Twynersh 2012 Pit 5

If you are a follower of my blog you may have noticed that I have not  submitted a post to thechoppedworm.com recently. This was due to a combination of both a broken foot and extremely intense university work. In fact I have not been carp fishing since my trip to Linear Fisheries in October with my brother. As soon as my leg was out of its cast and my university assignments submitted I was eager to get back on the banks. My girlfriend is currently pregnant and we are expecting our second, a boy  (Jack) to arrive at the end of May so pressure was on to get our last days fishing together . We planned a two night trip whilst our daughter Freya went to Disneyland Paris with her nan and grandad.
                         I decided to go back to one of my favourite day ticket fisheries Twynersh and fish the small secluded pit (pit 5) located behind pit 2. This small lake of approximately 0.5 acres holds some beautiful carp and has a surprise or two with a near 30lb common reported. It was the perfect lake to get away from the crowd, have some peace and quite and hopefully get a bend in my rod.
                    My tactics for the session were similar to the tactics used at linear fisheries in October and the bait a favourite of mine featured numerous times in this blog. Both rods were tied up with small naked chod rigs and baited with Hi Viz pineapple boilies. I set up a marker rod and made my way to the far bank to have a feel about with the lead and get an idea of the depth. As visible in the below picture of the swim a large sunken tree provided a great place for the first bait to be position near. I was reluctant to cast to close to the tree and allow the fish to snag me up on a take so the plan was to draw the fish from the snaggy area onto my bait. The depth dropped to seven feet almost instantly from the bank and so I fished close to the marginal shelf. I baited this swim from the far bank with a 2kg mix of sweetcorn, chopped boilies (some whole similar to hook bait),cornflakes, 6mm halibut pellets, salt, pineapple flavouring and some van den eyed ground bait.  The other rod was positioned six feet from bank close to my swim, again on the marginal shelf drop off and baited with the same mix.

The day passed uneventful but I was not disheartened as during my research of the lake I noticed most of the captures were at night and so this is when I expected a take. Before hitting the sleeping bag I tightened up my bait runners and marked up my line enabling me to hit the precise spot if I need to recast in darkness.
At 12.30am my rod fished at close range let out a series of beeps and I stumbled out of the sleeping bag. When I lifted into the fish I could instantly tell a Bream was on the other end. To my amazement the fish was quite large and weighed 7lb!!!. I took a quick snap with the help from my tired "didn't have a clue what was going on" fishing partner and jumped back in bed. At 3.30am my right hand rod fished to the far snags rattled off and I again fell gracefully out of my sleeping bag to strike into a fish that was definitely a carp. Luckily for me the fish turned straight out of the snags and after a short lazy fight she was ready for netting. Unfortunately I could not reach the net placed on the grass verge after the bream catch. I called my partner who was asleep and the angry lady with soaking wet feet finally managed to get out the bivvy and pass me the net. She was not amused, tired, had wet feet and was absolutely freezing. It was minus two degrees to be precise. Finally after taking out my other rod I netted a beautiful 16lb common. After the picture I slipped her back, untangled both rods, recast and got some deserved shut eye.

Day two also passed uneventfully and after some unsuccessful stalking I re-baited my furthest margin swim. I also decided to fish the other rod in this area and dropped a bait close to the sunken tree. At 1.30am the right hand rod rattled off again and I pulled into a strong fish. I have honestly never had such a fight from a fish of this size and it made four huge runs heading for the far snags. It just didn't give up and after eight minutes the fish was mine. My back and arms were aching and when weighed the fish only went 13lb!!!. I think the shape of the carp gave it its immense power and it was all rock solid muscle no fat. Another lovely common in the bag.

I caught no more fish during the session but had a great fun. I think Twynersh as a open access venue is excellent and the owners do a great job of looking after the place. Everyone seems friendly and the facilities provided are excellent. I will be returning in a couple of weeks for a three night session and will be looking to fish pit 7. Until then tight lines.