A days Catching at Park Lake

[mithrandir]

As we had had a few hard fishing trips recently, Claudia and I decided to have a catching day.
Saturday's weather was predicted to be the best of the weekend, so we set off at 7-30 for Todber Manor to fish Park Lake.

Park Lake is a canal style match lake, ideal for Claudia to practice her pole work, and for me to get into a bit more float fishing.
Here is my swim



To my right, the island and one stretch of water



and to my left the dead end bit that Claudia decided to fish



When we were setting up it was obvious that the carp were still spawning, luckily this lake is well stocked with a wide variety of fish, so I was quite happy to set up a pair of light feeder rods with bait runner reels and 8 lb line, this would give me the chance to deal with any of the larger carp that might pick up a bait, whilst keeping the gear light enough to play for a variety of fish.

I set my right hand rod up with a small sweetcorn boillie and a pva of mixed boillies and a 14 hook and cast it out near the island.

I then set up the other rod with a loaded waggler float of 4.5 grams , plumbed the depth to be about 4 feet. I did some simple shirt button shotting leaving the last 4 inches of line un shot and a size 18 hook with double red maggots.

This I cast straight infront of me about halfway and loose fed a few maggots to get the swim started.

I very quickly had the first fish of the day, one of Todber's infamous black crucian/brown goldfish/heinz hybrids



These started to come thick and fast and within half an hour I had half a dozen landed.

The boillie rod then decided to burst into life and something picked the bait and dashed straight into the reeds on the islands edge and snagged me up.

Well that is how the day went, I was getting almost a fish a chuck on the float rod, on maggots and on corn, with the strong wind that developed as the day went on I brought the float into 6 feet from the bank and fished it like a whip, just swing out the bait, get a take and strike then lift the rod and bring the fish to hand for unhooking. I did pick up some 3 or 4 lb carp that needed netting at this range too, and they do motor off so the clutch setting was quite light to allow them to run.

I picked up some larger carp on the boillie rod as the day went on, they were not big, the largest I landed was 6 lb, but I did have 4 break my 6 lb hooklink, I think they were just very big tailed and kicked off at such a rate of knots that the line snapped before the clutch could react.

During the day I picked up small perch ( sorry no photos as I was waiting for a decent sized one, but only got tiddlers)
Roach, this was the best at 9oz



Rudd



some bream





some common carp



A common/ crucian hybrid I think, see what I mean about big tails



Some nice crucians



This particularly interesting carp, lovely colours and I think it might have a bit of Ghost in it, but the photo does not do justice to the blue in its back



And some lovely Golden Tench



The total catch for the day was well in excess of a hundred fish, I really lost count of the number of small crucians, hybrids, roach and rudd I caught during the day, in total I had twenty-two carp of 3lb or larger.

It was a great days catching, not really fishing because it was too easy, but fun playing the bigger fish on the light rods, I had them hooped right over and that lovely singing the line makes when it is taut in the wind.

I did have a tin of luncheon meat I had been using as free offerings, but the majority of the tin went to this hungry little waif that came to visit me in my swim



Claudia seemed to have a good day in the corner on the pole, see was catching all day and she will put up some pictures and tell you about her day later on.

[Fishing Forum Admin]

Loved the piccys and great read. Wonderful selection of fish in what was a busy days fishing

[Norfolkboy]

Nice one Mike

[fishypaul]

superb report and pics mike,a wonderful days fishing . well done mate

[Greenheart]

Cracking days fishing Mike. Looks like Steve & I should have joined you there instead of fishing the Canal. Watch out for that Dog. The last time I was at Todber, there were a couple of guys Carp fishing there. They had hung their sleeping bags over their Bivvys to air out. Up trots the dog & cock's it leg over one of their bags. They did'nt notice, but I bet the bags owner wondered what the smell was that night. Of course, I did the polite thing & tried not to laugh....

[Banana Steve]

Well done Mike and Claudia, looks like you had a fantastic day. once again well done

[pingu]

a cracking day there you two

dave