Kingsland Small Carp Lake, Coates, nr Whittlesey, Cambs
This was a 12-entry club match. Bad health kept three or
four away, while our secretary was on holiday. The lake – originally an
irrigation reservoir - is noted for its
big numbers of carp, which run mainly
from 3 lb up to 15 lb-plus, with some fish around 20 lb showing themselves in
the bright sunshine – we never saw a cloud all day and the temperature in my
garden hit 30 Centigrade. There was much splashing in the reeds near me,
showing the fish are hoping to spawn any day.
Luckily I had re-read my previous posts on this lake, and
even more luckily I drew the same corner swim I had last time, when I had
framed in fourth. So I had an idea of what had worked before – fish close in on
the right. But things looked bad when
Tony Nisbet drew the favoured peg near the road, which is all on its own on
that bank – he’d lost a lot of fish last time in the reeds, and I fully
expected he would not repeat the same mistakes. Meanwhile Kevin Lee, who has
won our club championship more times than anyone else, was a few pegs to my left, in an area I like,
where there is an underwater reed bed a few feet from the bank which is not yet
visible.
Plan C
I had some soaked (but not pumped) expanders ready to target
fish on the surface, as this is allowed here and can produce huge weights. But
when I saw the conditions – flat calm and bright sun – I doubted whether they
would work. So I threw out a few pellets to about six metres, intending to
start there, as I had read that Kevin Lee had caught out around that length all
day last time. I also threw out a few floaters; but I started looking inside,
with cat meat, in four feet of water, a few feet from the reeds to my left, as
although there were odd fish in these
reeds, the righthand swim was positively alive with them.
Unexpectedly I started getting liners to the left
immediately and in fact I stayed here for the first two hours, and never went
farther out. A slowish start saw me take a 5 lb mirror a few minutes after the
start, by which time Dennis, on my left had
hooked and lost three or four fish which I suspected had been foulhooked – he told
me later that was the case.
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| My corner swim - the fish were splashing in the reeds to my right all day. |
A special method
I fish a ‘special’ method which, when conditions allow, allows
me to almost entirely eliminate foulhooking fish. I call it ‘special’ because
the only other person I know who has fished like this is ‘Fatha’ Dennis White. When
I can fish it, I expect to do well – though a better angler than I would do
better of course. Anyway, while Dennis on my left – and many others – were foulhooking
fish on and off all day I managed to foulhook just three that I know of all day,
and two of those came off in two
seconds. The other one stuck.
I stayed on cat meat almost all day, firstly on a rig
consisting of 6 lb Maxima straight through, and getting fish steadily, the best
two around 15 lb, with a couple of others in double figures. After a couple of hours, to
rest the lefthand swim, I dropped in a foot from the righthand side of the
platform, with my spare rig, with 6 lb Match Team straight through, and took a
run of about ten fish to 10 lb there, before switching back and forth between the two swims. Both
rigs had size 12 Kamasan Animal hooks – they don’t straighten!
Some of the fish shot under the platform, but they all came
out. These were all wild carp...well they looked very annoyed when I landed
them!
Best baiting
procedure
I eventually found it best to put in a few grains of corn
and a few cubes of cat meat before every fish. This definitely brought bites
more quickly than trying to get two fish from one baiting. The fish seemed to
come in within seconds – and I emptied a pot of water over the top each time to
make a noise. Amazing how that works. By
this time, although I had thrown out several floaters, hardly any fish had
taken an interest and I had abandoned the idea of surface fishing completely.
Playing problems
The fish were certainly pumped up with testosterone (or the
fishy equivalent) and I took longer than I would have liked playing them.
Having said that, only two came off after I had played them for a while, and
just one broke me in the reeds eight metres to my right, so I was pretty
pleased with the landing rate.
But I was using my old, stiff, margin pole, which I have
rigged up with two elasticated tops about
six feet long, which means I have to add another section to land fish. This meant I could not
use a puller even if they were equipped with them – and had I had a puller I am
sure I would have saved a couple of minutes on each fish, because the fish
pulled so hard there was much more elastic out than I would normally expect
when using these tops. One had Middy 22-24 solid and the other 18 Latex.
I had to virtually scoop the fish out as they swam past,
rather than being able to slide them into the net – they just never gave up. It
was hard work and at times my right hand cramped up, while afterwards my
shoulders really ached from playing and netting them. I decided I might have done better with my
normal Browning Z12 which has puller bungs, but in the past I have foulhooked
huge fish here and actually lost top twos, while I havealways felt it was only a matter of time before a
fish smashed the pole.
That’s a problem I am still working on. I also had with me a
Browning Sting though it’s a put-in pole, without pullers, and the tops are so
thin it’s not easy to insert a puller bung, which I favour over side pullers. But as I was landing almost every fish –
eventually – I felt it better not to change.
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| James - Dave's son, with another - he uses only rod and line. |
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| Dave Garner with one of the many double-figure fish taken. |
Oops
Two or three of the best fish came to double corn,
which I used as an occasional change bait, and I felt it worked more quickly
that the cat meat – something which I will try again.
When I was on my third net I landed a 6 lb common, looked at
my clicker, and was horrified to see 47 lb on it and, unsure which net to put
the fish in, I put it in that net, knowing I was over. At the end it
weighed 56 lb, and as our club fishes to a strict 50 lb maximum, so I lost the 6
lb.
As I weighed in my five nets (Tony, who I had not been able
to see because of tall reeds, weighed
first and had 191 lb) the other anglers gritted their teeth when they saw the
56 lb register, pointing out that, like me, Kevin also had five nets, and was
on the Golden Peg. Would that 6 lb stop me beating him?
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| Winner Kev Lee with a fish we weighed at almost 15 lb. |
My best match weight
I wasn’t sure whether I could beat Tony. My previous three best
match weights had been around 175 lb, though I had once caught 200 lb-plus on
Head Fen, to almost certainly beat the water record, only for nets to be disqualified so on that
occasion I ended with 61 lb!
Today three nets had 40 lb-plus, the overweight one was
given as 50 lb, and the last one went 30 lb – total 212 lb 2 oz, and my first-ever
weight of 200 lb. Kevin in fact beat me with 224 lb 14 oz to win, so my
six-pounder would have made no difference. He had again caught several feet out
in front of him, coming into the margins late. I was second, and not only very
happy, but when I got home Iwas – for the first time ever – pleased I was not
fishing the next day because I was very tired, and my shoulders ached. I
suppose at the age of 75 that’s the price you pay for enjoying yourself.
However, onwards and upwards – I’m at Decoy on Elm lake
tomorrow, when it might be slightly cooler.
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| Dick one of our weighers-in. Sensible hat! |
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| Callum with friend! |
TIP
I had a small cool bag in which I placed a tin of cat meat.
This tin had been in the fridge all night, and it went in with a couple of ice
packs – and a small plastic bottle of drinking water. In summer it’s a boon, as
when the sun becomes almost unbearable and the cat meat in my tray sets soft I
can undo the spare ti, knowing that the meat inside is firm...and have a drink
to cool off. Which I did !
Another tip , shown to me by Darren Cox, is to have a full
bottle of orange squash, frozen overnight in a freezer. The hotter the sun the
more quickly it melts when you put it beside you on the bank. That will be in
my armoury tomorrow. I had forgotten how hot it can get in England – it’s been
so long...while you all had your mini heatwave a couple of weeks ago I was in Portugal, in the rain, and when the
sun shone it was not as hot as this!
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| The result - six topped 100 lb. |
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