All round specialist angler Stuart Court has been turning his attentions to carp since the start of the season on the legendary Savay Lake in the heart of the Colne Valley . This is Stuart’s first season as a member of the night syndicate and on his first rota he had a rather special result, Stuart takes up the story:
My first session of the season was fast approaching and my excitement had been building for weeks. Just the name ‘Savay’ alone stirs something in the very soul of most carp anglers, its a place that we’ve all read about in the books and magazines, a place that has absolutely everything a carp fishing venue should……..beautiful surroundings and fantastic fish with a heritage and history that is so rare in this modern world of carp fishing.
As you’d expect, Savay in 2012 is a very difficult water, the fish are old and extremely wise so I was under no illusions that it was going to be an easy task to fool one into taking my bait so early in the season.
In the lead up to the start of the season, wherever you fish, all you can do is ensure that you’ve prepared yourself and your kit properly. Get the freezer loaded with fresh bait, pump up the flat barrow tyre, make sure the rods and reels are cleaned of all the muck that covered them from the previous winter, load new line onto your spools and make sure the tackle box is replenished with all those essential little items that could help play a part in snaring you your first fish of the season.
On this occasion my thorough preparations paid great dividends when I was rewarded with a beautiful old mirror carp weighing 35lb 2oz. Its a superb feeling to catch any fish from such a water but what made it even more special for me was the fact that this is a fish with quite a history. A picture of this very fish appears in the classic Rob Maylin book Tiger Bay from back in the 80’s when Rob caught it at a weight of 30lb 8oz. It’s an original Leney that is thought to have been stocked into Savay in 1950 making it somewhere in the region of 65 years old!!!!!! There can’t be too many carp of that age still alive and swimming today, what a massive honour it is to have caught such a lovely historic old carp. The fantastic condition it displays is a huge testament to Savay as a fishery and to every member of the syndicate that has fished there over the years.
The fish was taken from a lightly weedy area at around 70 yards which I had baited with around 2 kilos of CC Moore Live System boilies. The baits were spread fairly wide rather than introduced in a tight spot due to the weedy nature of the area and a 15mm Live System pop up was used to avoid the hook being masked by the bottom weed.
Rig wise, I always keep things fairly basic so generally go with a set up that will allow me to fish a pop up or a bottom bait without changing anything but the bait itself. This is so I can adapt quickly and efficiently to the different types of lakebed I may find in any given swim. My tackle consist of 15lb ESP Syncro XT straight through with 12 inches of Anchor tubing just above an ESP ejector lead clip. My favoured hook link material is 20lb Striptease in either weedy green or Gravel brown depending on what type of lakebed I’m fishing over. I simply tie a size 7 or 8 Raptor D-7 with a very basic knotless knot removing around 1cm of coating just above the hook, then i pull a further few millimeters of the coating back leaving it crumpled slightly, this is to give my tungsten putty something to grip onto so it doesn’t fly off during a hefty cast. A largish lump of tungsten putty works to pull the hook down into the fishes bottom lip when used with a bottom bait and also acts to weight down a buoyant pop up so its kept on the hook link regardless of the bait being used. This rig is as basic as it gets but I have every confidence that, as long as the hook is sharp, it will catch fish from anywhere. It also has the added bonus of being different to most of the more complex rigs that many anglers tend to use these days, that alone could be an edge.