7.45 - 8.45pm

The aim of the session was simply to catch a carp on a zig rig - something I've never done. My interest in this came from a time when I was trying to catch a carp on the top from what is now really a specimen lake, and they felt all round the dog biscuit to see if there was any suspicious line there. It occurred to me that if I had the bait a foot or two down with the line coming up from a running lead below the carp might come at it from above and not encounter the line. The lake in question was deep which made using a zig rig tricky, and it never worked, so my plan tonight was to try on an easy (and shallow) lake to give me a bit of faith in the approach.

I arrived at 6.30pm, but by the time I had decided between 2 possible lakes and messed about with the new rig it was 7.45pm before there was a bait in the water. I chose the lake with less birds! One thing I discovered was that, even with a bit of rig foam added, the bait wasn't buoyant enough to pull line through the lead, so I had to set a fixed line length from the lead to the bait. I was baiting up with chum mixer on the surface, so didn't want the hook bait to be too low. I should add that by now the carp were chomping hungrily on my dog biscuits, so I started full of confidence.

Then things went quiet for a bit, and just as I was starting to think it wasn't going to work the tip went round and I had a nice common of about 6lbs on bread crust. But I suspect I had the wrong type of bread as the crust came off very easily, and this caused lack of confidence as I couldn't see the bait. So I switched to dog biscuit. I lost two on this. The first one went off like a train and somehow broke my 6lb trace. I don't know how that happened - perhaps he found a snag. The second one got off the hook. All three fish seemed to hook themselves, though I had not set up the lead as a bolt rig - perhaps I should have done?

Then as dusk came on things quietened again, I suspect because they couldn't see the dog biscuits so well. But as I packed up I broke up a couple of slices of bread and chucked them in, and the result was wondrous to behold! Th carp were onto them in seconds, and their chomping was even less ladylike than it had been earlier in the evening. I made a mental note to use some bread next time as well as chum mixer as an attractant.

Mission accomplished, I caught a fish on zig rig! Though I'm still not confident with this rig, and I think I need another go on the easy lake. The most important thing will be setting the depth a bit more precisely than I did this time.

Edit 20.8.13 Water Boatmen

An item I forgot to mention is that the lake had many 'water boatmen' making significant ripples as they swam.. Actually I my have got the wrong name for them. They have 6 legs and swim a very effective breast stroke. I wondered why the carp weren't eating them, after all they must contain protein. But then I noticed that when I threw in some dog biscuits which got the carp in feeding mood, swimming around on the surface, they started to hoover up the water boatmen as well!