I wasn’t initially sure I’d make it out this week. With a house full of sick people, I was fairly convinced it was only a matter of time before I started feeling the tell-tale signs of a sore throat myself. Thankfully, I’m still feeling good.

Looking at the forecast, Monday night was clearly going to be a washout, so my thoughts turned to which lake would give me the best chance of a bite. Meadow Lake wasn’t on the list. The club lake, however, was an option. I did have a few concerns: a couple of trees had recently come down, closing most of the west bank, and I wasn’t sure whether the lake would be spilling over at the dam end, potentially making access to certain swims impossible. The saving grace is that the lake sits on high ground, so it generally runs out rather than floods in.

I decided to load the car and take a drive out there, which in itself could have been an impossible mission—we’d soon find out. There was only one tricky stretch of road on the journey. When I arrived, the lake was only an inch or two away from flooding a few swims. A couple were unfishable from a pitching-up point of view, but the closed swims actually worked in my favour, giving me a great opportunity to spread my rods out more than normal, knowing no one else would be dropping in either side of me.

I have a theory about spombing on this water. Around 90% of the carp anglers use bait boats, and with the lake being so shallow, I feel the carp have become accustomed to them and shy away from spombing. With that in mind, I use what I call a “chuck-and-dump” bait boat. It simply flips the bait out of the back—extremely simple and very effective. I tend to use it only at the start of a session to get the freebies out, this would be a mixture of hemp, buckwheat, solubles and a few boillies, then switch to flicking out PVA bags until I feel it’s time to top the swim up again.

The next two days were forecast to be warm and sunny—perfect conditions to be out and a decent chance of a carp or two. The pressure was steady, rising to around 1003mb by Sunday. There was a bit more wind forecast for Thursday, but I reckoned that would likely be the day I headed home.

With three spots picked out and some bait dumped on each, I started with three different hookbaits until a clear favourite emerged.

At 14:53, the right-hand rod gave a couple of bleeps, then the bobbin lifted before pulling right up to the top. I was on the rod straight away, pulling into my first bite of the session. The carp headed away from the island and into open water, which was great news—until I realised it could just as easily swing round the corner into the bay and potentially cut me off on the overhanging trees positioned either side of the swim. I would have preferred to fish the swim to my right, but overall, this one gave me far more options.

I had to slacken the line to avoid the underwater feature, which was knocking a bit. Giving the carp some line allowed it to swim clear without getting caught up, and that decision paid off. The fish moved back into open water, then came round into the front of the swim, allowing me to play it out under the rod tip. I genuinely couldn’t believe how quickly I’d slipped the net under my first carp of the session.

A 21lb 3oz common.

I was absolutely buzzing with that result. The rod was soon back out, and I settled into enjoying the sunshine before a spell of light rain, followed by some strong winds pushing through around tea time.

The night was deadly silent. As the skies cleared, the moon came up, and the temperature dropped far more than I’d anticipated, pushing the fish back into hiding once again. I was hopeful of a bite before midnight, but it wasn’t to be.

Unfortunately, the following night looked much the same. This time, there wasn’t even the rain. I could only hope the lack of wet stuff might give me another chance.

Get Walloped

I was expecting a frost, but it never arrived—nor did a single bleep. I’m starting to feel extremely lucky to have caught anything this trip at all. Hopefully, with February approaching and the daylight hours clearly stretching out, things will begin to pick up and make it worth heading back to the syndicate again.

We’re due a fair bit more rain over the next four days, which won’t help matters. The Hampshire Avon is already completely across the valley and pretty much unfishable. There’s nothing especially heavy forecast—just that constant misty drizzle that seems to do more harm than good.

We’ll see where I end up next time.