Thanks to Kev Hewitt for a report on his fishing so far this year. Its no suprise that it’s full of carp as Kev is a carp catching machine! Look out for some very interesting carp catching edges from Kev on the videos section of the ESP website.
It is a funny old game this carp fishing. One minute you can be down and out on a real struggle and then like a light it can switch on and your whole season seems to have turned around. I found myself getting off to a slow start to the year although partly due to my lack of motivation to go out in sub zero conditions but probably more to do with the fact that I had been enjoying fishing matches on Larford Lakes in Worcester every Sunday.
Winter took forever to ease off and it wasn’t until early March that I put my seat box and pole to the back of the garage and dusted off my carp rods. I spent most of March on St.Johns on the Linear complex in search of the illusive small plated but although I got plenty of bites and put lots of fish on the bank, I never managed to get through to the better fish. It seemed like I was working over time on the numbers game, wading through doubles with the odd 20 thrown in. It was the zigs that were consistent in getting bites for me, the trusty 10ft of 12Lb double strength, size 10 Barbel hooks with black foam hookbaits doing the business: as it has for a number of springs for me.
The weather warmed up ever so quickly in April and I found myself heading back to my Oxfordshire syndicate. My first fish of the year from the venue came to a floater in the shape of a scraper 30 mirror and the following day I had a further five fish including one of the most sought after fish in the venue, the awesome slate grey at 43Lb+. The following week I managed abrace of thirties including a magnificent 32Lb fully scaled which really was gorgeous and all of a sudden in a two week period, my poor start to the year had been forgotten.
My next outing was a trip to Baden Hall in Shropshire for a BCAC qualifier with my good friend Mark Bartlett. We knew very little about the venue and had never seen the place before. We believed that this could work in our favour as it is often someone who turns up and does something totally different that prospers. As per usual we came low down in the draw, 9th in fact so only had a few swims to chose from but we were happy with our swim choice. During the 48 hours, we banked 10 fish for 215Lb and we were comfortably though to the semi finals in July as winners of the match. All of the fish fell to large Bulk pva bags fished up tight to some big weed beds with small fluro hookbaits. It was nice to fish for 48 hours without having to get a spod rod out – something which doesn’t happen very often for me!
Where to next then? Well this summer I will be flitting between waters but still have my eyes set on a very big fish called the Hamster from my syndicate lake – A fish that is on borrowed time i’m sure! I willkeep you posted on how that one pans out.
Tight lines, Kev.