January 28, 2016 • 0

Effort = Success By Dean Flattley

Hi all,

It’s New Year’s Eve and I’m fresh back from a very wet and windy but very mild 48 hour session on my club lake,Autumn and winter are my favourite times to be on the bank but with a young family and a full time job I take what ever I can get.so with the festive celebrations out the way and a few days left off work I loaded the car and set off for a rare two day stint on the 20 acre lake on the Cambridgeshire/Bedfordshire border.

20 acres of Top notch lake

This is my second season on the lake and so far I have been lucky enough to bank some of its jewels to over 41lb, however the recent months had seen me string together several blanks. Typical just when you think you’ve cracked it the door slams swiftly in your face,now to be fair to myself the lake has not been fishing particularly well for any of the other lads I had spoken to just doing the odd fish really. Several 24 hour sessions all around the lake saw me leaving with my tail between my legs, it was then I decided that maybe baiting one swim and concentrating the little time I had in one area may be more worth while. Now the access to most of the swims on this lake is great with parking right behind most of them, with this in mind I decided to target a swim in an area that got shut off to vehicles in the winter so a barrow was required. The plan was this would hopefully put most anglers off fishing the swim, the swim itself covered some of the deeper water in this lake with one of the spots I found around 13′ deep and my second spot just off an over hanging willow tree around 9′ deep. Both spots were silty and surrounded in dying weed beds and not far from where the carp were holding up last winter.

41LB 8oz Mirror from last winter

My first 24 hour session in the swim passed uneventfully but I got a feel for the spots and used the opportunity to get a bit of bait going in, my aim was to keep the bait going in two or three times a week as I fish every other weekend this would get the fish feeding confidently. Due to work and not wanting to bait up at the weekend this meant coming down in the dark sometimes on the way to work and sometimes after, I got to work one morning with spod juices in my hair and all other my top needless to say I kept my coat on that day. I started baiting the spot with all sorts of bits just to give it a kick start and to clear some room in the freezer, mainly boilies,hemp,corn and chick peas to boot. Shortly after my first session I was introduced to Core baits by my brother in law and a fantastic and exciting opportunity arose to join there team of field testers, I jumped at the chance and before I knew it my first order of boilies and chilli hemp was on the doorstep and I was back down the lake introducing it to its resident carp. My next session coincided with my wife’s works Christmas party but being eager to get down the lake and see if the spots were going to start producing I set of once she was home, I had the rods out by 1am and hit the sack only to be straight back out again to attend to a bream. It was around 10am the next morning when I received the long awaited take on my right hand rod placed of the willow tree after a very short lived fight from what felt like a decent fish it managed to weed me up and slip the hook. I’m sure you all know the emotions that follow losing a fish especially after so many blanks but there was some positives to be had, the spot had produced and so had the new bait. Due to Christmas and everything else that comes with it I didn’t get another session in until this one I’ve just returned home from, probably about 2 weeks in between.

My First core baits order

I arrived at the lake for my 48 hour session on the 29th around 6:30am so I could see if any thing was showing, to my disappointment the area I thought no one would bother with was sewn up and hardly a sole on the rest of the lake. I walked around the whole lake at first light but it was dead, I went from one swim to the other and back again but could not find any sign of fish. After speaking to a friend he told me fish had been showing a lot in the area I had been baiting this added to my disappointment as I couldn’t get near it, I decided to set up in a swim that had served me well in the past and had previous winter form. Some 3-4 hours later saw me back on my toes around the lake as that part of the lake just seemed void of any life except the seagulls,in that time my baited swim had become free and a the guy in the next swim was due to leave in a couple of hours so I raced round took the bivvy down,put all the gear in the car and shot round to my swim. I soon had the rods on the spots with a good spread of Core baits SSK and the Core boilies over the top I was a million times happier. Once it got dark I had my usuall bream on the left hand rod, it was unhooked in the water a fresh pva bag of boilies attached and a quick dip in the glug then dispatched back out to the spot. The rest of the night passed without interruption except from the gales, bite time lately for the very few fish that have been out has been between first light and 10am. Around 8:30am the middle rod pulled up and held there I struck into it and at first couldn’t make out what was on the end, not another bream I was thinking when all of a sudden it woke up and a hairy battle commenced. The powerful lump I was attached to wasn’t happy and managed to pick up the line on the left hand rod which some how came free,then weeded me up but came out after some steady pressure and then picked up the line from the right hand rod and also tried getting around a tree but this one had my name on it,when your lucks in ay!! On the second attempt it slipped over the net cord, relief the hard work and the move paid off. On the scales she went 38lb, happy days.