Sam Weedon Finally I managed to get to on the bank.
Finally I managed to get to on the bank on a great sunny day after months of freezing weather. I planned to fish the specimen lake at framfield fishery and try and catch some big carp.
However when I arrived the bailiff said that most of the swims were booked, luckily I managed to find one spot free and set up my 2 carp rods with one using a yellow half boilie and the other a hybrid boilie. With the sun out and a few bubbles on the surface I was confident to catch. Unfortunately at that point the people who booked the other swims had turned up and were making a lot of noise, but that wasn’t going to stop me from fishing. At about 7:50 my left hand rod with the hybrid boilie screamed off and I was hopeful of a large carp. As I struck the lead weight shot out the water and almost took my head off as it came flying back without a fish. I must have struck too hard or something. Thankfully the line hadn’t snapped and I was ready to fish in seconds.
Around quarter past eight, my mate Tom had shown up and as there was no swims left I let him share mine (it was easily big enough for two people). An hour past with no knocks on any of our rods and the people who reserved the swims around us became very mouthy and were swearing a lot and casting towards our swim. That was it both me and Tom were fed up of their language, we packed up our tackle and headed towards spring lake which is one of the two course lakes.
Both of us set up our gear for the second time rather quickly and were soon fishing again. At that time I only had one rod in the water which still had the half boilie on. Thankfully I found my thirteen foot match rod In my rod bag and decided to set it up and use it for the first time.
Before I had even got the line through all the eyes of my match rod, I had a run on my carp rod. I knew as soon as I struck that it wasn’t a double figure fish, but it was still a decent five pound mirror carp and at least I hadn’t blanked. I didn’t recast it until I had set up my match rod with just a simple free lining rig and 2 pieces of fake sweetcorn on the end. Tom chucked out some floating dog biscuits to see if we could get some fish up on the surface and within seconds they were all over the surface sucking in the tasty treats. Suddenly a little black shadow cruising in the water caught my eye and it didn’t look like the rest of the carp feeding on the dog biscuits. I cast my fake sweetcorn towards, it and amazingly on the first cast I got the bait about 2 inches away from its face and I watched the sweetcorn disappear into its small mouth. My line went tight and I knew I was into something small but special. The end of the rod was bending like mad and I wasn’t going to force it in quickly as I was fishing quite light gear. After a few minutes it was in the net and to my surprise it was a dark crucian carp of about 2 pounds.
Through the next hour both me and Tom were getting lots of runs and at one point both of us had just netted one when the other rods shot off and we had 3 fish in the same net which all needed unhooking.
At around half 1 we decided to only use one rod which we were both going to have a float setup on and we were going to have our own little mini match and put all the fish we caught ( only if they were roach, crucians or bream) into our large nets which were designed for large carp as. We had no keep nets. I was going to use a single piece of artificial sweetcorn underneath a small bush close to me on my left. Within seconds I was into my first little roach which started the competition.
We kept getting a lot of nice bream, roach crucians and carp including a nice ghost carp of around 6-7 pounds which unfortunately like a lot of carp in the lake had a deformed mouth. Suddenly at around 4:30 my float shot off and whatever was on the end almost took my rod into the water. I was fighting the fish for about 5 minutes in My light tackle before I managed to get the monster into the spare net. It was a large mirror carp which weighed in at 9 lb 5oz. It was a beauty of a carp and I watched it as it disappeared into the cloudy water of the lake.
Finally the time came to pack up and the weigh in of our small hauls of fish. My reputation of being a course fisherman was sitting on this. I did not want to be beaten by a proper carp angler at my own game. We weighed Toms haul first which had about 9 bream, 2 roach and 2 crucian carp and the total weight was 10lb 4oz which was a very decent catch in our mind. My turn now.
Had 4 crucian carp and quite a lot of small roach and bream. The scales would decide the winner… 10lb 8oz. Yes, Yes. I won for the first time with only 4 ounces between us. I had won my first ever match and it was down to one piece of artificial corn. I know I will definitely have a pack in my tackle box when I do some proper junior matches in the summer.
Tight Lines
Sam