My little slice of heaven.

It's not very often we find a lake that has virtually no angling pressure these days, especially in the area I live! So imagine my surprise when I stumbled along a small intimate lake not too far from the market town of Selby that, from what I heard and have seen, holds a good head of carp up to the 20lb bracket.

When I pulled the car into the car park I was blown away by the beauty of the place. Tree lined with good solid pegs, reeds and large weed beds. Perfect. I took a walk around the lake and saw plenty of fish in every peg so I decided to set up away from the entrance in a bay that just looked too good. It was my first trip to the venue and I decided that the weed beds in the bay would be the most obvious feature to fish too as I didn't want to thrash the water to a foam with a marker float. With the weed beds coming to the top I could make out the edge quite clearly so a cast with a bare lead found that where the weed finished on the surface it indeed finished on the bottom too.


Baring this in mind I decided a pop up bait would be best as there will most likely be a few strands of the green stuff kicking about and I wanted the baits to sit a pretty as possible. I set one rod with a Chod rig on a diffusion leader and finished of with a Monster Squid Purple pop up. On the other rod I decided to place it where the weed bed split to the left and the lake bottom looked much clearer. I pulled out the multi-rig combi-link for this spot as I feel it would offer the best presentation on the clear bottom, again tipped with a Purple pop up and using a Fang Twister hook with a short kicker.

Multi-rig Combi-rig

As the lake has a boilie ban then I went armed with pellet and some hemp and fished the MS pop ups over the top. The day was one of the warmest we had had so far this year and the carp were making the most of the sun, basking in the weed that lined 90% of the pond. No amount of riser pellet was going to shift them on the surface yet alone a bait five foot below them! 

As the day drew on I had a 'lead' around the lake to get used to any features etc and I found that the lake bed is compiled mostly of silt but a nice soft shallow silt. Around the margins it firms up and a nice 'donk' gets transmitted through the rod when the lead lands on them. 

At around an acre and averaging roughly five foot in depth with a lot of natural features and from the look of the carp, a lot of natural food, I think I will thoroughly enjoy the time I will be spending on the bank. I had been set up in the larger swim for a few hours and decided that I would reel in and head down the lake to try tempt any carp that might be around in the weed free, lilly padded corner. I was hoping to see if any took a liking to some pellets of the surface but after an hour of trying and several large rudd destroying every riser pellet I put out I decided to reposition the bottom baits in the main swim for the last hour. About ten minutes after the Chod rig had been placed a short distance off the weed on the harder bottom it ripped off and I was soon playing my first fish from the venue. 

Small but a cracker.

The little guy ran me ragged in to the weed and a few lilly pads but he was soon in the net and at about 9lb it wasn't the biggest fish I had seen that day but was a real stunner. Now I can't wait to get back and next time I have some little edges tucked away that I reckon will put a few more fish on the bank. 

Matt.