Gold Valley visit

Twiddler · #1 04-30-2007, 03:17 PM

Last Sunday I arranged to meet up with Neil, another angler friend of mine to fish the syndicate lake at Gold Valley, as I have fished GV before last winter and wanted to give it another try in spring time.

I arrived at the lakes around 7.30am and was greeted by Neil who arrived 30 mins before me to pick some good swims (Neil use to work there, so he knows the lake of the back of his hand).

Neil landing one of his 20 carp

I only took very simple and light gear, as the carp in the lake only ranged between 4-12lb, other fish in the lake were roach, perch and some tench I think.

One of many caught that day

and another

I set up my first rod with a baitrunner, a simple running ledger with a hair rig and a in-house 12mm pellet (only allowed to fish in-house pellets, as they contain a small doses of anti biotic) and a small mesh bag with some in-house feeder pellets.

On my feeder rod I had a method feeder and my small river reel (I changed my mind as I was going to do some float fishing for roach), with the clutch set really light, just in case I would get a big bite lol (I should be so lucky) sweetcorn as hook bait.

I finally got to sit down, to light up a cigarette when suddenly I saw one of my rod shooting off into the water and before I could even think I went straight after it, managed to grab it but lost the fish on the end, darn and I was hoping to at least have a double on the end, after getting soaked up to my knees.

Wow what a great start I thought and why didn't by baitrunner kick in??? After inspecting the reel I've noticed that I must have accidentally tighten the baitrunner up during set up (defo a blonde day).
After sorting the reel out I re-casted and even before I had the chance to put the rod down, my other one nearly went flying (my fault for being too lazy to carry a rod pot) the bank sticks couldn't hold the force.

Geeez what do they feed this carp was my first thought...steroids???

The morning carried on like this, one bite after the other.....I gave up fishing 2 rods in the end, was far to hectic, so I took the feeder rod off, set my float rod up with a waggler single red maggot as bait and started a little roach fishing.

I started to bait a swim up with bronze and red maggots about one and a half rod length out and the roach soon obliged to my bribery, biggest one caught was 12 oz.

The carp still running crazy and didn't even give me the time to have a smoke or a drink in peace....no consideration in the carp family I can tell you.

Well although being a hectic day, I managed to bank 11 carp between 5-8lb, lost around 5, 2 cage feeders, one led, loads of hooks but hey....at least I got a swim out of it lol.

So far I have never seen such firstly carp before, great fighter, not the biggest carp but they do give you a run and fight for your money...great fun.