Xanadu day ticket lake at Anglers Paradise

We arrived at Anglers Paradise late afternoon on Thursday, cars loaded to the brim with cat-fishing gear for a couple of days chasing cats on the Eldorado day ticket complex. Imagine our horror when we parked up for a stroll around the lake to discover the lake (which is usually pretty quiet, especially on weekdays) had anglers dotted all around it! One of the Anglers turned out to be Joe from Anglers Paradise and after a quick chat it became clear that we'd either be fishing a different lake or all squeezed into one corner as the other anglers were all booked on for the night. Never mind! I said, we'll just go fish the specimen cat lake on the Nirvana complex instead, there's never anyone on there...

Obviously I was completely wrong, as when we enquired at the tackle shop it turned out that had a few anglers booked on it too, but the friendly tackle shop goblin informed us that the Xanadu carp lake was completely empty, so we decided we'd give that a go, despite only bringing a token amount of carp gear intended only to save a blank if the cats hadn't been playing ball.

As if by magic the best part of £20 was absorbed from my wallet and in exchange I had a bag of Anglers Paradise own brand "pink stink" boilies and a pot of wafter hook baits to fish with as obviously I'd pretty much only brought gigantic catfish pellets with me and a couple of pints of maggot. After a quick wander around the lake the 4 of us had decided where we were fishing and various base camps were erected on the lakes edge.

My view for the next 2 days

What seemed like an eternity passed as I set about breaking down my cat rods (which I'd spent the previous evening building to perfection!) and rebuilding them as carp rods with some rigs I'd thrown in just in case I needed them, and no sooner than I'd cast them out, the famous Anglers Paradise "liquid sunshine" made an appearance and didn't let up until the following morning, so that's where my rigs stayed, all night, without as much as a liner. 

I was awoken the following morning just after 5am by something that I can only describe as being rather fitting for the finale of Tchaikovsky's 1812 overture, and upon venturing from my bivvy discovered my friend Lavis appeared to have a fish on. I wandered over to offer my assistance (and heartfelt condolences if it should happen to fall off), and soon had it in the net for him. A perfect little common of just over 17lb (which I have no photo of to show you as I took them on his camera!). Maybe things were going to kick off finally!

They didn't. I managed a small tench and a few silvers while experimenting with a maggot clip which  rather quickly became apparent wasn't going to be a feasible option, and after trying just about every other trick in the book without success decided to reel in and have a wander around the lake to see if I could spot any signs of carp. It wasn't long until my eagle eyed vision picked up the subtle hint of a carp in residence as the water boiled in the margins in a corner of the lake as I'd obviously spooked a fish despite my best efforts of ninja like stealth. It hadn't bolted off across the lake though, I'd just disturbed it slightly, so I upped my sneaking game and crept back to grab a rod, net and mat.

Upon returning, the water boiled again in the same spot, so I very gently lowered a bait in just to the side of the weedy area the fish was in, and covered it with a handful of maggots before retreating up the bank a bit to avoid spooking the fish any further. About 20 minutes passed and my ears picked up the sound of a reel spool spinning into action. It wasn't mine, it was my friend Steve's who was laughing his head off about halfway up the lake as he was also discovering maggot clips were not an option and was valiantly playing a small perch into his 42" landing net. While watching him struggle to gain the upper hand in what I'm sure was an epic battle between man and fish, I heard the sound of another spool spinning into action, this time much louder and much more from the direction of my own rod!

With the reflexes of an arthritic cat, I pounced on my rod and lifted into the fish, which didn't appear to be best pleased at getting hooked and made quite a commotion in the marginal weeds. The weed was thin however and didn't cause any problems, and Lavis returned the favour by netting the fish for me a short while later. It looked like it was going to go 20lb+ in the net, so Lavis looked after it for me while I scooted back to base camp to grab my scales, sling and camera. While lifting it from the water, it became evident it was going to smash the 20 mark, and after carefully weighing and some dodgy maths for taking off the weight of the sling, it weighed in at 26lb 4oz (originally thought to be 26lb 12oz due to said dodgy maths, so my apologies to those I ended up lying to!). That beat my old common PB by a full 6lb, and it was a minter too! I got a couple of photos and rested the fish in the sling for a couple of minutes to make sure it was fully recovered before returning it to the lake.

Despite all the commotion the fish had caused, it appeared there was still at least 1 other fish in the same area, if not more. Being the gentlemanly type, but mostly because I wanted to go cook some dinner, I decided to let my companions have a crack and retreated back to base camp. Sadly they didn't get to sample the sweet taste of success, and none of us caught for the rest of the session. The smaller residents of the lake were pretty active with spawning on the Saturday morning while we packed up, and most of the signs of carp we'd seen during the 2 days were also in the margins, so I have a sneaky feeling the carp were preoccupied munching on all the eggs being deposited by the smaller species.

I'll be going back for a full week on the main complex in 2 weeks time, so fingers crossed I can keep my winning streak going! Excuse the stylish "dragged through a hedge" hairdo, the midges were eating me alive and driving me somewhat crazy.

26lb 4oz from Xanadu at Anglers Paradise in Devon.

He even posed for the camera!