I’m finally on my new syndicate (doing my first trip). It was before Christmas that I last did a night and it feels like a lifetime ago and quite strange, to say the least.

I arrived just after 7am for the draw and had a trip around the lake checking out the swims as we went around.

I was number 6 or 7 out of the hat, this was perfect, as I’m the newbie and I prefer to keep myself to myself for a few months. This gives me time to formalise myself with the water, the swims and slowly get plugged into the lake routine.

I picked one of the swims that I quite liked the look of, not necessarily in the best area, but close enough that I felt I was in with a chance of a bite. For the past 3 day’s, there’d been a strong SW wind blowing which was gale force at times, it was an incredibly cold wind, overcast and grey. I didn’t feel that end of the lake was that favourable. I quite fancied the shallower end, but I was beaten to it by 3 others and didn’t fancy being the fourth man down that end, too many rods etc, we can use 3 here.

Hooper’s

After 3 hours of hard graft – there was a long list of Noddy nightmares (as my friends at Carp Cogs would say), it was so bad at one point, I just started laughing, I’m sure I will let slip what happened at some point, but not just yet, way too embarrassing at the moment and for my first trip on new water!

Moving on.

This lake is very weedy and quite hard to find a clear spot, you can go out in a boat and bait up/drop your baits. I didn’t feel it was right to do this on the first morning, with so many anglers doing the first night for some months. So, with the aid of my Deeper and the marker rod, I finally cracked 3 spots and got the bait out, with a nice load of freebies. One thing I will say is that the Pike do like a pink boilie. As you guessed it, I hooked one on the retrieve, which managed to pick up the Deeper, marker rod lines and cut through the marker braid. Which by some miracle I retrieved and spliced it together (one of my nightmares).

I was planning on using 3 different colours pop-ups and flavours, just to see if there’s a preference until I get some idea of what works best here. The wildlife could be an issue, but with the sheer volume of weed stacked with naturals, I may be lucky.

The night was uneventful, except the fog and a cold easterly blowing in through the door. I didn’t hear or see anything at first light in front of me, but from what I’ve been told, there’s a good chance of a bite up until noontime. I’m going to sit still till then.

I spent a bit of time weighing up my opinions and decided that staying put, despite an early start for work on Wednesday morning, was better than going home today.

I found the perfect spots and baited up using the boat. This was so much less aggro than spombing for 30 minutes over each spot. You can even put your hook baits out as well, which I’ve not done in this instance. As I feel it helps to zone into the range you’re fishing and helps at night to recast after catching a carp.

With this swim, you need to get into the water to avoid the overhanging tree.

I’ve moved my margin rod to the same area as the middle rod and will keep my fingers crossed for today.

Morning soon arrived, it was time to get the kit down and head off to work. It’s been an enjoyable two night’s on the syndicate and I meet some nice people. I’m certainly looking forward to getting to grips with the place over the coming months.

Until next time

Stay safe

Richard