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... 

Anglers Paradise 2016

It's taken me forever to get around to this years write up, so long in fact that I've half forgotten what happened on this years holiday! I'll do my best though...

Day 1: Specimen Catfish Lake

As usual we headed down a day early for a sneaky 24h on one of the day ticket lakes before the holiday proper. This year we opted for the specimen catfish lake again, go big or go home as they say!

Specimen Catfish Lake

We were the only people booked onto the lake, so we set up next to each other about halfway up the lake and claimed half of the lake each, with Steve on the left and me on the right. The conditions seemed good for a moggy, it was warm with some light cloud cover. I was fishing a low resistance free running setup with large (21mm and 28mm) halibut pellets as hook baits on my tried and tested catfish rigs. Nothing was showing in the lake at all however, not even the small fish, so we opted to bait an area out in front of us with a mixture of small and large pellets and some fishy boilies that we could both fish a rod to, while we used our other rods to probe around likely looking areas for an hour or 2 each in the hope of landing a hookbait right in front of a fish, a tactic that has worked for me before.

It didn't work this time, and the lake remained pretty dead for the whole of the day. The night wasn't any better either, with all hookbaits still intact come the morning, even the little fish hadn't been nibbling away at our pellets, but at least we got a good nights sleep! We had a few hours left before we had to pack up though, and after topping up with a couple of spods of small pellets to try and draw the bait fish in, one of Steve's rods went screaming off! He looked somewhat confused as he struck into thing air however, as there was nothing on the end of his line, and by nothing I mean nothing, no leader, no lead, no hook, the whole lot had gone! He claimed he didn't even feel any resistance at all, it was as if someone had snipped through his line with scissors. Strange...

About 20 minutes later the relative silence of the Devon countryside was broken by the wailing of an alarm, and this time it was one of mine! Whatever it was was going at a rate of knots as I picked the rod off the rest and struck... into thin air. I had lost all my tackle too, no hint of resistance from a fish or the weight of the lead, exactly the same as Steve, but in a completely different spot. Upon inspecting my line, it wasn't frayed or damaged at all, it was a clean cut. Rather baffled by the affair the only remotely sensible explanation we could come up with was pike charging at the bait fish and getting caught up in our lines in the process, causing the "one toners" and the clean cuts through the line, but as far as we were aware there weren't any pike in there!

That was the only action we saw on the cat lake, but as we were packing up one of the bailiffs came round, and we explained our mysterious tackle abductions to him. He seemed as baffled as us as there are no major snags in there, but when I enquired about pike apparently some have been stocked into the lake and had been coming out on all kinds of crazy baits, including sweetcorn! Whether or not we were the victims of a pike attack we'll never know but as far fetched as it seems it's still the only explanation I can come up with.

Day 2: Octopussy

As we were already kitted up for cats we figured we'd go straight onto octopussy when the holiday proper started on Saturday afternoon.

John, Ringo, Paul and George... I'l get my coat.

It was quite a bright day and the cats didn't seem to want to come out to play in the sunshine, so the main highlight of the day was watching this beetle try and climb a piece of stickyweed and fail because it had eaten far too many pies. Not the most exciting day but it was nice to have some sunny weather as it was forecast to get a bit wet and stormy in the not so distant future, with a big temperature hit too, not exactly what we wanted to hear. Some people swear by south westerly winds and all that, but in my experience if the temperature takes a real nosedive (or hike for that matter) the fish seem to switch off until things settle down a bit.

Nighttime came and with it some "heavy dew" and a run! It was pretty obvious from the outset that it wasn't a cat, but it felt a half decent carp for the lake, and after a short tussle the first fish of the holiday was in the net! A greedy mirror carp at 17lb that had somehow managed to jam 2 28mm pellets into his mouth!

17lb mirror from octopussy

It didn't feel like I'd been back in my sleeping bag long when I was summoned by Steve who had a fish on. It also turned out to be a carp, and 17lb. I would have accused him of copying me but his was a common. At least we were both off the mark, and a little bit damp now too!

17lb common from octopussy, and a bad case of pink eye!

Little linear

That was all the action for the night, and pretty much for the rest of the session. I did manage a small linear early Sunday morning which had scoffed the remains of the pellets from the night, and it wasn't raining anymore, which was a bonus! We packed up our gear and headed to the villa to get cleaned up and have some decent food at the BBQ before an evening stroll around the lakes and a few pints in the bar.

Rocket fuel

Zygs annual story telling at the BBQ went on a little longer than usual this year and we barely made it back to the bar in time for the raffle draw. Thankfully we got there just as Zyg was about to draw the first ticket, and after seeing us shuffle into the bar he gave me the honours of drawing it. After whittling down the handful of tickets I pulled from the bucket to just one and unravelling it, the number (444) looked vaguely familiar and as Zyg called it out I rather smugly produced the matching ticket from my wallet, and after some mild abuse and claims of match fixing proceeded to claim a bottle of Zygs Tokaji wine as my prize!

"Grapes from Devon, warmed by the sunshine of heaven. Matured and fermented to perfection. Recipes rumoured to have been mysteriously bestowed. Raise your glass and with careful action you will have great satisfaction". I think Zyg may have been sampling some this himself when he came up with that label! 

Day 3: Main Lake (part 1)

Friendly robin perched on the peg sign

It didn't look like the cats were playing ball so we thought we'd try for some decent carp, and where better than the main lake! After a walk around the lake we had originally planned to fish by the dam wall, but someone who shall remain nameless (and is a member of our 2 man group and isn't me) decided now would be a good time to snap their fox eurodome bivvy. After letting him cry about it for 10 minutes while watching him randomly stabbing the broken pieces together like some deranged ape trying to build something out of twigs (as if it would somehow magically fix it), I reluctantly informed him, that it was indeed completely f****d and that we should probably move to Nev's point and the adjacent peg as they were currently free and had a pagoda he could sleep in as it was due to be rather damp for the foreseeable future.

We managed to move all our kit round just in the nick of time, as a group of now rather disappointed anglers barrowed their kit past our new pegs having obviously just scouted them as being free. Oh well, you snooze you lose! Steve refused to admit the death of his bivvy though, and headed to the tackle shop in some rather whimsical hope that they just happened to have a clip for the front porch of a 10 year old bivvy in stock... Oddly they didn't! But he did return with some glue, tape and a rather hopeful look on his face which soon disappeared when I pointed out to him that even if the glue did work (which was highly doubtful due to the stress that would be placed on it) he would have to wait at least a day for it to harden enough to even stand a chance.

Here comes the heavy dew!

The fishing gods weren't totally out to get Steve though, and not long after Dion showed up with a replacement part for Steve's bivvy that he'd taken off of his own spare bivvy and said Steve could borrow it for the week, what a legend! It couldn't have come at a better time either as the forecast stormy weather arrived and things got just a little damp and windy. I realise I've rambled on for ages now about a broken bivvy and you're all bored and want to hear about the fish. Well, the truth is I didn't catch any for the first 24 hours, but Steve did and I hate "losing" so thought I'd tell you all a riveting story about a broken bivvy instead... Fine! Steve had a nice common early evening, it looked like it could go 20, but was spawned out and only managed 18, still a nice fish though!

18lb, look at the size of that head! The fish has a pretty big one too!

And just to rub it in, he had another fish in the night, this time a mirror. Again it looked like it should have done 20, but was spawned out so weighed in at 19lb. Both were caught on the new essential cell, and neither of them won him a bottle, hahaha!

19lb mirror from main

Day 4: Main Lake (part 2)

17lb from main

We opted to stay on the main lake for another 24 hours as Steve had had some fish and was optimistic for some more, and I'd piled in a load of boilies and had a feeling the fish would show up sooner or later. Steve struck again early morning, but I was half asleep and only took a photo with his camera, and cant really recall anything about it, other than I think it was around 17lb, my bad! I had one from the margins early on too, caught on paradises own "pink stink" wafters from a spot that had done my then PB a year before. A rather chunky and slightly battered mirror (from what we had caught it looked like the fish in main had only just stopped spawning), that was again 17lb. I was starting to wonder why I brought my scales, as everything seemed to be about 17lb! After the early morning feed things went predictably dead as the sun rose higher into the sky. We were due the storm any time now but the weather didn't seem to be able to make up its mind if it wanted to be calm and sunny or windy and wet. I decided to try and make the most of the calmer periods by firing out a load of dog biscuits to the middle of the lake to see if I could get anything to come to the surface. It was while doing this that a bird that became known (rather exaggeratedly) as the "pterodactyl" swooped down

onto my peg and like some kind of brightly feathered ninja made off with a stray dog biscuit before I had chance to get a good look at it. Obviously it was challenging me to get a photo of it before the session ended, and I accepted...

Due to the brief distraction from the pterodactyl, I had completely lost track of the dog biscuits so proceeded to fire another barrage out into the middle of the lake. It was at this point that I noticed a lad had set up on the far bank in the peg Steve was originally going to fish before breaking his bivvy. I also noticed he had the same bivvy as Steve, and by some strange twist of fate, had also broken it in the same place Steve had broken his. Don't worry this isn't another broken bivvy story, just a warning to all the eurodome owners out there, beware the bivvy breaker peg! Obviously that distracted me again, so a third round of dog biscuits were fired out to the middle of the lake. It's at this point that Steve decides to catch another fish, this time a common of 16lb.

16lb from main

By now I've fired out half my supply of dog biscuits and haven't even been watching to see if anything is taking any of them. So obviously a fourth barrage gets sent to the middle of the lake, and what do you know, 2 or 3 different fish proceed to pacman them off the top. The fish were too far away (about 50 yards) to get a look at them, but the swirls looked pretty sizable and that was all the convincing I needed to reel in one of my rods and break out the floater fishing gear! I set up with a large controller float to get the distance, a hooklength of around 4ft and a whittled down banoffee pop up as a makeshift imitation dog biscuit on a short hair to a size 8 wide gape hook, and a small mesh bag with some dog biscuits in which adds a little weight to the hook and helps straighten everything out when feathering the line on the cast and prevents tangles. I launched it out to the "danger zone" fully expecting every biscuit in the bag to be hoovered up and the hook bait completely ignored as is usually the way, when a big swirl appears behind the float and before I've had chance to decide if it was my hookbait the float has vanished and the drag on my reel is singing. Whatever it was was kiting off to the left at a rate of knots, and despite me reeling as fast as I could it looked like it was going to get behind the island before I'd gained enough line on it. Thankfully it gave up it's dash for freedom just a matter of feet before it reached the island and I finally had it under control and heading towards the net. I had a feeling what it might be from the way it just seemed to give up after a strong run, and my thoughts were confirmed when I slipped the net under a new PB grass carp of 19lb 8oz, so close to being a bottle winner!

19lb 8oz from main

Despite all the commotion, the other fish were still mopping up the remaining dog biscuits so I fired out some fresh freebies and put the rod back out in the danger zone. The wind was starting to pick up a bit again now so I had to recast every couple of minutes as my float drifted around to the left fairly quickly. It wasn't long though and I had another take, and another grass carp in the net, a bit smaller at 14lb.

Another mutant chub off the top from main

 There were still fish feeding on the surface, but they were slowly getting pulled away from my swim and towards the lad with the broken bivvy as the wind carried the remaining dog biscuits across the lake. I did my best to keep them in my water by trickle feeding dog biscuits off to my right in the hope the fish would follow the trail and come back towards me. It worked to some extent but I could only pull them back as far as the left edge of my swim, meaning my hookbait was only in the danger zone for maybe 30 seconds before I had to reel in and recast. In the end the wind got the better of me and the fish drifted over towards the lad in the broken bivvy.

17lb (again) from main

I did manage another fish on the margin rod later in the day, which as you've probably guessed weighed 17lb. The weather took a turn for the worse after that and we had a rather stormy night in the bivvies. I don't think it could have rained any harder, and it was relentless throughout the entire night. What can only be described as a small river was forming near our bivvies as water rushed down from the rest of the complex on the hill behind us. What was once my peg was now a lake of its own as the river backed up against the wooden logs that made up the front of the peg. When we awoke, the storm had passed but something didn't look right, something had changed. The lake appeared to be completely void of all the dwarf lillypads. On further inspection, they hadn't gone anywhere, the lake had just got about a foot deeper, and had submerged them all! On top of that, the lake was now flowing over the dam wall, and a large section of the bank where a stream flows into the lake had been washed away! Still, it never rains in Devon...

Day 5: Octopussy (again)

We had decided to try the specimen carp lake, but there were a few people on it already and previous experience told us that lots of lines in the water is a kiss of death for that lake, so we opted to give octopussy another go instead as it was completely empty. We hadn't heard of any cats coming out at all yet, so we re-rigged for catfish, after all they've got to eat something sooner or later right?

15lb 4oz from octopussy

Wrong! But the carp were still hungry, and I was pretty much out of usable 28mm pellets, and the alternative 21mm pellets proved easier for the carp to pick up, as it wasn't long before I had a 15lb 4oz mirror on the bank. I was actually quite pleased with this one, simply because it wasn't 17lb! We decided to have a bit of a break mid day and have some proper food in the villa and a shower as I had become quite "ripe" by now and I'm sure Steve wasn't any better. I'd also been instructed by Rich the tackle shop goblin earlier in the week to report to him early Wednesday afternoon as apparently I had been awarded something by the "angling writers guild" of which he seemed to be the head. I was rather dubious about receiving a reward from what appeared to be a made up guild with only 1 member, but my suspicions were unfounded when I was awarded a magnificent piece of fishing head wear in recognition of my "superb angling in adverse conditions" during my recent visit to Xanadu where I had endured swarms of ravenous midges to catch my PB common carp. I gratefully accepted my award and proceeded to adorn my head with it as I stocked up on a few items in the tackle shop. For some reason Steve, some other customers and especially Rich seemed to be struck down by some form of temporary hysteria but thankfully I seemed to be unaffected, probably due to some kind of shielding from my new hat.

We returned to the lake mid afternoon, revitalised and eager to try and win a bottle of wine after coming so close on a few of the previous captures. It wasn't long until my reel was screaming away again, but again it didn't feel like a cat at all. It was a carp of course, and a good one for octopussy, it was certainly over 17lb, but would it manage to sneak over the 20lb mark and win me a bottle of wine?

No! But it did weigh in at 19lb and had a bit of a funky scale pattern with huge scales all over its belly so I was happy all the same.

19lb and a rather fetching hat from octopussy

Evening came around all too fast and quickly turned into night. The cats still didn't seem to be playing ball and we were running out of holiday to try and win that bottle. It was then that I hatched a genius plan that couldn't possibly fail! I realised that 2 years ago on the peg I was currently on, I had caught a one whiskered catfish from a spot just off to my left, and the previous year I had caught the same catfish, from the exact same spot, so surely all I had to do was put a bait in that spot and see if my old mate stumpy was at home! So at last light, I placed 2 of the better looking 28mm pellets on the spot, and covered it with a handful of 21mm pellets and went to bed hoping that I'd soon be dragged out again.

I wasn't! But I was dragged out at 5am the following morning, and it was the stumpy rod that was away! It was apparent straight away that I'd finally found a catfish as the rod lunged over in the distinctive manner as the fish ploughed off up the right hand margin. I managed to get my other rod in out of the way and a tug of war battle ensued with the catfish trying to get around the arm of the island one minute, and under a marginal tree the next. After around 10 minutes it finally started to tire and it wasn't long before I had it safely in the net. It was easily a bottle winner so I called Steve to come take a photo for me while I rested the fish in the net. I jokingly said to him "I told you I'd catch stumpy" as I lifted it on to the mat, and when I peeled away the net to get a look at it, it only had one whisker! I never really thought in a million years I'd actually catch stumpy again from the same spot, but here we were, re-united for the third year in a row!

It's my old mate Stumpy at 26lb 8oz!

Me and Stumpy through the years. Some say Stumpy has more facial expressions than Nicholas Cage!

Self take photo full of sausage fingers

As I was wide awake from the fishy reunion and pretty much out of the 28mm cat baits, I decided to have a little crack at some carp using some boilies I'd designed mainly for barbel fishing in the upcoming river season that I'd brought along as a bit of a test run. I had 3 fish in about an hour, the biggest of which was this 16lb 8oz mirror before I switched back to 21mm pellets for a chance at another cat while I got a bit of shut eye in the bivvy. We didn't get any more runs on octopussy, the cats really didn't seem to be feeling it this week, maybe it was from all the cold water from the rain, maybe they gorged themselves silly the week before, who knows.

Day 6: Specimen Carp Lake.

We were going to give the main lake another go as it was completely empty bar a couple of anglers that we'd become friendly with during our week who'd jumped on our previous spots and as it turns out had done quite well from, so at least all those boilies I piled in didn't go to waste! There seemed to be a lot of fish patrolling one corner of the lake but it meant sitting in the teeth of the wind and to be honest by this point in the week I'd had enough of hiding in my bivvy, so we opted for the specimen carp lake instead. It still had a few anglers on, but they were all crammed onto one bank well away from where we wanted to go and they all looked like they were only doing the day so it looked worth a punt. We were in the right area as periodically we'd see the same fish swimming the same patrol routes, and it was only a matter of time before someone got a run. That someone was Steve, but it was obviously not a specimen carp and we assumed it was just going to be a little pasty. Turned out it was a golden tench, so although not what we were after was a nice surprise, and I think was a PB for Steve too!

tinca tinca now comes in new orange colour!

Not much else happened for the rest of the session, though we did get a good nights sleep! We tried just about everything, setting little traps on the patrol routes to trying to stalk them out from right under our feet but they either weren't feeling hungry or they had us well and truly sussed out (I suspect the latter). In an effort to try get them feeding on the top I did manage to attract the attention of what looked to be a decent sized orfe, which I managed to hook about 5 seconds after my first cast to it! Sadly it got in the dwarf lilly pads in the margin and come off before I had chance to scoop it out in the net.

Day 7: Float Lake

As is becoming tradition the Friday afternoon was spent just having a bit of fun catching the koi and other species from the float lake on a light float rod. We had loads between us including koi, carp, goldfish, chub, barbel, golden and blue orfe, golden tench, golden rudd and a few interesting hybrids! 

Just a small collection of the many, many fish we caught from the float lake

Not a pterodactyl

Phew! That was a bit of an epic blog, congratulations to anyone that made it to the end! Oh and just for those paying attention, after many, many failed attempts and using probably half a kilo of boilies to lure him out, I did finally manage to get a photo of the ninja pterodactyl! Turns out it was Jay, not a pterodactyl after all, who would have thought!

Tasty tinca...

I had a little reconnaissance mission to try find some tench on a local water earlier. I managed to find one, but someone had beaten me to it!

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!

A freebie for a PB (or 2) at Anglers Paradise...

I finally managed to make use of my 5 year loyalty weekend at Anglers Paradise this December, where they kindly provide loyal customers who have holidayed with them for 5 consecutive years with free accommodation for a weekends fishing on the well known complex.

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.

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.

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!

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!

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.