I wrote this ages ago...
This is a good, long and thought provoking read which hopefully will help you tactically if you ever want to fish for wild or unfished for carp on big waters.
I wanted to target a single fish of 42lb but it was a funny old business because this fish had been unfished for for many years and only recently caught. The lake has also just been stocked with pasties. The question was, “Where would the 42lber be?” I was wondering would it shoal up with the pasties or would the fish venture onto the features of the lake in search of food
I had been doing my research on the lake a few weeks before I started my session like all good carpers should. I had seen 1 swim dominated by spods and marker float for around about 4 weeks. All the anglers were fishing to a sunken island and they were choosing the shallower end of the lake. I though about my swim choice carefully and decided against fishing the top shallow end of the lake as I believed it to have been pressured by people spodding buckets of pellets in.
Think of this from the carps point of view.... You have been sitting in a lake for approx 20 years and you have been eating swan muscles, bloodworm, worm, slug and any other creature that lurks below, suddenly 4 kilos of hard brown stink are trusted in front of you. logically the fish isn't going to confidently feed on these and recognise them as a regular food source. Obviously over time the fish will start to feed confidently on pellet but at the early stages of the fish’s awakening to man made baits I thought it best to go for the more natural bait approach. After the first night of using pellet in P.V.A bags with tiger nut and tiger nut boillies if was even clearer that unnatural baits were not the way forward. I recognised this but I had no alternative natural bait to fish with on the ledgers so my alternative approach was to fish for curiosity takes with a strawberry ice-cream fluro pop-up boillie over washed out red and orange crushed boillie… It worked well and I had a 12.12lb wildy
I decided to marker float a little and upon doing so I came across a lot of carp rising in the shallow margins of the lake... I went to my rod bag and dusted of the float rod and Chose to use hemp because it's more natural and are often mistaken by carp to be small water snails. Almost instantly after baiting a margin swim I had the float lift and sail away on a small piece of bread flake, the culprit was a pastie but at least I had located the fish and had one on the bank. A pastiefest started and I had roughly 15 of the stock fish up to 6lb and my friend Mike joined in the fun and managed a handsome wild double on the float.
We moved swim to where the fish were showing and managed a few pasties in the night. Nothing special. It was a early rise and I started looking for a feature I had found previously… It was either a very steep drop, a big bed of weed or a deep silty patch… whatever it was the marker wouldn’t rise when I was onto of it and it was very hard to drag my lead through or over it. I grouped my rods around the spot and within a hour a fish we called Arthur (halfa tail) graced the net
Throughout the day the fish refused to show themselves in order for me to locate them, but out the corner of my eye in the windswept corner I saw a large carp poke his head out the water. Obviously I started fishing into the corner with a float. My friend Mike started fishing my swim so I moved up 30 yards to cover more ground and to establish where the carp were shoaling. Mike had the first fish which went 13lb and then a second of 12lb so I started fishing the same swim…. The float dipped slowly and disappeared… “This is a nice fish, OHH MY GOD… It‘s a Chub.” The first thing that ran through my head was this is a monster. I honestly thought it was 7lb plus and I know if it was in a river it would have gone that without a shadow of a doubt. Plonked it on the scaled…. 5lb I was shocked to say the least! It was still a specimen Chub so it’s not all bad
I followed this with a few more carp stalked out like usual (a few good doubles) and I spotted the 42lber which swam straight under my floating crust… surface baits…. Not a chance!
Tight lines CRAFTY
(I caught that 42 after fishing the weekends for 6 weeks... hasn't come out since RESULT!)
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