New PB Zander

So, last October I smashed my Zander PB with a 14lb 6oz beast from a local canal under the light of a full moon. At the time I couldn't believe it, I'd always thought there was a monster in there somewhere but never managed anything much over 8lb. It was a PB I figured I would never beat without heading to somewhere like the Severn that's known to produce bigger fish. Turns out I was wrong!

At the start of October, during a full moon, my friend Steve and I decided to do a spot of carp fishing (aka bream fishing) on the canal. We hadn't been out on the canal for a while so had no idea where the fish were, so figured we'd just wing it and try a trusty old spot. I still had a couple of sorry looking dead baits hidden in the depths of the freezer left over from last year, so took them with me, a roach and a small mackerel, with the intention of chopping them up and throwing them out at the end of the session as a bit of pre-baiting ready for the impending predator season

As it turns out, the carp were no-where to be seen (which is pretty standard) but we weren't really picking up any bream either, so I knocked up a wire trace and swapped a rod over to a predator rod with about an hour of daylight left. To cut a long story short, I lost a decent fish right off the bat on the roach, had a few "ghost runs" and pickups on the mackerel tail, and ended up being left with only the head of the mackerel as bait, as I don't generally use the heads of mackerel as I never catch anything on them and usually end up being harassed by boot lace eels chewing at the gills if I leave them on and fish the whole thing. Anyway, it's all I had and the carp (bream) fishing was pretty non-existent so I launched the head out. It rattled off soon after and as the hooks struck home the rod hooped over. The fish didn't want to come off the bottom, as is usually the way with the better fish, and I could feel it thrashing it's head around so was fully expecting to see a rather angry pike on the end when I finally got it in. I'd barely had chance to see what it was before Steve had ninja'd it into the net as it finally popped up off the bottom and hit the surface. Needless to say it wasn't a pike, it was another big zed, or more accurately, the same big zed (distinguishable by a dark spot on its left flank) that I had caught last year, only this time it was bigger! After weighing a couple of times, we both agreed it was 16lb on the nose! Now, you're probably all expecting me to put up a picture of this fish here, but I can't do that as all the photo's give the location away and as it's early into the predator season I'd understandably quite like to keep the spot to myself for as long as possible. I did try "photoshopping" in a different background which looked ok, but you could tell it wasn't quite right and I didn't want to put up with all the crap from the "non believers" so decided not to post it (hence no blog at the time)... But fear not, the story doesn't end there my friends!

Fast forward a month, to the full moon at the start of November (you can see where this is going...). Steve had a free pass from his pig (his rather affectionate name for his other half) to go fishing, so we went back to the spot, but this time I was only targeting the predators, specifically the zander. I even joked with him that as it was a full moon, I was going to catch the big zander again. Well, during a rather hectic evening, involving 2 pike, 4 or 5 zander and an eel (getting 2 sets of trebles out of an eel is interesting to say the least!) I only went and caught it again! Exactly the same weight as the month before, 16lb on the nose. But this time it was in the dark, which gave us the opportunity to get a photo that gives nothing away, so here it is for all to see...

...But, that's not the end of the story either! As I had a photo that I was happy to share, I figured I'd try my luck and send it off to the angling times, and I've only gone and won a weekly Drennan award! I'm off to go make up some traces ready for the next full moon... ;)

Anglers Paradise 2017 - Session 4

Session 4 - Main Lake

Feeling a little fresher than expected on Monday morning after a night of magic glasses at the BBQ, Steve and I were planning on fishing Main for a day or two, but after a quick recon mission down to the lake quite a few of the pegs were already taken so we decided we'd take minimal gear and do a bit of opportunistic fishing in the free areas of the lake. Steve slotted in down by the pagoda, which is where he wanted to fish anyway, and I headed off around towards the bay area below the specimen carp lake.

Mid double common from Main lake

 There were a number of lumps sunbathing amongst the weeds and after a few catapults of dog biscuits I managed to temp a few into having a bit of a munch on the surface. Unfortunately, I'd also attracted an army of little 1 to 2lb carp who were also feeling rather peckish. Despite my best efforts to try and avoid the smaller fish, after hooking 4 or 5 of them the bigger fish had drifted out of the area. I knew they'd come back if I stopped causing the disturbance of catching the small fish though, and from previous trips I knew if I was quiet they quite often followed a path right up against the bank under a tree on my left. So I ditched the floater gear, and very carefully placed an essential cell wafter in a small hole in the dwarf lily pads, no more than a foot in diameter just under the outer branches of the tree on my left no more than 2 feet from the bank. I roughly crumbled a handful of boilies and dropped them in over the top, with another handful of whole boilies which I flicked out in a wider diameter of 3 or 4 feet. About 20 minutes later the water erupted under the tree and my spool  briefly screamed into action as a fish had fallen for the trap and made a dash into an area of thicker weeds. It hadn't locked up solid and I could still feel the fish on the end, and so ensued a painstaking 10 minute battle of giving and gaining line to keep the fish moving and slowly free it from the weeds. Eventually I got it within netting distance, and after a few failed attempts managed to get it in the net, complete with a bouquet of dwarf lily pads draped over its head like weedy dreadlocks. I did weigh it but have since forgotten the weight but I'm pretty sure it was a mid double or there abouts, I really should write these things down!

As I was taking the photos, Steve phoned me to inform me the person who had been fishing next to him on Nev's point had packed up, so I gathered my gear together and quickly nabbed the peg so I had somewhere to fish for the night. I tried a bit of floater fishing here too, with the same result as in the weedy bay, so gave up on that and set about finding a spot to fish to. In previous years there had been a hard spot no more than 30 or so yards out that had provided me with a number of fish, but it was no longer there, so I opted to fish a bit further out where I could see fish passing through over what turned out to be a slope where the lake changed depth by around a foot in a fairly short distance before levelling out again. I baited the area with about half a kilo of boilies and then headed back to the villa for the rest of my gear and a bite to eat while the fish hopefully stopped off on their travels through my swim for a bite to eat themselves.

Upon returning I quickly put the rods out and set up camp for the night. Steve was telling me how he always seemed to get a run from his spot at around 6 o'clock, and that it was almost 6 o'clock when low and behold, his alarm went off!

Steve with a mid double fully scaled mirror from Main

He had a similar battle to my earlier capture, with the fish burying itself in the dwarf pads, and after getting locked up in the weeds just out of netting range handed me the rod while he went for a little paddle in the lake with net. Eventually he managed to scoop the fish up in the net and get it back to the bank. We weighed this one too, and again I've forgotten the weight, but most of our fish from main over the years have been between 13 and 18lb so I'll call it another mid double. I really really should write these things down!

Steve saw a bit more action through the evening with 2 more runs, both of which he lost in the weeds, but my swim was proving to be pretty dead despite a steady stream of fish passing through. I had even swapped over to zigs for a few hours to no avail, but felt confident I'd get a few in the night. I was wrong of course, I caught bugger all! Not even a liner. I did have a furry friend to keep me company though in the form of the resident dog, who decided to spend the night in my bivvy after a busy evening of digging the rats out of the bank!

Anglers Paradise 2017 - Session 3

Session 3 - Octopussy

Dragonfly on Octopussy

We only had a fairly short session on Octopussy as we had to pack up around 5pm to be ready in time for the BBQ. Catfish were the target and I was able to get on the peg I'd caught stumpy from for the last 3 years, so putting a bait in stumpy's spot was a no brainer. The other rod I figured I'd move around every couple of hours, trying in the bay, margins, open water etc... For baits I'd opted for 2 x 28mm halibut pellets topped with a large pop-up in stumpy's spot, as I didn't want to be picking up any greedy carp. For the roving rod I went for a single 22mm pellet topped with about 3/4 of a 15mm krill pop up.

Not much happened for the first half of the day, in fact that's probably overstating the action we had! No liners, no beeps, no signs of catfish anywhere... I've seen more life in a morgue! There were a few small grass carp hugging tight to the back and edges of the bay though, so I brought in the roving rod and broke out the floater gear and dog biscuits. They took quite a lot of convincing to eat anything at all, and when they did it was only the biscuits that had drifted near them, and even then they only took a few at a time, they simply weren't in the mood. One of the fish taking the biscuits did look half decent for Octopussy though, and this was the most action we'd seen for the last 4 hours or so, so I decided to have a go.

First cast couldn't have landed in a better place, and almost instantly the bigger grassy came up and slurped in my bait, and with my ninja quick reflexes I struck... Into thin air. There was a large swirl as the fish spooked, never to be seen again, and most of the smaller fish went with it, brilliant!

Steve with a small grassy from Octopussy

It turns out they all went to Steve's swim, who also had the floater gear out, and it didn't take long for him to bag one. He wasn't fussed about having a photo, but it was a nice day and I didn't have anything better to do having just voided my swim of all fish so I made him have one! I switched back to fishing 2 cat rods for the next couple of hours, again with less life than a Cliff Richard concert, when I noticed a half decent carp had turned up and was munching down the remaining dog biscuits still floating around from earlier. So back in came the cat rod, back out went the floater rod and not long after I watched my bait vanish into the abyss of a pair of slurping lips. Even more ninja like than before, I struck... into more thin air, followed by another large swirl as the fish spooked also never to be seen again, double brilliant! I put my cat rod back out for the remaining couple of hours but nothing came of it, I was heading to the BBQ with a cheque book and pen.

Anglers Paradise 2017 - Session 2

Session 2 - Octopussy Specimen Carp Lake

After nipping into Holsworthy for the weeks shopping (which seemed to consist entirely of pizzas!) and having a glass of wine or 2 with Zyg, Steve and I planned to try for some cats on Octopussy as in previous years, and as the weather was now well and truly scorchio it seemed like a good choice. I decided to go have a quick recon mission down to the lake while the others attempted to fit 20 pizzas in the fridge, and it turned out almost every peg was already taken! Upon returning to the villa and breaking the bad news, we formulated a new plan to fish the specimen carp lake instead, as main was out of action for the day for the 5C's syndicate.

My peg on the Specimen Carp lake

After a quick look at the lake, Steve opted to fish the ramp swim as usual, as there were a number of fish in the area. Despite seeing plenty of fish there every year, I never do any good there so decided to look else where. Many of the fish were held up in the weeds and pads around the back of the lake towards the koi lake, a couple were circling in open water in tadpoles peg (I have no idea what the peg is really called, it just always seems to be the peg tadpole gets caught from) which is where I usually end up fishing (and do no good!) so I resisted the urge to fish there too! In the end I opted for a peg on the far bank. I did see a decent mirror in the margins, but I'd never fished the far bank before, and the lake had repeatedly kicked my arse year on year so I thought I'd try somewhere different to previous years. 

I had a decent sized island bay out in front of me, and the island corner on my right. I decided to fish my right rod just off a small set of pads on the corner of the island, as I knew the fish took that route when swimming round the lake. My left rod I decided to put right at the back left of the bay under an overhanging tree, with the intent of moving it to the margins when the sun had set. I put about 40 to 50 boilies over each spot, and cast out my trusty wafter rigs fitted with a medium bag of 3mm betaine green pellet. Naturally, as soon as I got my rods out exactly where I wanted them, Steve phones me up asking for a photo of a grass carp he'd just caught, so in come the rods and off I trotted with my camera gear.

Steve with his new PB grass carp

It was worth it just to watch it beat Steve up on the bank, as grassies often misbehave when out the water, but it was a pretty nice fish too, and a new PB for Steve! My memory is a bit hazy but I think it was 16lb something. I returned to my peg and put the rods back out on the spots again, and almost instantly the left hand rod was away, and shortly after I had a small barrel shaped carp in the net, which looked like it should only have weighed a pound or 2, but was probably closer to 3 or 4 as it looked like it had indeed eaten all the pies! This proved to be a recurring theme for the left hand rod for the next few casts, but with all of the other fish dropping off on the way in. I didn't want to catch pasties all day and night, so I decided to ditch the pva bag of pellet on the left hand rod and fired out about half a kilo of boilies, which seemed to do the trick as the bites died off. As the evening was getting on I decided to put another 40 baits or so over the right rod too just to make sure I had some freebies out for the night ahead.

26lb 6oz from the specimen carp lake

I was just settling down for the night at around quarter to midnight when my right hand rod tore off! Fully expecting another pasty I casually lifted into the fish, at which point to my surprise the rod hooped over and the spool continued to spin after disengaging the baitrunner. It didn't take long to get the fish to the bank, but once there it absolutely refused to come up off the bottom, so I had a feeling I'd snagged a decent fish. Eventually after about 10 minutes of the fish plodding around under the rod tip it finally came up off the bottom and I swiftly got it in the net. It looked a decent fish and felt even better when lifting it out, surely I'd won my first bottle of the week! I quickly unhooked it and weighed it in at 26lb 6oz, before briefly resting it up in the margins while I got my camera gear sorted for the photos. I didn't want to wake sleeping beauty and drag him round the lake in the dark for anything other than a PB so decided to try for a self take. Not the best photo in the world but it'll have to do!

The milky way, complete with plane

The excitement had woken me up again, and I wasn't going back to sleep any time soon so I decided to have a crack at capturing the milky way with the camera. Being close to the longest day of the year it wasn't exactly the best of times for such an image as it never really got completely dark, but I did sort of manage to capture a part of it, complete with passing plane!

Starting to feel tired again about half an hour later, I got back into bed for the night, and no sooner had I shut my eyes, the right rod was off again! I jumped back out the bivvy and hit into another good fish. This one seemed a bit more lively and was taking a fair bit of line. I wasn't too worried though as it felt like it was heading down towards the pagoda through the open water. That was until I noticed I was starting to put more and more side strain on it to the left, at which point I realised it was nowhere near the pagoda and was actually somewhere over by the monk, ahh bugger! Despite my complete lack of sense of direction, I carefully turned the fish and soon had it under control under the rod tip, at which point it did a rather convincing impression of the first fish and refused to come off the bottom. It did eventually end up in the net however, and was a lovely linear at 25lb 14oz. 

Tadpole??? 25lb 14oz from the specimen carp lake

Now, I didn't think much of it at the time due to it's weight, but since coming back home I've noticed this fish has an uncanny resemblance to the infamous Tadpole, who usually graces the bank in the low 30's so I've included a photo of tadpole from the AP website for comparison, what do you think?

Tadpole from a few years ago at 29lb, closest angle I could find to my photo for comparison.

That was pretty much the end of the action from session 2, apart from the pasties annihilating my left hand rod again as soon as daylight started to return in the early hours of Sunday morning, which resulted in me getting virtually no sleep whatsoever! Still I couldn't complain, I'd caught 2 good fish, and won 2 bottles on my first night of the holiday proper, and finally broken my 7 year streak of terrible luck on the specimen carp lake during the summer.

Anglers Paradise 2017 - Session 1

Well it seems it's been a whole year since my last entry, and not because I haven't been out much or had anything to report. In fact I've broken a few PB's, had my picture in the angling press and won the Anglers Mail fish of the week award in that time. The truth is I've just been slacking on the blog front! Anyway onto this years AP adventure...

Session 1: Kracking Carp

As usual we headed to paradise a day early for 24 hours on a day ticket lake before the holiday proper, and this year we decided to try Kracking Carp instead of the Specimen Cat lake. For those not familiar with the AP lakes, Kracking is a lake of roughly 2 acres and contains around 15-20 specimen sized carp to over 50lb as well as the usual AP orange army and other smaller species.

It was a rather cloudy and a bit chilly start to the holiday, and I ended up in peg 4 at the windward end of the lake despite getting last pick of the pegs out of the 4 of us which to me seemed the place to be given the conditions so I was happy. Having seen fish crashing in the same places from previous years when we've been on the cat lake (the cat lake looks down over Kracking) I knew the far margin was a good place to focus on, and so baited up a spot with maggots and chopped boilies while I quietly built base camp. 

An hour or so later I was ready to put the rods in, and opted for a maggot clip with around 10 maggots. This proved to be a terrible idea, as not long after casting out I had a perch of around 12oz setting my alarms off, and this trend appeared to continue for the next couple of casts. I tried changing to a bigger clip with 30-40 maggots on but it was no good, no sooner had I cast out I was getting hammered by the smaller species, so it looked like I'd be fishing with boilies then!

Peg 4, Kracking Carp

Out went my faithful wafter rigs, with an essential cell on one rod and a paradise baits pink stink on the other, with a handful of chopped boilies over the top and a few more maggots. During this time the clouds had cleared and the sun had made an appearance and had been slowly cooking all 4 of us to a crisp without us really noticing until we'd already turned somewhat pink. Nothing much happened all afternoon, so I reeled in and had a walk around the lake to see if I could spot any lumps. As it turned out, it appeared almost the entire population of the lake was down the shallow (and opposite, doh!) end of the lake, but they didn't look too interested in feeding, it looked as if the warm sunshine had given them more carnal desires as they followed each other around in circles amongst the weeds and lily pads.

While interesting to watch, it didn't bode well for our chances of bagging a lump or 2 so I'd pretty much given up hope for the session and returned to my peg for a spot of dinner. While eating my rather disgusting sweaty bacon wraps, I thought I saw some activity over my spot, so decided to have a stealthy sneak around the lake to have a closer look. When I got to the spot, I noticed the water was a little coloured and about half of the free offerings had vanished. I watched quietly for a couple of minutes, but only saw the usual orange army pecking away at the baits and put the disturbance down to them, but as I was about to return to my peg I saw something else...

At first it was just a bit of a shadow, maybe a small carp or a tench or something, but then as it rose up closer to the surface it turned out to be a tail, a tail belonging to what I can only describe as a whale. By far the biggest carp I'd ever seen had had it's head down on my baits no more than half a rod length from the bank, and I was pretty sure it was one of the biggest 2 fish in the lake which have been out over 50lb in the past, and whats even better it slowly sank back down over my baits for another serving! 

A Kracking sunset

This gave me a bit of a dilemma, as my rods were still wound in from my walk around the lake. I didn't want to spook it by casting in, but neither did I want to miss my chance of bagging a hippo, so I carefully added a couple of handful of maggot and a few more chopped boilies to keep it interested and grubbing around, and decided to risk putting 1 of my rods out. Instead of casting directly to the spot, which would have almost certainly ruined any chance I had, I cast just the lead onto the far bank, and then walked round and clipped my rig on before gently lowering it into the margins. There wasn't any sign of the fish spooking so it looked like the game was on! The evening wore on and turned into night after a lovely sunset and I'd seen either a dorsal or a tail just break the surface a couple of times so was feeling confident the fish was still there grazing on the spot. But before I knew it night had turned into morning as I was awoken by the nearby air cannon without getting so much as a liner during the night. I had a quick look at my baited area and every single maggot and boilie crumb had vanished, and the water was clear again. I'd missed my chance. Upon reeling in my rig wasn't tangled which is always a bit of a risk when placing it in the water the way I had done, and the hook was clear of any weed or debris, but for whatever reason the fish had cleaned me out without even touching my hookbait. To make matters worse, the guys who had been fishing on the cat lake told us they'd had 3 cats out during the night, and they weren't even fishing for them, only choosing to fish that lake for the carp as we'd beaten them to booking Kracking! The one year we decide not to fish the cat lake, and it actually fishes well! It doesn't end there either, as it transpired the people that replaced us on Kracking for the Saturday day/night only went and bagged Silverback at 48lb, one of the lakes 2 biggest residents, from the far margin of peg 3! More than likely the very same fish that had well and truly done me the night before! Still, we had the whole week to try and catch some chunks from the main holiday complex and it wasn't raining, so things weren't all that bad...