The weather forecast said it would be about 17 degrees with the possibility of showers, some thundery.
Minutes after leaving the house a few drops of rain hit the windscreen and I thought I was in for a wet one. However after driving the 20 miles to Stubpond the rain had abated and the sun was out.
I arrived at 7:50, ten minutes before opening time to find the gates already open!
Paid my £1 day ticket fee, had a quick chat with the owner and then headed for my swim.
After the last trip's disastrous result which, after seeking advice, I put down to over-feeding on a coldish day, I felt I had to change my approach somewhat.Previous experience told me that the larger carp didn't usually show up until around mid day so I decided to set up two rods. The first, my 13' match rod, was set up using 4lb main line to a size 16 hook. The second was my 12' commercial float rod which was set up with 5lb main line to a size 14 hook.
I cut back on the initial groundbaiting. One large handful of brown crumb with a few pieces of sweetcorn plus 2 or 3 handfuls of hemp were thrown in. After that it was a small ball of groundbait every hour and I alternated between a few maggots and a few hemp seeds every cast.
First cast, and out came a nice roach. A fish a cast was the order of the day for the first hour as the little roach and rudd grabbed the single maggot as it dropped through the water. Every half hour or so I switched baits. Sometimes bread, sometimes corn trying to tempt a bigger fish and to see if there were signs of the carp were moving in.
When the bait was able to hit bottom I also managed a crucian, a tench and a few gudgeon. Also a few bream were showing, mainly skimmers but also this nice specimen which was around the 2lb mark.
At mid day I switched rods and began to include meat into the feed. I also tested meat on the hook from time to time along with maggot, bread and corn. At 12:30 I was rewarded with this carp which was around the 4lb mark.
The rest of the day I caught a few carp albeit pretty small ones until 4pm when I caught this lovely common which looks like it's carrying spawn.
So by the time I packed up around 5ish (why do commercials have to close so early in the summer months?) I had caught 45 fish, a mixed bag of roach, rudd, tench, bream, gudgeon, crucian, common and mirror carp.
For once I had to share the lake with one person to my immediate right and 3 people 4 swims along to my left. The sun shone all day and for the most part I had just a t-shirt on. Wonderful.
Tight Lines.
