The last week in November saw me heading to Sandown Park for the carp society show to help out on the Avid carp stand. It was my first ever show and I must say that although it was hard work I really enjoyed it, talking all things carp and catching up with old friends. There have been quite a few changes at the Avid camp and the future looks very bright indeed with many great new products due to hit the shelves in 2015.

As bites are very hard to come by at the moment I thought a nice trip to a pretty little local lake called Tri-lakes in Yateley could be the one as it is only 2 miles from my front door and has a nice head of fish, a lot of which are hard fighting ghost carp. It was only a couple of weeks until Christmas and the animal park that the lakes are part of was in full festive mode, with sleigh rides, Santa and a huge Christmas phone where children could ring Lapland and put in their gift requests. Joining me on the trip was Brandon Butler who has fished the lakes a lot this year with a great deal of success.

I arrived at 8am when the gates were due to open, the previous night had been a cold one with even colder forecast at minus 3, not great carp catching weather but I was going to give it a bloody good try! The swim that I selected was the one called the point, which gave me a view of the whole lake albeit only about 5 acres in size. I opted to fish little snowman rigs with a hi-viz pineapple pop up on top of the new test bait from Sonubaits called 24/7 as I had caught on this on previous day sessions. These were dispatched with a bag of boilie crumb next to the snags to my left as the main body of the lake had been “claimed” by a couple of anglers opposite which wasn’t really a problem as they were only there for the day so I could fish out in the main water during the night. I could also watch where they were casting to as I had been told by Kev the owner that they were regulars and always

caught fish and it was no surprise when one of their rods rattled off at about 11 o clock and a carp was duly landed. I watched with interest as they re-cast their rod to a small island at 45° to my right, which went into my memory bank for later. It did seems that the anglers were concentrating all their fishing efforts around one of the many islands or margin snags, which made sense, especially when the same rod went off again half an hour later but this time the carp came adrift. I gave Brandon a call and told him about the “going spot” and as he wasn’t getting any luck where he was, he decided to make the move to the swim to my right. It turned out to be a good move because after a quick call on the giant Santa phone he received a take on his left rod and he landed a nice low double common. I took a couple of pictures and even got him to smile in one of them despite the plummeting temperatures, it was definitely going to be a cold one, in fact I swear I saw some brass monkeys looking for a welder.

Once the anglers opposite went home I finally got my rods on two spots in the main body of the lake as the snags had been a nightmare during the day due to the constant attention from Mr and Mrs coot and their Sonubaits addiction. I marked and clipped up the lines to drop just short of the snags, one on llama point and the other by a small dot island, which I had to spod my freebies to, due to the pesky sky rats eating every boilie that I even dared to catapult out. The Llama point rod was a bit easier to bait up as Kev had let the animals out for their nightly wander around the complex leaving the gate open which gave me access to the bank where my bait was lying under. I went round before I cast my rods out and spread about 20-30 baits over the area, turned around to go back to my swim and was confronted by a bloody great llama stood in my way. “Hello” I said to the llama, why I’m still not sure but unsurprisingly he didn’t answer me, he just sorted of snorted and wandered back off into the darkness. I walked back round through the flock of sheep that was now making its way around the lake and cast out into the darkness, hit the clip, heard a splash, bobbin on, now we were fishing.

At about 1am my Delkim signalled a take with the rod jumping about in the rests due to the clutch being locked up tight. I pulled the fish away from the snags and lead it straight into my waiting landing net with very little resistance from the fish which was probably so bloody cold it just didn’t have the urge to argue. Brandon came over and did a quick couple of pictures for me and although the fish wasn’t much more that 10lb I felt that I had done what I set out to do. As I released the monster back to the lake I noticed that the water around the edges were starting to freeze, the temperature gauge said minus 3 as was promised, I couldn’t get back into my sleeping bag quick enough! An hour later Brandon came round to say he had another in the net, a nice mid-double common. I did his photos and legged it back to my warm bag as ice was forming on everything creating an eerie white landscape. I had two bream over the next two hours which in Baltic conditions are definitely not welcome but they were treated with respect and returned carefully to the icy water. All my bites were coming from llama point and I was casting into the pitch black, hitting the clip, hearing a splosh and getting a drop each time so I knew I was fishing…..or was I?

I awoke at first light to re-cast my rods and to my horror realised that my last llama point cast was not as good as I’d thought. Yes I’d hit the spot perfectly but what I didn’t  realise (or indeed see) was that the water in the middle of the lake had frozen to create an ice island, of which I had cast over, laying my line on top of it and then further freezing had encased about 40 yards of my line in ice. I spent the next 2 hours casting a spod full of water along the frozen lines to try and release them which I eventually did. It goes without saying that we packed up not long after that as I had probably scared every fish across the road into the Yateley car park lake with all my spodding. I will go back in the spring to have another go before the lily pads get too mad though as I’m told there are couple in there that are definitely worth catching.

The Sunday after Christmas I am off to Linear fisheries with the Catch and release team which should be good fun even if we blank. Then I’m starting back on the syndicate to hopefully catch one, which isn’t going to be easy especially when anglers like Ian Russell tell me it’s the toughest water he’s ever fished!!

Have a great new year,

Cheers,

Poults