Once back home after my first ever fishing trip to France (detailed HERE in last month’s piece) I decided that I’d try and pick up my fishing where I’d left it before going overseas and planned to head back over to Swan Lake on the Bluebell Complex as often as I could and try and get one of the big carp.
When I’ve fished Swan in the past I’ve tended to target the catfish rather than the carp but, despite doing well with the carp on other lakes on the complex, I’d never had one of the larger carp from this particular lake and I’d suddenly got the urge to catch one.
I managed to fit in three sessions on Swan during July and managed to catch a couple of doubles and a long, lean 21lb plus common and a couple of bonus commons with a quick bit of opportunist stalking on Sandmartin Lake, which is a slightly smaller pit right next-door. The largest of the Sandmartin fish weighed 23lb 8oz.
The carp fishing on Swan was quite challenging as the weed was growing at quite a rate, with much of the bottom covered with weed growing to varying heights and a fair bit of the stuff reaching right up to the surface. This meant finding suitable spots to present a bait was hard work. The extensive weed growth was obviously causing some anglers problems and it was clear that some tackle was being left in the lake after line breakages etc. One night I lost a fish after a fast run on a choddie presented pop-up found me connected to a fish that was obviously pulling my main line against another load of line that had been left out in the swim, as I could feel that awful tell-tale, uneven, rubbing sensation being transmitted back down to the rod. As things pulled tight my main line parted somewhere down towards my end-tackle as it was sliced through by the other line and my fish was gone.
Fortunately, I was able to retrieve the lost line that had been left in the swim the following day after I managed to tangle up with it again on my marker rod, but this time managing to gradually inch what turned out to be about 50 yards of heavy main line and a massive lump of weed back to the bank.
The rules allowed me to fish with up to four rods but on this occasion, because of the weed, I limited myself to carp fishing with just two, both rigged up with reliable 15lb main line. However, following that particular incident I decided to upgrade even further and replaced one of the spools with a spare spool of 18lb and the other with a spool of 18lb line off a catfish rod that I had stashed in the car. In weedy lakes I feel that the fish are less likely to be spooked by a thicker mainline and I figure that the extra insurance in favor of bringing any hooked fish to the landing net far outweigh the possible extra scare factor of the thicker main line might cause, especially if I can get away with not fishing the main line too tight.
Swan isn’t the easiest of lakes, so I was reasonably happy about the number of runs I was managing. However I was a little disappointed that the larger carp had so far eluded me, but this just added to my determination. I was confident that I wasn’t actually doing anything wrong, but had simply been unlucky in the size of fish that I’d caught.
In July the main fishing event of the month for me was a Nash Roadshow that was taking place at the Catch 22 fishery near Lyng in Norfolk. I planned to arrive a couple of days early to get some fishing in and to ensure that I would be around to assist in all the setting-up duties.
Catch 22 is best known for the quality of the carp fishing, but the day ticket lake has produced specimen fish of a number of different species and I’d been aware of the big roach potential for many years, but had never had a chance to fish there before.
I arrived early afternoon on the Thursday, which gave me plenty of time to say hello to the fishery owner and to have a quick catch up with Jim, a fellow Nash consultant, who had driven a large van full of gear up from Nash HQ and was already set up in a swim that we’d be using for casting demos during the event. I also had time to check out some of the swims that we’d be using for further demos and Q&A’s during the Roadshow and to set myself up in one that I’d fish from during the event itself.
My swim had plenty of depth in front of it, as it quickly dropped away to 12ft only a rod length or so from the margins. Then, at about 45 yards, the bottom slopped up again to a plateau type area with depths between 8 and 9ft. I was able to use two rods and both areas with the depth change appeared to be the features worth investigating for the first 24hrs. I could always alter things later on if different areas of the swim looked more promising.
I’ve not had the opportunity to do any serious stillwater roach fishing for a number of years, so I was very keen to try and put a good roach on the bank during my stay, as Catch 22 has produced a good number of 3lb plus specimens in the past. I’d got a few pints of maggots with me, so decided to start off with a maggot feeder approach around the area of the close in drop-off and experiment with a variety of hook baits over an area spodded with a mix of hemp, corn, pellets, spod cloud and crumbled up boilie based around the plateau shelf area.
Nothing much was happening initially, though I wasn’t too surprised as the days had been very warm with strong, bright sunlight. However as the light began to fade I started to get indications of fish related interest in both spots and eventually I had a skimmer bream on a piece of plastic sweetcorn fished over the spodded area. As the evening progressed I caught skimmers on both rods, then as it became properly dark I started to catch eels on the maggot rod.
I like big eels, but have to confess that I can get quickly fed up with having to deal with small eels and the mess that they tend to make of the end-tackle and anything else that they come into contact with. One of the eels was a decent one weighing 3lb 2oz, but this proved to be the exception and as the night progressed all the other eels on the maggot-baited rod were small ones, mostly about a pound or so. Amongst the skimmers I was catching on the rod over the spodded area I was also catching the odd roach/bream hybrid and these were all good fish, with a handful between 3 and 4lb’ and a slightly better one that weighed 4lb 10oz. The first one had me fooled into thinking that I’d perhaps hooked a big roach and I played it very carefully into the waiting landing net. However the hybrids were pretty obvious hybrids once you could get a proper look at them and once I was aware that they were about I could usually tell that I’d hooked one before it reached the net.
So it turned out to be a busy first night for me at Catch 22, with plenty of fish caught and not much sleep. The bites began to tail off as the morning progressed and it got lighter; the sun bringing with it the return of the heat that we’d experienced each day so far that week. However, there was still one more good fish to come before things got quiet, as a ‘proper’ bream, a couple of ounces over the 9lb mark fell to a bait fished over the spod, which due to the amount of overnight action I’d topped up at dawn.
Most of Friday was spent putting the Roadshow stuff together, but I found time early afternoon to introduce a good helping of bait onto both area of the swim that I’d targeted the previous night. On the Friday evening I was once again ready to fish, after topping up the swim once more with a variety of goodies. I’d made a couple of changes to how I’d fished previously, dispensing with the more delicate hook links, small hooks and maggot hook baits on the close-in rod and replacing them with more substantial gear and larger hook baits to deter the small eels. However I was still using hook baits and tackle that I hoped wouldn’t deter any decent roach if they did turn up in my swim.
It was perhaps just as well that the Friday night didn’t turn out to be as hectic as the previous night, but I still caught plenty of skimmer bream and the bites continued spasmodically into the morning and into the day, so that some of the Roadshow visitors got to see the odd fish coming to the net.
The Roadshow itself appeared to go well. It was never too busy with visitors, which meant that most of the time I was able to have a good chat with the people that came over to ask questions about either the gear, or questions on methods/baits etc. Dave, the owner of Catch 22, also reported back that his on-site tackle shop had done a good amount of trade over the day, so things looked to have been successful all round.
After the Roadshow, there was plenty of packing up to be done, so it was quite late in the day before I was free to do my own thing. I could have chosen to go straight home, but I was too knackered and didn’t fancy the long drive so I chose to spend a further night at the fishery. It wasn’t a difficult decision really, as it was a very nice place to be… and I still wanted to see if I could tempt one of the big roach.
The third night unfortunately didn’t result in a big roach, but I did catch plenty more skimmers and had a good handful of ‘proper’ bream, including a couple of double figure fish, the heaviest weighing in at a very respectable 10lb 15oz. I’d certainly enjoyed my time at Catch 22 and would recommend the fishery to anyone looking for a day ticket fishery in the area that could provide either quality carp fishing, or the chance for specimens of a variety of species.
I didn’t have any further Roadshows to attend the following month, but still fancied seeing if I could wangle out a good carp from Swan Lake during August before I started to think more seriously about my potential autumn targets.
I’ll give you an update on how things progressed next time.
Until then… happy fishing!
