Catching Wildies - September 2017

During the month of October I had perch on my mind and so I made my way to a local lake that contained some decent size fish to target. Although the perch are not massive in this particular lake they are great sport on light kit and It seemed the great venue for a peaceful day out on the bank. The session was more of a social event and my brother in law Jamie also joined me. The lake is a beautiful small estate lake set behind Hever Castle set in tranquil surroundings. It is stocked with most coarse fish and also contains some lovely wild carp that I was to find out about later on in the session.

I started of the day trying to catch some live baits for the perch but struggled to get any of a suitable size. After baiting for a while the bigger roach and Rudd started to appear and I managed a few fish close on 1lb. It was great to see such beautiful fish and of such decent size but I only managed two live baits so the I had to try and target the Perch on worms.

It was far from a typical Autumn day with really mild weather and it didn't take long before the carp were cruising on the surface. That was enough persuasion for me and I grabbed some bread from my sandwiches and went about setting up a floater rod to try and catch them of the surface. I walked around the lake and found numerous fish in the pads all of which looked good to take a bait. I started to feed the swims where the fish were located with some mixes Jamie had brought down to the lake after I called him and mentioned the carp were on the surface. Instantly they started to gobble down the mixes building confidence and it was then time to cast out . After some adjustments I had the rod in position and waiting for the carp to swing round, head back to the baited area and then BAM. I managed to catch a stunning little wild looking common carp and on such light gear was fantastic sport. So much for the Perch fishing.

Throughout the day this continued and we managed well over ten fish each up to around 10lb. Once the sun began to set we had them feeding so confidently it was a fish a cast and I even managed a nice brace of stunning commons for the camera. So although we didn't catch our intended species we had a fantastic day on the water and that's what really matters in fishing.