Right, where do I begin? I guess I could apologise for my absence of fish related blogs, but we’ll put that behind us.
What matters is that recently I have been fishing an extremely local, private, water – a few friends might know where I’m talking about. Anyway, after recently buying some new bait, I thought I might as well try it out on a rather productive and beautiful water. As I woke up, several hours past my alarm was meant to wake me, I hopped out of bed to lazily drag my gear downstairs feeling rather put off as I had missed the early morning fishing spell.
However, I was in luck, when I reached the lake and trickled in a small handful of 10mm halibut pellets, two or three good orfe and possibly a carp, drifted over the baited area. It was obvious that it rarely gets fished so when bait does go in, they’ll instantly want a piece of it. The rigs were simple; Rod 1 would have a normal 12x16mm halibut hook bait on a blow-back rig, and Rod 2 would have a squid and octopus pop-up. To that, each rig would have a small, tight parcel of pellet and fishy ground bait in a PVA mesh bag nicked onto the hook.
Both rods were only an under-arm chuck away to some sunken bushes - a classic feature to keep your eyes on any water – to that, another small handful of pellet would be accurately put in.
Only after five minutes of chucking out both rods, it started to heavily rain. Although this being a minor inconvenience, I could have done without it. However, after another minute or so of being drenched the left-hand rod received a peculiar bite. The bobbin lifted half way and stayed there for a good few seconds, it then went slack, and then slacker than before.
The fish was giving me a classic drop back bite from the heavily snaggy swim.
I picked up the rod, wound in to the fish and set the hook, a rather dogged fight eventually landed me a pristine and fin perfect golden orfe weighing in at about 3Lb.
After regaining my warmth that had been quickly lost through my hands while releasing the fish, I cast the rod out again with another pre-made PVA mesh bag – just hooked lightly in the side – and a slightly heavier amount of pellets. The thinking behind this is that the orfe were getting to the bait faster than the big carp that swim in that lake. However, after a good half an hour – which was along time to go without a bite in this lake – the bobbin on the pellet rig indicated another weird bite, picking up the rod hard, I must have caught the fish unaware because shortly after feeling the weight of the fish, it made a very strong lunge towards a sunken snag in the middle of the lake. Keeping the rod low and steady, turned the fish. Unfortunately for me, it then swam at me and only cranking the reel hard caught up with this clever fish. After four, or even five minutes, we had the first glimpse of the fish. It was a fantastic and flawless, golden koi carp. I had seen this fish before, and nicknaming it ‘goldilocks’ seemed very appropriate for the colour of this fish. Unfortunately, we didn’t get much of a chance to admire it, because it was ready for another powerful run. This happened for several more minutes before it eventually gave up and came in like a wet cloth!
Slipping the net under the fish, my brother and I just looked at it and grinned. We had caught goldilocks. Result. The magnificent fish weighed in at 13 Lb and 5 Oz. Not a monster for this lake but it was a rather spectacular fish to catch.
There is one thing I can be sure to tell you, I am definitely going to be fishing that lake more often now. Esspecially as we have seen much, much bigger carp swimming in that water. ‘Till next time, I wish you happy fishing and good luck. The CMM.
