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Location – Meadow Lake
Hours – 44 Hrs
It’s Syndicate time and with a kind friend offering to collect the kids from school; this saves me a night time set up. The water levels are pretty much as high as I’ve ever seen them – 3ft+, so a high proportion of the swims are either underwater or extremely hard to fish. When I arrived, there wasn’t a soul here. After a quick drive around the lake which ruled out a fair few swims, I was standing in this swim and a nice fish rolled. My choice was made. I hadn’t seen anything on my walkabout around the few fishable spots.
I felt that as I hadn’t been here for some time, I had to get the Deeper out and see if I could locate a couple of good spots away from the normal ones. This swim can be very tricky. I located a perfect gravel spot I had previously not found, which is brilliant as the Carp have hopefully cleaned off the weed/silt and created a feed spot. All I hoped for was that I wasn’t too late and the Carp had moved on. This was in a perfect position as an interception route out of the bay area to my right, it leads into the sanctuary area. The other spot was at some range and was along one of their patrol routes. This spot was silty but you could pick up the odd signs of gravel. I always run the marker rod over the area once I’ve located a spot with the Deeper, this also helps with baiting up and lining up your horizon markers; unless its a flat calm day, unlike today, I had to sit in the bivvy for 15 minutes before continuing to set up, as a very heavy rainstorm pushed over the lake.
I baited up both areas, the range rod was going to be Classic Corn boilies with a matching wafter. The other was Catalyst boilies, pellets soaked in Catalyst syrup with a bag of particle blend with a 12mm PPS pop up. Once all the rain had finished, the temperature started to drop and the pressure was steadily rising, there was sunshine forecast for tomorrow with the prospect of a northerly wind. The part of the lake I was in would be sheltered and hopefully warmer, fingers crossed.
It was just after 3 am when my first take happened, I was happily pumping across the lake what felt like a nice Carp when the hook pulled out, I thought I had got around that problem, perhaps not. That was a real shame as that was on range rod baited with the Classic Corn, it would’ve been nice to catch on my first trip here using it. Well, at least it produced a pickup, which is certainly positive as there is a pretty hard frost on the ground. Onwards and upwards. With the rod back out there and a fresh bait on, the hook was still needle-sharp, just was one of those things I suppose.
My second take happened just after 5 am and after a very careful fight, the fish was safely in the Nsr50, the hook hold was absolutely perfect and going nowhere, same rig just on the right rod this time.
22lb 9oz Common
I was over the moon after the lost fish early on, with that rod back out, it was time to get back in my pit. There was a very heavy frost and I had to break the ice on the water bucket that I use for the fish.
I awoke at just after 9 am to find that heavy fog was over the lake, not surprisingly after that temperature drop overnight -3 apparently. Once the fog had cleared and I could see my horizon markers, I rebaited both rods on their spots and a couple of spombs over each for the day. It was going to be a sunny day but with a fresh northerly wind.
As there had been no action by 13.45, it was time to top up the swim fully for the night. This was in the hope that I will receive more action and after seeing a Carp crash out some way past my baited area, I was pretty confident. A moving carp will be using up energy and therefore must feed to replace what it’s been burning off. Fingers crossed again for tonight, it’s going to be another cold one and the pressure is through the roof, I can only hope.
Just after 3 am, which was more or less the same time as the take yesterday morning, I get a couple of bleeps and no more – don’t you just hate that? You are never 100% sure until it either rips off an hour later that it was a liner or you reel in the next morning and there’s a problem with the rig. Well, I took the decision to leave it, as I was 100% sure I could get the bait back on the spot and there had been no real positive signs it was a take – we shall have to see. I stayed up for a bit and heard a Carp or 3 topping out in the open waters. This boosted my confidence, I was more positive than it was a liner and a take would happen sometime soon. That wasn’t the case and morning soon arrived along with pack uptime. I can’t complain about 1 Carp on the bank in these first proper Winter conditions and the ‘oh so’ sudden changes in the pressure, wind, and temperature since Friday am.
p.s the rig was perfect on rod.
Until next time
Richard
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As it was mental health week, a few weeks ago, I thought I would share how I believe fishing has helped me get through all the years of suffering and into many more.
My depression started, way back when I had no idea what was going on. It is only in the past twenty years when the illness has been brought out into the open and less of a stigma attached to it.
Unfortunately, there is still a vast gap between people who suffer and people who don’t. There is just no real way to explain that one second I can be perfectly ok and the next unbelievably sad and wishing I could burst out crying. Which in a nutshell, is how I have lived my life for decades, there is no trigger that I can spot.
I was prescribed medication a good number of years ago and took them for about a year when things were really bad. But after reading lots about the long time side effect, I discided this was not the way forward for me and I just have to deal with this down moments in time my own way.
What I (and my wife) noticed it never happened when I was fishing. In some ways, I thought was odd, as I generally fish alone and have done for many years. I think we fish better like this; don’t get me wrong, you can see from my blogs over the years I have started to fish more, with other people. I often wondered whether it was due to having fewer things going on. Which can’t really be the case, when you consider how much time I have spent by myself before I took redundancy. Work was so full-on, over 12 hrs a day and my mind was occupied with work 24/7, it still would kick in but a lot less. However, over the past 4 winters, since finishing my shipping days and doing gardening now, the Winter months have become less active for both work and fishing. There is a clear difference between the weeks where I can fish and the weeks I can’t. I have come to realize that fishing is definitely my happy place or it could be just getting out into the countryside and the freedom of it all. For me it’s the best therapy there is and I’m not sure where I would be without fishing. There has been the odd time where I just could not get out of bed, but I found that I just had to go and tell myself, just go for a walk around the lake. Inevitably, I would stay and fish, probably not to the best of my ability, however, I was out there. It also goes without saying that my wife & family have been so understanding and letting me out in the bank all these years.
I have also found that it’s a great satisfaction for seeing my friends catch carp – it must be the emotion of the moment which rubs off on me. I get a great sense of well being.
I do hope this helps people and maybe, it’s worth taking up fishing of some sort. It may just turn out to be the best therapy you can ever get.
Richard
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The water levels are still amazing high.
Fingers crossed for the next 48hrs.
Richard
Your lake maps, sonar scans, photos and notes are automatically saved with date and time and grouped together for each fishing trip and body of water. When you open Deeper Lakebook™, you’ll see your mapped waterbodies marked with symbols that represent their size as well as how much area you’ve mapped.
You no longer have to worry about forgetting the details.
