Carp Free Lake + Photos

[natty]

I fancied a change from my usual carp-dominated fishing sessions, so I decided to pay Swanborough Farm’s Tench lake a visit. It is stocked with tench, bream, roach and rudd and is meant to contain no carp.

 

I was shocked when I arrived at the lake, every swim was extremely overgrown and there was only about 3 swims that were actually fishable! One of these was taken but a man feeder fishing, he had been there for 3 or 4 hours, he had caught a tench and a bream on his first two casts, but nothing since. This wasn’t really the news that I wanted to hear!

 

I finally got set up in a tucked away swim that seemed to just have enough room for two rods, but it may be a bit hairy landing anything half decent from it. One rod was legered and the second rod was float fished. Both rods were fished with either 6mm Carp Vader Breamax Jelly Pellets or a grain or two of sweetcorn.

 

I chose to fish my float rod at the bottom of the marginal shelf straight out in front of me and to begin with I ground baited fairly heavily with Carp Vader feed pellets in Breamax, Pineapple and Natural flavours, I also added some hemp and a bit of corn. After each fish I would top up the swim. I decided to fish my leger rod a couple of feet off the edge of my baited area to the left, hoping to pick up any larger fish hanging away from the main bed of feed.

 

Within 10 minutes, my leger was away and after a very hectic fight, desperately trying to keep the fish away from the weed and reeds with my light tackle, I managed to net the fish. When I was playing it I suspected it to be a large tench, but I was surprised to see a mirror carp in the net - I had came to this supposingly carp-free lake to get away from them, but it was the first fish I caught! Nevertheless, I was pleased to have landed a lovely little carp that looked like it had never seen a hook before.

Here it is:

 

Once my leger was re-cast my float was away and I hooked into what felt like a tench, after a few seconds it came off. Over the next 40 minutes, I lost another 3 fish which all felt like nice tench, the weed and reeds were giving me serious problems. The fourth of those fish actually got snagged in a weed bed and after giving it slack line, it failed to swim out, so instead of risking damaging it, I decided to put on a pair of shorts and go in after it! By the time I got to the fish it had long gone and my hook was left in the weed. While I was out in the water I decided that I might as well clear all of the weed and cut down a few of the reeds, so I had a better chance of landing anything I hooked. After a quarter of an hour, the swim looked twice as big and I had much more open water to play the fish in. Job done!

Here is a photo:

 

Throughout the rest of the day the fish feed well and the action was fairly steady on both rods. A couple of times I had two fish in the net at once, this happened when I shoal of bream would move in, I would get a bite on both my float and leger rods within a minute or two of each other. The clearer swim definitely helped as I was able to land all of the hard fighting tench I hooked. In the end, I managed to catch 11 bream - ranging from 1lb 8oz to 3lb 8oz. Something really odd happened, I landed the same bream 3 times throughout the session! (I knew it was the same because it had a slightly deformed mouth), each time I put it back, it must of just swam straight back out and started feeding on the baited area straight away! Along with the many bream, I landed 10 tench averaging the same sort of size as the bream. I also managed to land 3 quality roach nudging the 1lb mark and a nice rudd of around half a pound. As I was packing up and I just had my leger rod it, it screamed off one last time, the fish felt rather powerful and I thought and hoped it might be a larger tench, but after a couple of minutes once again a carp popped up at the net. I couldn’t believe that my first and last fish of the session were both carp when I was fishing a carp-free lake to avoid them!

Here are some photos:

 

The average size of the bream:

 

Some of the tench:

 

The three roach nudging the pound mark:

 

My final fish of the day - a carp!:

 

Overall, I had a lovely days fishing with light tackle and really enjoyed catching a variety of species.

[Dick Dastardly]

What a great days fishing Natty.

[bluerinse]

What a great days fishing Natty.

 

 

Nice thread, lovley to see some fish in excerlent condition. love the fact you got in and sorted out he swim.