Frank Warwick’s September Blog

Hi there guys hope you had a productive summer I have had one of my best years ever despite Covid restrictions and travel being affected, this has had a significant effect on my fishing as I usually like to do a fair old bit of continental carping.

Circumstances made me concentrate on the UK and I can hand on heart say I am truly loving every second of it all.

In fact I am finding it hard to want to go abroad now we can travel again, if you had asked me two years ago if I was going to say that I would have bet anything against it.

The Syndicate Lake, where my main campaign has been this year, had been fishing slow due to a large algal bloom where low oxygen levels had affected the carps feeding badly which is very understandable.

Luckily we avoided thunder storms -which can create the perfect storm and de oxygenate the water and wipe out the entire stock – though it was a tense time where we kept a sharp eye on everything and stood by with the air pumps at the ready.

After cooler weather arrived with some decent rainfall and strong winds it seemed to perk up the lakes residents and get them munching again, at the same time my Koi carp in my garden pond went a bit mental – always a great barometer for the lakes inhabitants who seem to mirror my Koi.

I found the carp in the syndicate in the shallowest part of the lake by spotting them from a climbing tree, the water was still highly coloured and it would have been easy to miss the very subtle small signs but I spent a good 30 minutes up the tree before they gave the game away! The small back bay is both shallow and intimate so I set my gear up well back from the water and made a huge effort to keep out of sight and be silent, they know your there if you are clumsy and it shows very quickly with a dramatic lack of action.

I felt sure I would catch and very soon I had a stunning 25lb common, followed by two stunning double figure mirrors that were both heavily scaled and more than welcome. The following morning I had a sizzling take and landed a truly stunning 30lb common.

Just as things were looking up, a family holiday in South Devon cropped up and some filming scheduled with my mate Joe Morgan from Carp angle on a different venue, took me away from my mission for 3 weeks.

I was literally gagging to get back to my Syndicate Lake but work and family must come first, so this week I had 48 hours pencilled in on the syndicate lake. Upon arrival I had a good look around and climbed a few trees I saw very little apart from an obvious lump exploding out through the lilly pads, that was all I needed

The first 20 hours was slow but I was absolutely confident my rigs and baiting strategy was perfect so it was only a matter of time before a carp tripped up. The second morning at around 11am, I had a single bleep on the indicator and being locked up solid I was on it in a flash. A pretty 18lber was the culprit although I must say it felt bigger and had I lost it I would have thought I had lost a decent fish.

Then I suffered a hook pull which was disappointing, then it went quiet after a restless night. I had this strange nagging feeling something special was about to happen, so I got up at 4am in the weird light of the amazing harvest moon that eerily lit up the lake. I re baited and took a calculated gamble at 7.30 am to re do the rods which is feeding time but I had had a few bleeps in the night and thought I might well have been cleaned out of bait by the lakes numerous tench and many silver fish.

It worked at 8.15 I had a mental rod flattening take that quickly became a shit or bust crazy battle that had my knees knocking. After some ten minutes of heart stopping drama I netted what I knew was quite possibly the most amazing mirror carp in my home county of Cheshire. It was incredible and on my most wanted list of target fish and now it was mine – the amazing Black spot mirror. I rang a few of the lads to see if they could come for photos but all were working away from the area so self takes it was to be.

All went well and not that it matters a jot but the amazing creature went 39.6 hope you like the shots as much as I do.

Tight lines until next time

Frank