On arrival on Friday morning, Steve and I were kindly greeted by Zyg who opened the bar just so we could have the customary "magic glass" of his infamous wine, where we were surprised to learn that we were in fact the only guests there for the whole weekend, and as such had all the swims, on all of the lakes completely to ourselves!
After a quick trip to the on site tackle shop for a few last minute bits and pieces, we decided to spend what was left of the day with minimal gear having a roam of the complex, more to try and suss out where the fish were and which lakes looked most likely of doing a decent fish or 2 than anything else.
After a quick look around octopussy, main and the specimen lake, they all looked fairly dead with nothing showing or any signs of feeding on any of them, and with that in mind we decided to give the specimen lake a go for an hour or 2, in a few spots we knew held fish in the warmer months, and as it was unseasonably mild with temperatures into double figures, hoped would still hold them now.
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| 2 gallons of maggots for bait |
I fished around 15 maggots on a hair, popped up ever so slightly, with a pva bag containing a handful of freebies cast into areas I thought might hold a fish or two. It wasn't long before there were signs of life in the area and I had a few liners before the rod tip banged round before the line went slack indicating a take. I had a fish on, but sadly it was only small, so expecting a little carp I quickly reeled it in to avoid disturbing the spot too much and kind of hoped it would come off so that it wouldn't get lost in my 50" landing net. It turned out it wasn't a carp at all, but a nice sized blue orfe, and definitely a new PB, but sadly in my lack of urgency to ready the net, it did come off as I fumbled to find the net handle. Oh well, at least something was feeding, which was somewhat encouraging!
Over the next hour or so, both Steve and I saw a bit of action, but it was all from small carp that had been the result of breeding since the lake was last netted a few years ago. We both decided to stay on the lake as at least we knew the smaller fish were active at least, and hopefully it'd only be a matter of time before the bigger fish muscled them out of the way. With this in mind I put out about a pint of maggot spread around the area to keep the small fish occupied, and switched to boilie hook baits with a handful of freebies. It was around this time that I saw a big fish jump in the opposite corner of the lake. I considered moving, but decided to stay put for a while and give my baiting plan a chance to pay off. I thought it had when my left rod suddenly hooped round, and I lifted into a fish that certainly wasn't a little 2lb pasty. It soon became apparent however that it wasn't one of the big girls either, and soon had a pretty little mirror of around 6lb in the net.
This renewed my hope that it was only a matter of time before a bigger fish made an appearance, so I decided to stay where I was for the remainder of the day. This turned out to be the wrong move, as I didn't get any more indications of fish in the area, and as the light faded and we started to pack away, I saw another big fish crash in the same corner as the one I'd seen earlier.
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| Mr Robin eyeing up some escaped maggots |
On Saturday we decided to do a day-night-day on the main lake, as this holds a lot more carp than the specimen lake, and we thought would give us the best chance of bagging a 20. We set up in the newly named Nev's point swim, as it meant we could make use of the pagoda instead of getting our bivvies wet and covered in mud, and we'd fished the same area in the summer to great success. The morning was pretty uneventful with no signs of fish anywhere on the lake, in fact the only sign of life was a robin who'd taken a liking to the spillage from our maggot filled spods as we baited a likely area of the lake.
Morning turned to afternoon, and afternoon to evening with only 1 fish showing itself all day, about 60 yards to my right. I put a rod to the area as best I could due to the overhanging trees for an hour but nothing materialised, and as the light started to fade I moved it back to my baited area for the long night ahead. I'd decided to edge my bets a little, and had a large ball of maggots (21 to be exact, my OCD requires that I count them as I thread them on!) on my left rod, and a paradise baits "pink stink" wafter on my right hand rod. We had some food and decided to crack open the complimentary bottle of Zygs wine that we'd brought down with us from the villa. We filled a mug each and decided we should say a kind of prayer to the fishing gods in the style of Zyg from an old Matt Hayes TV show.
"Oh monsters of the deep,
please make our alarms go beep,
even if it wakes us from our sleep,
and give us memories we may keep!"
That was the best we could come up with (or something close to that, my memory is a little hazy of the exact words, I can't think why!) and while we were trying to come up with some more words that rhymed with deep for another verse, our concentration was broken by the wail of my left hand alarm indicating that our little prayer had worked!
Lifting into the fish I knew I'd hooked something worthy of my over sized landing net, and as it made it's first run into the darkness to my right I had a sneaky suspicion that it wasn't a carp and was the very reason why I use such a large net when I fish at Anglers Paradise. Instead of the racing run often given by a carp, I was subjected to a slow steady pull, pulsating with the rhythm of a large tail slowly kicking back and forth in the waters depths, and no matter how much I tightened the drag of my reel, it seemed to make no difference to the amount of line the fish was taking. Thankfully I remembered I was only using a 20lb esp carp braid hook link and size 8 hook before I cranked the drag too high, as by this point it was pretty obvious I'd hooked a fairly large catfish.
Having caught (and lost) plenty of catfish in the past, I knew only too well how much damage the pads in their mouths can cause to even the tougher, stronger catfish braids, and how easily a sudden lunge can bend a big size 1 hook, so I'd have to be careful if I were to stand a chance of landing it on such relatively light tackle. Of course the longer I allowed it to swim around, the more time there was for the pads to slowly wear their way through my hook link, so I made the decision to give it some beans and try and get as much line back on it as possible whenever it gave me the chance.
I managed to stop its run off to my right, at which point it did a U-turn and started swimming back towards me, which saw me frantically reeling in line to keep up with it. It was far from beat however, and upon getting within probably 20 yards of me it took off to my left heading towards an island. It was too dark to tell exactly where it was, but when Steve's left rod starting beeping away from where the cat had obviously crossed his line, I knew it wasn't far from taking me around the back of the island at which point it'd be all over, so I prayed the hook link hadn't seen too much damage and gave it as much pressure as I dared, thankfully turning it back into open water. The rest of the fight was fairly trivial, and I backed the drag off a little to take some pressure off the hook link. About 10 minutes later Steve got it in the net for me 1st time (the extra size to the net helps so much with netting catfish) and the battle was over.
At first I thought it was going to be a relatively small fish for the lake at somewhere in the high 20's, simply from the fight that it had put up. After having my first glimpse of it in the net still in the water I changed my mind and thought I had a decent 30. Steve thought I was mad and that it was quite clearly a new PB, beating my old 44lb 8oz best. I mocked him by saying it was maybe 40lb at best, before swiftly changing my mind as we attempted to lift it from the water! A brief struggle later and we had it in the sling, and weighed it in at 57lb! Not a bad fish on the humble maggot!
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| 57lb catfish, a new PB! |
We polished off the rest of the bottle of wine in celebration, and decided to top up the bed of maggots with a few more spods as a marauding catfish could quite easily have mopped up what was out there in just a couple of mouthfuls! That was all the action we saw for the night however, and after some breakfast in the morning we decided that we were on the wrong lake, and that we'd cut the session short and head up to octopussy for the day and try and catch a few doubles.
I decided to fish the big bay on the shallower side of the lake (though still fairly deep), as it was sheltered from a fairly chilly and strong wind, and Steve opted to fish the shallow water near the lily pads at the top of the lake in the hope the fish were shoaled up in the cover that they provided.
It soon became clear that the shallows weren't where the fish were as a sizable carp crashed in the deeper water just round the corner of the island to my left. I informed Steve and gave him the option to move into the area before I did, as I was content with my catch from the previous day and would rather Steve caught something worthy of weighing. He made the move, and almost instantly he was getting runs and catching fish, albeit small ones, while I still hadn't had as much as a twitch on the line. I decided I was in the wrong place and moved to the opposite side of the lake which was noticeably deeper. I too got results almost instantly, also from the lakes smaller residents. A number of good sized fish showed themselves over the next couple of hours in the areas that we were fishing, but we just couldn't seem to get away from the smaller carp. I decided to take a bit of a risk, and fish the margins where I could accurately feed maggots on a regular basis in the strong winds. The change of tactic paid off and within half an hour I'd had 2 fish of around 7lb and 10lb, which while still on the smaller side for the lake were at least large enough to put up a fight and so were welcome.
Oddly, the limited action seemed to tail off as the light faded into darkness instead of increasing as it usually does, but something was crashing around over my shoulder in the specimen carp lake behind me, and while I couldn't see where it was, it sounded like it was from the same area I'd seen the fish on the Friday. It was time to pack up for the day, but Zyg had told us that as it was quiet, he was happy for us to stay the day on Monday too instead of leaving by 10am as is the norm in the summer, so I decided that I'd have a go for the fish for a few hours in the morning before we headed home.
After a good nights sleep in the villa, we headed off to the lakes. Steve headed to octopussy again as he saw it as his best chance to get a half decent carp, and I headed to the specimen lake as while it may be one of the trickier lakes on the complex, to me it seemed the most likely to do a fish as I'd seen signs of fish in the same area all weekend.
Almost as soon as I arrived, a fish revealed it's presence in the same corner of the lake as the others only a few feet from the bank. As there was no chance of anyone else coming to fish the lake, I set up quietly a few pegs away and cast up the bank to the fish in an effort to avoid spooking them. As I wanted to keep disturbance to a minimum, I decided to put my other rod in the middle of a choke point between the island and the bank. I'd decided to use the pink stink wafters as hook baits, to avoid a repeat of Fridays session with the juvenile fish.
About an hour later the fishery manager Joe came around to say hello, and while we were catching up the fish showed itself again. He offered me some advice, most of which I was already doing, but he explained that the fish don't see much angling pressure in the winter and as such I could fish both rods to the same area without really worrying about spooking the fish off, and suggested a spot in-line with a tree about 20 yards from where the fish had jumped where he had had some success before. After he had left to continue his rounds of the complex I decided to re-cast my other rod with a pva bag of maggots to the spot that he suggested.
A mere 20 minutes later and the rod screamed into action! My only real concern was that the fish would get around the nearby monk, so I gave it a bit of welly at first before backing off after I'd safely guided it into open water. A nerve racking 5 minutes later and I had it in the net. Over the years I'd managed to catch just about everything but a specimen carp from the specimen carp lake so I was rather proud of myself of finally beating the curse of the specimen carp! I had a quick look in the net before calling Steve to see if he could come take a photo for me, explaining I'd caught a half decent fish that looked like it was a twenty.
A few minutes later Steve appeared and took a look in the net, and once again told me I had a new PB, and once again I told him there was no chance and he needed his eyes testing!... Obviously I was completely wrong, and the needle on the scales crept around to the 28lb mark, beating my previous PB by 4lb! To say I was happy with the result is a bit of an understatement!
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| My new 28lb PB from my nemesis lake! |
The eagle eyed of you reading this will notice I'm no longer sporting a marvellously ridiculous moustache in the second photo. There's no shenanigans going on, I simply had a bet with Steve that I'd keep my 2015 Movember effort until I caught a 20lb fish, and as such had hacked the thing off with my braid scissors after landing the cat fish and had a shave back at the villa! You can still donate if you would like to even though November is now long gone too, just follow the link above.
Bit of a long blog this one and I applaud anyone who made it this far! I still can't get over the fact we were the only people there, while just a couple of hours away back home in Gloucestershire many carp waters are still quite busy! I couldn't have wished for a better weekend and hopefully will be able to find the time and money to do an off peak weekend next year too.
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