Another Carp Session Today

[natty]

Today I had a day session after carp at Borde Hill fishery in Haywards Heath (Sussex). I arrived at the lake around 10am and set up in a swim that had a nice reedy margin on the right hand side and plenty of open water out in front.

 

I set up one rod with a leger, as a hookbait I used a 6mm Carp Vader hair-rigged Halibut Crab jelly pellet, this was fished with a PVA bag of mixed Carp Vader feed pellets. My other rod had a simple controller float set up, with a size 10 hook and a piece of bread crust as a hookbait.

 

I gently lowered my leger along the reed lined margin and cast out my surface set up towards the middle of the lake. No action was forthcoming for the first half hour. Finally a few carp had started to show a bit of interest on the surface and were now cautiously taking a few dog biscuits.

 

I managed to get my bread crust in front of a feeding carp and it took the bait straight away, my light rod was bent double as a powerful carp surged towards the far side of the lake. After a few minutes I had managed to get the carp under the rod tip and shortly afterwards it was in the net. It turned out to be this lovely 9lb 3oz common:

 

Over the next few hours I managed to land several small carp on my leger and I also managed to tempt a few more carp off the surface. Unfortunately all of the carp were rather small, but atleast I was catching.

 

A reasonable sized common carp was slowly cruising around the margins and sucking in dog biscuits that had drifted onto the edge of the reeds. I quickly took off the controller float and freelined a small piece of bread crust. I gently lowered the hookbait inches from the carp's mouth and with a loud slurp my hookbait was taken.

This nice common carp was the result:

 

I managed to catch a few more small carp late on and finished the day with a total of 14 carp, three people fishing opposite me only managed one carp between them, so I was certainly happy with 14!

[wayne baker]

Nice one natty.

[Guest Chris Perch]

Nice catch Well done.

Chris.

[WickerDave]

Nice report and pictures (only two this time ). It always surprises me how many people seem reluctant to surface fish when others nearby are catching well on that method; the surface expert on my local lake had a jacuzzi in front of him yesterday evening but was the only one surface fishing.

[j_s]

I'd like to surface fish but day ticket waters near me don't allow it

[Janet]

I gently lowered my leger along the reed lined margin

 

I didn't have quite as good a day as you yesterday, but all my fish came from within four feet of the bank...

 

It amazes me when I walk past our local Lodge and watch all the carpers chucking leads out to the middle of the lake without even thinking what may be just under their feet!

 

Well done on a good day Natty, and another good write up.

 

Janet