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...