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When I went back on Thursday, the wind was pushing against the shoreline but not a carp to be seen. I baited up two swims & scattered some in between, hopefully to trail some fish into my two swims. When I got there Friday evening the wind was still blowing onshore, still there were no carp to be seen, however the swim I elected to fish from had areas of gravel which had been cleaned of algae in the very areas I had baited up, a good sign. But aside from that, no other carp activity was evident. I baited up again with several spod loads of maize & scattered some chicken feed in fairly close. I cast out two rods &1 of each bait, relying on the size of the offering to make it stand out & I use simple maple syrup as a palatant, which works normally very well. Through the night there was no action apart from a couple sniffs at dusk. At around 2AM I decided to kip in the car for a few hrs ready for an early start at 5AM. At 5.15 I had a take on the maize, an absolute flyer ,which I knew at once was no great size , however it put up a real good scrap & managed to tangle me up in my other rod, whilst I was attempting to untangle this the line was ripped from my hand & No 2 was making a line for the other side of the lake.1 on each bait. I then had a series of twitches on the chick feed rod, which was repeated when I changed bait to maize. The rigs seemed to make no difference, still I got twitches. Eventually I struck as the line tightened & No. 3 was on it's way to the net, which took an age to unhook because the anal fin snagged the net & the leading spine on this fin would not let go the net, eventually I cut the net. I then kept in on the action fairly constantly bringing another 4 to the net ; loosing 2 more to hook failure. The winning rig was an 1/8 oz lead to a No 6 or 8 hook fished freeline style, I simply waited till the line moved & then nailed it. Bait was wheat & oats on a string on the hair (chicken scratch feed). I could again see the fish on my bait, I kept baiting at about 2-3 cupful every 20- 30 mins. I had up to around 15 fish in front of me at times & I spotted 2 bigger fish which I would certainly have liked to catch, they would have gone about low to mid 20's. Try as I might there was no way I could get a take from either of these fish. I tried braking the shoal up, different baits but whatever I did these fish stayed tight in the shoal & were consistently beaten to the hookbait by the other fish . In the end I had the area feeding really well with abandonement but then the carp coloured the water up & then I could no longer see the fish & it was a lottery. I stuck it out till 3 pm & could stand the heat no longer, the fish also were thinning out so I got out before I was baked alive. Next time I will have to take extra ice with me !
My problem on this venue is wading through the small stuff, in 1990 it was estimated that 70,000 carp come into this harbour in the spring, there are big fish but the average size is quite low nowadays, these fish dont know about fishermen. These fish are wild fish, they only know about survival on natural food, but they can be coaxed onto corn & other grains, boilies are very hard work & the catfish take them. One day I will get a 40 from this place but apparently........... not yet!
Steve in Kitchener, On, Canada
AKA Carpsava. |
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