An aimless wander around the lake with the sole purpose of escaping the remains of Christmas turned into a 2 hour fish spotting session since the water was unusually clear and without a breath of wind. During the course of this walk I was drawn to the water inlets at the north eastern end of the lake. I could clearly see that water was flowing into the lake despite little rain in the preceeding days, this got me thinking that maybe this water is warmer, or more oxygenated…it just screams fish!

So, with this in mind (and some advice from the members of Carp-forums) i set out yesterday morning with high hopes. The clear skies and sunshine of the previous day were not repeated, instead replaced with light, high cloud, but the temperature was warm and I felt that this might trigger the fish into a short feeding session. I had prepared a particle mix the night before consisting of sweetcorn, hemp and tiger nuts all stewed in their gooey cooking juices. My thinking behind this was that it would hang in the water and be carried on the flow into the lake sending out food signals to a much wider area. I had been feeding boillies up to this point, but opted for something with a lower food value for the session itself.

One rod was fished tight into the inflow and baited with 3 grains of fake corn, popped up about half an inch. The idea being to create a very visual bait that would waft in the flow (yet remained firmly nailed down with a Solar ‘Depth Charge’). I was anticipating immediate action, but none was forthcoming.

In the meantime i busied myself with a marker rod trying to find something of interest to place my second rod on. To date all my plumbing sessions have yeilded nothing in the way of features in open water. With this in mind i was astonished to find a large bar in front of me, where the water went from 4.5ft to 2ft and back to 3.5ft within the space of a few yards. Given the high pressure, and my success in shallow water the previous week, i opted to fish a rod directly on top of the bar with a slacklined running rig. This was baited with a tiger nut boillie, stringer and 10 freebies loosely scattered either side of the bar.

Despite my high confidence it was a quiet day and night, with nothing other than a large crash near the drain to show for my endeavours. So it was after some deliberation that I decided to ignore the persistent rain that had swept in overnight and recast to the same spots.

My confidence had ebbed away overnight, and i was unsure what effect the rain would have on my chances by the drain. Therefore, i was stunned when within 10 minutes of the rod hitting the water, it ripped off at high speed, and after a frantic little scrap i slipped the net under a bright gold Common Carp of about 4lbs!

A slightly unusual looking fish, that had clearly suffered some damage during it’s infancy, it neverthless brought cheer to a grey and miserable morning - another result

Stumble it!