Next thing I knew of was Ben shouting up the stairs that, "some guy calling himself Danny," was at the door. AaaaH! I'd managed to get into bed upside down and fully clothed - minus boots, and now managed to get out again in fantastic haste, and had all my gear in the back of Danny's motor in what seemed just a minute or two, but it could have been ten, I was so raddled...
We arrived at 'Capability' Brown's Compton Verney estate lake and the whole water was shrouded in thick white mist. Perfection. It looked superb, even through the lens of my still half drunken perception. I could not face tackling up afresh so I just took two rods from the quiver already set up for carp float fishing and rudd respectively, put a fat lobworm on the carp rig and red maggots on the rudd rig, reset the depths to suit the lake, cast out and sat back to try to adjust slowly, slowly, ever so sloooowly, to the rising sun...
At some point I checked for the camera so that I could get off my skinny arse and take some pictures, but found to my horror that I'd left it either at home that morning or at the dinner party house I'd been too the previous night. Crap. I just hate being without my camera...
Thankfully Danny took some pics on his and when I photographed his first and unfortunately our last tench I think I even took some too, if I remember correctly? Either way all the pics you see here are credited to Danny, just in case. They're lovely aren't they? Mind you, at Compton Verney you could point the camera randomly at any part of it and it would still some out lovely. It's just lovely; all over.
I like fishing lobworms because when you get a bite on this bait there's a very high chance that the fish is going to be a big one. My first bite to worm produced a pound perch that did more to shake me out of my stupor than even Danny's donated tea! I really imagined that the next would be a monster, but unfortunately the next bite saw me strike thin air. Small perch...
Sure enough, bite after bite resulted in nothing until one finally connected to a perch no longer than the worm itself. So much for the prospect of a mahussive estate lake sergeant, but still I hoped for tench. Unfortunately by noon it was plain that I wasn't going to get what I came for, however in the interim I enjoyed myself catching roach, bream and hybrids. Then I changed swims and encountered some cruising carp enjoying the high hot sun and when I threw some dog biscuits into the only tiny patch of lilies in the bay, they responded by duly slurping them down.
We took a pub lunch break soon after this, and while I was eating sarnie and gratefully slurping hair of the dog, I decided to catch one...
Tactical discussions
I had a floater controller somewhere in the depths of my bag so I dug it out, rigged it up and put a biscuit in the middle of the lilies. Danny thought I might have trouble in the lilies if I hooked one and I wasn't too sure myself, but when a double figure mirror entered the swim on the trail of scent, turned and gulped down the bait, I struck into a force that ploughed straight through the bed and out the other side as if it wasn't even there and only stopped after ripping fifty yards off the firm set clutch. It then turned and raced back to the peg, me winding frantically to keep up, where Danny bagged it neatly, first go.
Unfortunately the fish was a bit scabby on the flanks and had suffered that all too commonly seen (five out of my last ten carp captures) and increasingly difficult to excuse problem of modern angling, braid - made mouth damage to large carp, damage that once started off can only get progressively worse with every repeat capture. When I started serious carp angling in the late seventies and into the early eighties, long before braid and bolt rigs came into common usage, mouth damage to carp was unheard of. Carp angling really needs to put its house in order when even hard to bank estate lake carp are suffering.
I have to say that in this perfect place that gash in the side of the carps mouth was the ugliest thing I saw all day long.
I've seen way too many carp like this also, but I reckon oft repeated captures are way more to blame than the hooklength braid on the end bit. When bolt rigging the fish are almost always hooked near the front of the mouth, so there’s not so much chance for the braid to start sawing, but being caught once a month or more will do it whatever the line. Being yanked repeatedly out on heavy t/c tip action rods doesn’t help either…
ReplyDelete(Speaking as one who never hair rigs, bolts or methods...)