It was a moist August morning over the mere, I arrived in the car park at 4am it was still too dark to see the steps leading down the lake so I used the phone screen to help me. Once down beside the lake I could hear crashing carp not too far away, as the darkness began to fade I could see where they where showing and it was in a swim I know very well called the hotspot. As it was still raining I went back to the van to set up the bivvy and then walk everything else down so it didn’t get soaked through.

Setting up didn’t take long only to realise I had left the alarms at home, so I fired out 30 baits over each spot I wanted to fish. A quick 30 min journey each way and I was back ready for some action. An hour went by the right hanger pulled up tight and the line lifted in the water. Lifting into it I knew it was a decent fish by the way it was pulling back and attempting to find sanctuary in the pads, after a 15 minute battle I netted a fish I know well it’s called the lump. It is called this as at some point he must have been dropped and popped a rib. It weighed 25.4

The rest of the day the fish were swimming about in front of me but after endless attempts I couldn’t bag another. The rain fell again at midnight and after a couple of hours the left rod pulled round and I was into another Boreham carp, this one felt much bigger and was stripping line off a tight clutch trying to get further into the pads holding on to the spool I persuaded it out and it was plodding up and down in front of the swim as it rolled in front of me I saw a row of scales, hoping it was the big lin I started to ease off on the pressure slightly. 10 or 15 minutes later she was in the net I parted the mesh to find out it was the big lin and after 5 sessions I had 1 of the 3 fish off my target list. She weighed 29.10

Unfortunately the rest of the night wasn’t great I lost 2 takes due to hook pulls from fish taking me into the pads and a Tench of 8lbs. The 2 other fish I am currently after from here is a common of 32lbs and a nearly fully scaled called Bullseye which normally goes high 20’s watch this space. All fish were caught on combi rigs around 7in long and Sticky baits Vor-tex tipped with the new signature pop up.

If you want to catch more carp or improve an aspect of your angling book a tuition today.