Winter Action

There's no escaping the fact that once winter is upon us, blanking becomes all too frequent on the harder waters. This winter i had planned to spend my time experimenting with various bait and essential oils at my cambs syndicate. 'the folly syndicate'.

The lake i settled on can be hard at the best of times. I knew the lake like the back of my hand, having done a fair number of sessions over the years. The Mascal Carp lake is 7 acres in size, weedy one side of the lake and like a snooker table the other, depths down to around 20ft. It contains a good head of fish over 30lb and a few over 40lb, These are the ones I'm hunting.

My First Winter session was just a few days after boxing day. Conditions didn't look to well as the nights were down to -5 and i knew a few more weeks of this weather the lake would have a lid over it.

So i started baiting up my swim before i even had any of my gear out as i wanted the carp to start moving into my area as not many people was fishing on the lake at the time.

After i had put about 3kilo of boilies out and about 20 spods of my mix I started thinking about my plan to catch these crafty carp. If i caught one fish i would have been happy

Time wasn't on my side as the night was closing in, so i got my stalker rod out and quickly tied a small chody rig and placed a 10mm white pop up on that i had been soaking in irn bru for about a week.

The chod rig was placed in about 12ft of water on top of a small amount of weed and was baited up ready for the night ahead.

Confidence was high as i was getting alot of liners through the early hours of the night. Sleeping with one eye open waiting for the Nash sirens to light up the night.

Morning came without a run, i knew it was going to be hard so wasn't put down by this.

I took a walk over to the small lake to see flash had pulled up in the car park swim doing an overnight with his mate Russ. After having a chat with the guys i went back to my rods to think of a new plan to try and get me a bite. After sitting thinking about what i was going to do the line started to move on my rod, just a few bleeps and i sore that the rod tip was moving so i knew there was a fish on.

So down i went to strike my rod and could feel a fish on the other end, The smile on my face got bigger and bigger the closer the fish came in, as it felt like a big one. After a 5 - 10 min fight the winter carp was in the net.

New pb common at 35lb 10oz  

This was just the start to one of my best winter fishing experience.