Kris Garrett has been in touch with news of a couple of lovely commons from an Essex club lake.
Well the colder weather has finally arrived seeing the first few ground frosts of this season. I have come off a local syndicate to target a common in a club water. The lake is around 6 acres and would say around 150 plus carp (so pretty easy to get a take or so I thought). Unfortunately at the start of the season with high rainfall the lake was flooded for a couple of weeks and since then it has fished very poor seeing the top rod of last season doing in excess of 50 nights for 5 fish. The stock average’s between 14 and 17lb with a handful of 20s, 3 30s plus the big-un which is around 43lb plus.
I did 3 blank nights before slipping the first culprit in the net, a stunning upper double mirror nicked off the top in an evening session. Rig was simply a controller with 5ft of 10lb double strength to a size 9 specialist hook. A couple more nights with nothing to show for my efforts and I started to get itchy feet, so a mobile approach was adopted seeing me move several times per night casting bags at showing fish. While doing this I kept a bit of bait going on a spot that the big-un is known to do a few captures from but most times I struggled to get in the swim. I started catching constantly using the mobile approach but I felt none the closer to the better fish.
On a Wednesday night I managed to get on the baited area with the 2 rods on the spots which felt a lot harder than they previously did I sat back with a brew full of confidence. At 8pm the right hand rod was away and after a short scrap one of the better ones was beaten. The size 5 stiff rigger was firmly nailed in the bottom lip with the DT Baits colder water bottom bait a good inch back. Now I was sure the baited spot would come in to play. I did 9 nights within a 2week period catching every trip normally within 30mins of getting down after work. They seemed to be waiting for me to get there.