out a bare lead. This was flicked out at 45 yards – as I’m using 10ft rods it was 13.5 wraps round the sticks. I then got the second rod and wrapped this to the same mark. I then did the same with the spod rod to which I then spombed out around 15 spombs of boilies to the spot followed by the rigs.

It was evident that fish were present. The one thought which automatically crossed my mind was “you should have put two zigs out”. The fish continued to show and I was fairly confident with where the rigs landed but having said that, I wasn’t prepared for the session so I knocked up a couple more rigs which i would change if I happened to get a bite.

The night past, waking every hour or so and seeing the fog creeping in until I couldn’t see past the rod tips. It wasn’t until 3:30 where I had a strange take. I thought it may have been a bream as the fish didn’t fight hard at all, the fish came straight in and straight over the net chord. This rod was a straight single bottom bait with a piece of curved shrink tube which extended the shank of the hook. This was pinned in the fishes mouth, the hook had sunk in and all you could see was the shank of the hook.

With pictures done, albeit blurry pictures the fish was soon slipped back. I had to redo the left hand rod as the fish had managed to kite through the right hand rod. I cut the leader off and retied it altogether. I then clipped the rod back up and flicked it out on my chosen snowman rig, minus a bit of tubing from the eye to make the rig more aggressive.

Hopefully this will be the first of many quick over nighters on this particular lake. Unfortunately I had to be off the lake after 4 o’clock as I had to get into work on the Friday morning. Now the weather is starting to chill a little bit, hopefully this means that I can squeeze in a few more quick overnighters before we are fully overcome by the dreary, cold and damp weather.

All the best

Ross