Fishing at hampstead heath.

I thought i'd try for carp at hampstead in the next week or so and I was hoping some of you would have a quick look at what im thinking of fishing and give me any pointers in case im missing something.

Planning on fishing the boating pond (the top pond) and had a quick look today on the way back from work, the water was quite opaque so figured smelly baits rather than brightly coloured baits. Chatted to a few anglers who were fishing squid flavoured boillies but they were'nt having much luck, although apparently theres quite a number of crayfish in the water.

So I figured one line using pva bags with a ready mixed strawberry flavour and a strawberry floater used as a pop-up (figure if I keep the bait a few inches above the ground the crayfish might leave it alone) on a bolt rig through a bite alarm.

The other line I figured Id use pva bags with a crayfish and crab ground bait and some red shellfish boilies on a lift method float (only have the one bite alarm so hence the lift method) figuring something should be munching on all the crayfish.

I know theres a couple of thirty pounders in that lake (one of the guys I chatted to produced pictures of two he had caught, he was after the third 30 today) as well as a fair amount of smaller ghost carp the lakes recently been stocked with, but there arent any real distingushing features, the edges slope down until about 10 foot out then the bottom levels off for the whole run, no over hanging trees and theres only a few reed patches in places, so I figured i'd fish near those.

So, sounds good? Or am I missing out on something vital?

Cheers

are you talking about the model boating lake ?

So, sounds good? Or am I missing out on something vital?

Cheers [/QUOTE]
Yes, just watch your bottom Krain.
Bet Cakey puts, you would know.

you would know

Why would he

Cakey said:

are you talking about the model boating lake ?

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I think its the model boating lake, its the one just north/above the mens swimming pond.

Morespiders said:

Yes, just watch your bottom Krain.

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I heard george michael is in the US, so I should be fine

More importantly, how often should i send out a new pva bag considering the crayfish? I was thinking of scattering a few fishmeal pellets out every so often to give the crays something to nibble on, hopefully letting the carp concentrate on the strawberry stuff, or are the conflicting flavours/scents likely to put em off?

use a snow man rig of crayfish boilies this looks like a crayfish tail wafting around in the water and can be deadly in the summer I would not put out loose feed for fear of bringing more crays into the swim

Be very careful in Hamstead ............

yeah Wol and Ed use it.......................

...quite often actually!

they used to do a turn in Jack Straws

yeah ...........whatever !

are you whatevering me ?

I thought they'd be hanging out in the King William IV

Where's that?

Its a fairly discreet (but apparently well known) gay bar in hampstead, stopped in with a friend for lunch one day and got the shock of my life when the surprisingly attractive woman at the bar asked me what I wanted in a very deep baritone I think drag queens should come with a warning label, surely its a breach of the trade description act?

Well, I tried fishing at hampstead, and got a new PB - a 3oz crayfish still, first time i've hooked any kind of shellfish, so its a picture for the books. Oh, and we caught a couple of tiny roach, but that was all on the float lines, not a single beep on the leger, I think I need more practise legering!

did you see any signs of them ,bubbles or vortexs etc ?

Yep, they surfaced a couple of times and another guy on the lake managed to land a 20+lber with some scopex squid flavour boilies whilst we were there but the crayfish were a bigger problem than i expected - had a fair few of them strip the bait from the floats and decide to let go only after we pulled them out of the water.

Plus the bottom was pretty silty which I think probably meant the wrong rig for legering - the silt stops any kind of bolt rig from working properly right? Next time i'm heading up on my own, I'll spend a while doing a proper bit of feature finding and see if i cant start to map out the lake properly rather than spending most of my time helping my bro and my partner set up their rods.