Fishing an overgrown lily pond?

Hey, I've never fished for carp before and on a recent walk I discovered the pond in the picture below. Apologies now for the picture quality, it was snapped on my phone.

Anyway, as far as I can tell its pretty much unfished or rarely fished - its crowded with trees (no bits of rigging hanging from the trees either) pretty difficult to get to with no signs of any kind of path into it, but I definatly saw a rise from a fish or two.

So the thought of fishing an unfished pond is pretty appealing but I have no idea where to start with that amount of lillies, so I was hoping for some advice on rigging or improving the area from you guys.

Oh, just to fill you in I have a couple of shortish float rods and an 11ft ledger rod, but no poles and I don't really want to shell out on buying one (although I figure that would be the best way)

I was thinking about possibly taking up a longarm with a scythe attachment and clearing a channel about two feet wide and 15 odd foot long, then just fishing the channel, thoughts?

Alternatively theres a fallen tree on the other side of the little promontory I was standing on, water looked to be about 3ft deep at the deepest but it was clear of lillies, would this be another good area to try?

Thanks in advance!

I'd definitely try to clear an area using a rake. Assuming you are carp fishing, even if the fish aren't huge, you'll still need kit capable of keeping the fish from getting into the weed, and when they do get into weed, getting them out again.

If it were me I'd bait up some areas and watch and see exactly what fish are present.

I was thinking about dropping some bread crust on the surface and seeing if theres any activity but I really don't know what bait to use, every time I look at carp bait at the tackle shop I get slightly overawed by the sheer amount of different boilies, dips, liquids, pastes and everything else that I don't have a clue where to begin!

The only remotely carpish bait I have is a small tub of 10mm rosehip isotonic pop up boilies by mistral baits - I was trying them out chopped in half combined with some maggots for tench, should I scatter a few on the surface and see what happens? Or should I pick up something different?

if it hasn't really been fished then corn and bread is all you'll need - you might actually find it hard to get fish onto boilies.

Cheers i'm back up that way in the next couple of days so i'll give it a go and let you know the results if your interested, I'll take my compact up and see if I can't get a better photo or two as well.

Looks to me like these are miniature water lilies, some idiot has put them in from their garden pond because they sure as hell aren't native.

It would be a lot of work, but if the pond isn't that deep you could get one of those double sided scythes that screw on the end of a landing net handle. Use a telescopic handle NOT a take-apart.

If you can get in the water with chest waders all the better, but be absolutely sure of your footing and that there are NO sudden drop-offs. Have a mate with you and tie some rope around your chest.

Alternative is to spray them with Round-up, a Glyphosate based weedkiller. Don't worry if you kill them all off, they aren't worth it and shouldn't be there.


Also find out who owns it before you do anythign at all but it looks like it will be worth it though.

there is a lake near me doesn't get fished much some nice carp in there. can't buy a bite on sweetcorn. worm, maggots and floating crust only thing they will take.

I run a landscape gardening business so I have a fair few tools for dealing with a large variety of problem plants, but I don't really want to break out some of the bigger gear because a: its in a public park and b: I really don't want to beat a trail that all the local kids will see and then reap the benefits of my hard work!

I think I'll try clearing out some of the scrub in front of the fallen tree and a small area of lillies and chuck in a bit of bread, see what happens, if the signs are good then I have all day sunday and monday to enjoy fishing whilst the better half is off at a conference. Anyhow I shall report back and let you all know if I have any luck.

i would just decide the best place to fish it from, based purely on access and manoeuvrability, the from there, clear a big semi-circle, then feed a couple of spots around its edge. pop back the next day to fish it, with the same bait you put in the first day, and see what happens.
nothing like maggots to find out whats in the water, but if you have reason to believe its got carp in it, meat, prawns, frankfurter, they'll get a bite almost anywhere, as will worms and bread, and quite often, sweetcorn.
make the semicircle a decent size, and you wont have to worry so much about hit-n-hold fishing.

If I owned the lake I wouldnt like some one clearing out my lillies

i would ask if your allowed to rake it if its a park lake there may be no fishing.

feed loads of pellet and partiblend in, the carp *might* clear the area for you. the worst of the roots will remain though.

Well I stopped off this afternoon and cleared a bit of undergrowth to open up a small fishing area, threw in some bread and sat back and waited, it was munched within a few minutes, looked like some small common carps - about 3 - 4lbs based on piccys of the same size fish.

So i'm heading back up on Saturday with the missus to make a day of it, I have a screw on longarm attachment, weed cutter and rake that'll fit on to my landing pole so i'll clear a small swim and see if i can catch anything.

The park has another lake you can fish in and the only signs up say fishing is allowed with a permit from the cafe so I think i can logically assume that I can fish at this little pond too. Can anyone point me at a good (easy!) rig for surface fishing with bread flake?

Cheers.

if your clearing only a small area, freeline it.
floating line and a hook, how much simpler can you get?

could be tremendous fun.

Well the fishing went fairly well, no carp but we pulled out about a dozen roach between us in a 3 hour session, the biggest at about 10oz's. The missus loved it, they're probably the biggest fish shes managed to catch yet.

Tried fishing with breadflake for a while, had some nibbles but some ducks moved in fairly quickly thinking we were feeding them, so switched to corn on a waggler, hence the roach.

Still it was a good day out and best of all, no bloody dogs jumping into the lake or stealing the bait as their mildly retarded owners watch on with self indulgent smiles