I’m back on the school lake today for a few hours gardening and the pads have completely gone. We are now getting frosty mornings, Winter has set in. It’s time to be a bit more mobile in my approach and may start using the Deeper to find their secret hideaway.
After seeing absolutely no signs of Carp, I’ve set up in peg 10, it has been the most productive area and I can see a large part of the lake. Hopefully, I will spot something to move on to, the opposite bank does get the morning sunshine.
By 2pm there had been no signs of Carp and I’d not moved swim, there had been a couple of other anglers walking around and setting up. They had also not seen a thing. I had recast and changed over to different color pop-ups, but still no action. My next trip, I will be changing one rod over to Catalyst wafter, I had had a couple of single bleeps and that was that.
Winter has certainly arrived and it’s going to be hard work at times.
I am down on the Syndicate lake this weekend for two nights. I was unable to get in the same swim as last weekend – which would have been nice, after bagging a couple of Carp. I looked at another option nearby, but with a strong easterly wind forecast that just didn’t float my boat. It would be pushing hard on to that bank.
I arrived after dark, so there was no real rush to get set up. After two laps around the lake and a fair bit of standing listening to absolute silence, I finally settled on a swim that I felt would produce a fish or two.
Now to get some bait and rods out. As I’ve fished this swim many times, it does help things a bit and knew exactly where I was heading. I clipped on a 3oz distance lead from Touchdown leads and counted out the number of wraps on my marker poles. I flicked the rod out and sure enough, there was a nice tap tap of gravel from the right-hand rod. The other was on a lovely smooth patch of silt, just of the gravel. Both were very close to each other. I find this helps when spombing at night, you’re only really baiting up one area. With a PPS & Pineapple pop up on, the rods where done. You have to be confident with your casting and baiting up when setting up in the dark. If it’s always perfect in the daylight, why would it not be at night? As we have light pollution, this does help with those horizon markers!
The night drifted by with a fresh East wind picking up through the night and died down by first light. The sun is due to make an appearance then its going to turn into a grey Winter’s day, just in time for the 1st December tomorrow. May catch a Winter carp tonight?! The wind is still due to blowing from the E then swing NE later on with the pressure up to 1018 from 985 two days ago, I’m sure this will affect the Carp. These big girls have to feed and its more likely to be today/tonight as the pressure will have settled.
Ian popped down for a few hours Pike fishing today and we spent it chatting away. His time was soon up and he headed home. Unfortunately, the Pike rods were also silent. I rebaited the rods and settled down for an evening of Netflix. The wind was now from the N/E and it was pretty fresh out there.
With a liner in the night around 10 pm, I was feeling pretty confident. However, it’s now afternoon on Sunday and with not a carpy sight – it’s looking like a blank. The sun has been up and along the treeline since 10 ish and I was hoping for a take. When they ventured out of the sanctuary it’s very sheltered from the sunshine and that spot is also on the back of the wind.
I was packed up by just after noon time and drove around that lake. I stopped in one of the days swims that looked incredibly Carpy, so I parked up and set up one rod for a couple of hours, but there was no joy in the end.
Did you know.. We keep all our key ingredients including our prime fishmeal’s, for example like Tuna Meal and LT94, which go in The Smokey Jack Boilie, in sealed airtight UN containers, to keep them fresh before use. Stored for reference, with ABP numbers ready for any APHA inspection we may face… Why do we do this ? because we believe that spending that little bit more on how we store our products means you get it delivered in optimum condition and also has added benefits of keeping things like flying insects out of the ingredients in the summer, as well as keeping dust in the environment to a minimum for our staff.
This is a little snapshot of some storage space, holding 9-10 tons of about 60 tons, we are holding in the warehouse this morning.
