Chasing Commons

25/04/14 -27/04/14 - After having some fun last week tempting tench from a small pond in Sussex I set about planning my attack to target the large carp that inhabit a 280 acre water that I have been itching to fish. The stock is in the thousands, if rumours are to believed but in truth it is relatively unknown. I have seen some pictures of carp that range from long to stumpy, scaly to leather, dark to light, small to large and you name it this lake will have it. All of this amounts to some interesting fishing and some uncertainty adding to the excitement of fishing at such a beautiful venue. This feature of my blog will be updated on this post with every session so my entire campaign on this particular venue running from Spring to Autumn will be accumulated below.

The lake has a three rod rule and boats are allowed which makes baiting up and finding fish holding areas easier. I decided to use a basic Eco sounder that allowed me to row out and find features on the bottom of the lake bed that would be good to place a bait on. From the Eco sounder readings the topography of the lake seem fairly uniform with no big bars or ledges and just gradual slopes to depths of 22ft. I managed to find a spot based on the depth which was 12ft and dropped a H marker to which both my rods would be cast to either side. I then unloaded my bucket of vitalin onto the areas and my preparation was complete, now all I had to do was cast the rods and wait.

All three rods were fished on similar chod rigs with Tutti Fruity pop ups. I had added approximately 3kg of Tutti Fruity bottom baits to my spod mix to encourage the fish to feed confidently on my similar hook bait. The fishing was hard and I couldn't even manage a bream from the heavily baited areas. I began to question my set up and rigs but more importantly my location on the lake. A north easterly had began to blow into

UNDER CONSTRUCTION