A difficult day at Kingsland

Kingsland Small carp Lake, Friday

This was a midweek club match with a nasty Northerly, over my right shoulder, meaning the swims on our side of the lake were in flat calm all day. Combined with the bright sunshine it spelled very difficult fishing for the big carp, which were swirling under the surface and nosing the reeds. It looked as if they wanted to spawn, but of course the water is nothing like warm enough.

We have a club member, Peter, who always fished on the surface here if he can – most places it is not allowed of course. And he’s good at it, and had a swim with the wind coming into him – just what you need for surface fishing. The angler to my right had a corner swim, but I didn’t fancy it because of the calm water; to be honest I’d rather have been in the wind, because at least there was a ripple on the far side of the lake.

And sure enough within two minutes of the match starting Trevor, opposite, was playing a carp. But then – a miracle – I hit a six-pounder within five minutes, in the side to my right, where there was the odd reed out from the margins. Then nothing for half an hour and I went out to six metres, putting in mainly corn, and took a two-pounder there. Then back to the side and after two hours I had five fish to 8 lb, and all those on the side were on cat meat.

I could see Trevor and Peter, at the other end, catching fish and at this point decided that the match would probably be won in the wind, so my best result would be to be top of the seven anglers on this bank. Things were very slow, with just the odd fish on cat meat, so I decided to put some dead maggots in the swim down my lefthand margin, and bait with a big bunch of dead maggots. This brought some liners and I came up off the bottom, and immediately started catching fish to 10 lb.

It didn’t last long and from there to the end I picked up off fish each side, having to put bait in after every fish. If I hadn’t had a bite within two minutes of putting bait in it seemed I wouldn’t get a bite at all. The fish were in, and quickly out. I also tried the longer swim a couple of times, but had only liners from fish swimming just under the surface. Incidentally I had some floating Chum Mixers with me and threw out some small bits but although odd ones were taken eventually by fish I never felt confident enough to have a real go with them. If there had been some ripple I would definitely have given it half-an-hour.

Just before the end, with an estimated 40 lb-plus in one net and 38 lb in the other, I went for a third net, in case I hit another double-figure fish, though I could see that both Trevor and Peter had three nets. In the last 20 minutes I took two fish on meat to the right.


At the weight-in Peter had 106 lb, all to floating Chum Mixers, and he lost several. But my bank had indeed fished quite poorly, with only one other angler having two nets in, and the top weight was in the 60s. Then it was my turn to weigh, and my 40 lb-plus turned out to be 38 lb and the 38 lb turned out to be 33 lb! The last two fish I had esimated at just uner 10 lb went 14 lb!! I really should go to Specsavers...

So my total was 87 lb which was second until Trevor weighed in his three nets for 99 lb. He has a terrific record on this lake, having taken at least four weights over 200 lb in our matches, best 280 lb-plus from the surface (and I was next to him on that day).

Best result

But the best result of the day, so far as we were all concerned, was Ted’s 73 lb for fourth. Why? Because Ted is 89 and the only help he ever asks for is taking his nets out at the end of the day. He’s a regular, and always catches plenty of fish, and as you can see, his still frames. What a man!