I have to admit to being a bit of a carp fishing nomad so far this season, finding it hard to settle on one lake for one reason or another and a lot of unexpected extra work has taken up a fair bit of my valued angling time too.
I spent the early spring on Cleverley Top Lake, carrying on where I had left off the previous autumn and with the lake fishing very tough due to the unusually cold weather only managed a few carp, mainly on zigs topped by a nice scaley one of 28lb 5oz so it wasn’t all bad. The new season saw a large influx of super keen new members and after slipping the net under a lovely old character known as Busted at 28lb 8oz just a couple of hours in on the first day I decided it was time to look for some where a bit quieter until the early surge of new members had calmed.
This led me to a quick overnight session on Cleverley Mere. It was my first session on the lake and I knew I was on limited time as the carp were about to spawn which would rightly see the lake closed for two weeks. After flicking the rods out just before dark in a small bay I was finally rewarded the next morning with a 33lb 4oz mirror known as Zeppers, my first Mere carp. As I suspected the carp spawned the next day on both lakes so that was my cue to exit the Cleverley complex for a couple of weeks.
A couple of nights filming on the Mill syndicate lake followed and I literally lost count of the carp I caught over the two thoroughly enjoyable nights, topped by a lovely mirror of just over 20lbs.
A few overnighters on a club lake followed and I managed three carp to 21lb 8oz, again all heavily spawned out and not looking too great for the camera and the biggun there came out over seven pounds down in weight so it was time to exit there too.
A quick night back on a busy Cleverley Mere resulted in a small common and the loss of a good one in the early hours and now it’s back to the task in hand on the Top Take. My first and only session to date was again an overnighter and after an uneventful night I managed no less than five morning bites before packing up. A nice common of 20lbs started the proceedings, quickly followed by a spawned out 20lb 8oz mirror and then a crazy double take producing a mysterious 30lb 2oz common and the stunning Birthmark Linear a little down after spawning at 25lb 10oz. The last bite as I was packing up unfortunately resulted in a loss but I will without doubt be returning very soon.
The vast majority of the carp I have caught in recent weeks have all been nailed on a little mono rig I have been using comprising an ESP 15lb or 18lb Syncro XT hook link and a size 9 ESP Long Shanx hook coupled with a critically balanced 12mm Baitcraft T1 and ESP Buoyant Corn hook bait and a small mesh bag of matching T1 boilie crumb. The hook holds have all been superb so far. I will be doing a video on this rig which will be appearing on the ESP website very soon.