James Wilsmer - Spring
Well I must admit it’s been quite a while since I’ve put pen to paper for a carp angling mag. For the last couple of seasons I’ve not done as much angling as I’d have liked due to business commitments and various changes in my life but Simon and I (we run DT for those of you that didn’t know) decided it was time for me to brush the rods off and do some big carp angling again.
My chosen venue for the year was one that had been on my mind for quite a while. It’s always hard trying to find a realistic lake with a decent head of fish to go for which isn’t a million miles from my home - especially one that wasn’t mobbed 24/7. However DTs Production Manager Neil Messenger, (affectionately known to us in the DT camp as the ‘Awesome one’) inspired me with two great catches he had at the back end of the Autumn from Fryernings which is only 10 miles from my front door
After seeing Neil’s pictures and hearing his stories I was totally sold on the place, as after only some twenty nights fishing last year Neil had managed to catch and bank 14 carp (one loss) with every single fish being over thirty pounds! Yes you read it right all fourteen over thirty pounds. Unreal.
After a quick call to Chris Knowles (the owner of Fryerning) I was soon driving down the estate track and meeting up with him in the Lodge which resides by the lake. After chatting with Chris it soon appeared for once in my carp angling career I’d met a fishery owner who genuinely knew how to cater to a big carp anglers needs.
The stock appear quite regularly in the pages of Carp Talk but really is quite staggering with something in the region of a 100 fish in the main lake with four or five fish pushing over the 40+ bracket, with the biggest known as the ‘Gurm’ – yes odd name I know, but a corker all the same. She came out back in October at 45+. After that we then come to the thirties with a conservative 50 or 60 of these fish, maybe more for all I know, being in the thirty plus bracket with many over 35+ and the remaining stock being upper twenties! I couldn’t believe what I was hearing an ideal venue for me to promote and field test our bait and it was ten minutes from my door step. Nice!
My chosen venue for the year was one that had been on my mind for quite a while. It’s always hard trying to find a realistic lake with a decent head of fish to go for which isn’t a million miles from my home - especially one that wasn’t mobbed 24/7. However DTs Production Manager Neil Messenger, (affectionately known to us in the DT camp as the ‘Awesome one’) inspired me with two great catches he had at the back end of the Autumn from Fryernings which is only 10 miles from my front door
After seeing Neil’s pictures and hearing his stories I was totally sold on the place, as after only some twenty nights fishing last year Neil had managed to catch and bank 14 carp (one loss) with every single fish being over thirty pounds! Yes you read it right all fourteen over thirty pounds. Unreal.
After a quick call to Chris Knowles (the owner of Fryerning) I was soon driving down the estate track and meeting up with him in the Lodge which resides by the lake. After chatting with Chris it soon appeared for once in my carp angling career I’d met a fishery owner who genuinely knew how to cater to a big carp anglers needs.
The stock appear quite regularly in the pages of Carp Talk but really is quite staggering with something in the region of a 100 fish in the main lake with four or five fish pushing over the 40+ bracket, with the biggest known as the ‘Gurm’ – yes odd name I know, but a corker all the same. She came out back in October at 45+. After that we then come to the thirties with a conservative 50 or 60 of these fish, maybe more for all I know, being in the thirty plus bracket with many over 35+ and the remaining stock being upper twenties! I couldn’t believe what I was hearing an ideal venue for me to promote and field test our bait and it was ten minutes from my door step. Nice!
Ticket paid for - I was down the following Saturday for a quick night to get a rough idea of the venue. The initial recce trips on a new water always excite me with the prospect of catching some new whackers. Well for a Saturday it wasn’t too busy at all - even better! Being 18 acres, it’s a reasonable sized pit and considering I’d been angling 3 and 4 acre pits the last few years it looked huge initially but it wasn’t long before I was launching a lead out to the horizon on the end of a fresh south westerly. It was great to be angling again!
Although very little at the time had been caught, (two fish in fact since December) it didn’t really put me off as I knew fish of this size would soon be on the munch after a seriously cold Winter.
Now to many of you this probably seems all too good to be true, 40’s and 30’s in abundance on my doorstep, not massively pressured and a good looking venue to boot. However, as with anything it can’t all be this good and there is a downside to this little story which comes in the shape of Ronnie and Reggie the Crayfish Twins.
This place is alive with the little gits and to be honest in part is probably one of the reasons for the incredible growth rates of the fish on the venue. Now being a gym and fitness freak myself I know all too well the benefits of a high protein diet and crayfish serve that part immensely well for the carp. Every crayfish infested carp venue I’ve come across in my career the fish have truly grown onto huge sizes.
It seemed apparent that they were a real nightmare for rig presentation and I’d been fed all the horror stories of them tangling up rigs and pulling baits off hairs. In fact one angler even said to me he reckoned he’d seen a group crawl out the water one day to sun themselves! Well whatever the case was I’ve never been one to be deterred by the old carp angling challenges that goes hand in hand with every lake. I’ve never been a fan of the plastic stuff on the hook and being a big boile fan, that would be my approach as it is practically on every venue I fish. Carp love boilies - period! The only difference I had to combat with the crayfish was my hook bait and Chris at Fryerning had just the answer for me - clear 18mm shrink tube that can be double shrink wrapped around the hook bait and pierced the same as you would a normal hook bait. However, instead of using a standard hair stop I would incorporate one of the new style anti crayfish/pouisson chat stops now produced by the likes of Kevin Nash and Korda.
The baits look a bit odd at first but I blocked this minor change out my head and concentrated more on finding the fish first and then see what happened.
Having seen four fish head and shoulder at distance between my chosen swim – ‘The Millstone’ (named due to it having a bloody great Millstone behind it!) and the Dam end swim up to my left I scattered all three rods on single 15mm N-Blend bottom baits at 90 yards range. The rods were roughly where I’d seen the fish, but not exactly on them as they were in fact more to my left in front of two guys set up in the Dam swim. As it happened the night passed uneventful and although I stayed up well past midnight I didn’t see any more carp movement that session.
Although very little at the time had been caught, (two fish in fact since December) it didn’t really put me off as I knew fish of this size would soon be on the munch after a seriously cold Winter.
Now to many of you this probably seems all too good to be true, 40’s and 30’s in abundance on my doorstep, not massively pressured and a good looking venue to boot. However, as with anything it can’t all be this good and there is a downside to this little story which comes in the shape of Ronnie and Reggie the Crayfish Twins.
This place is alive with the little gits and to be honest in part is probably one of the reasons for the incredible growth rates of the fish on the venue. Now being a gym and fitness freak myself I know all too well the benefits of a high protein diet and crayfish serve that part immensely well for the carp. Every crayfish infested carp venue I’ve come across in my career the fish have truly grown onto huge sizes.
It seemed apparent that they were a real nightmare for rig presentation and I’d been fed all the horror stories of them tangling up rigs and pulling baits off hairs. In fact one angler even said to me he reckoned he’d seen a group crawl out the water one day to sun themselves! Well whatever the case was I’ve never been one to be deterred by the old carp angling challenges that goes hand in hand with every lake. I’ve never been a fan of the plastic stuff on the hook and being a big boile fan, that would be my approach as it is practically on every venue I fish. Carp love boilies - period! The only difference I had to combat with the crayfish was my hook bait and Chris at Fryerning had just the answer for me - clear 18mm shrink tube that can be double shrink wrapped around the hook bait and pierced the same as you would a normal hook bait. However, instead of using a standard hair stop I would incorporate one of the new style anti crayfish/pouisson chat stops now produced by the likes of Kevin Nash and Korda.
The baits look a bit odd at first but I blocked this minor change out my head and concentrated more on finding the fish first and then see what happened.
Having seen four fish head and shoulder at distance between my chosen swim – ‘The Millstone’ (named due to it having a bloody great Millstone behind it!) and the Dam end swim up to my left I scattered all three rods on single 15mm N-Blend bottom baits at 90 yards range. The rods were roughly where I’d seen the fish, but not exactly on them as they were in fact more to my left in front of two guys set up in the Dam swim. As it happened the night passed uneventful and although I stayed up well past midnight I didn’t see any more carp movement that session.
As I was packing away Sunday afternoon I heard that a 31lb mirror had been out the other side of the island up to the right of me. Clearly an area worth investigating before I left with the marker rod. The area seemed great for a Spring time assault, shallow at 5 and 6ft, a south facing bank and it just happened to face the open water marks where I’d seen the fish from the Millstone. Perfect. all I had to do was to get down earlier next week for an Easter Bank Holiday session to ensure I got the swim!
Thursday of the Bank Holiday couldn’t have come any quicker and I rushed about first thing to make sure I was back a the lake as early as I could. Well as luck had it there were only five anglers on with the swim in question (‘The Box’) completely free for me to carry out some carp tramp activities for four days which is a seriously long session for me since I normally fish for a 24hr period at the most.
The fish were very much still in the area from the week before and with a strong south westerly wind on the cards all bank holiday, I was not only on the fish but in a perfect area where I couldn’t be ‘bombed up’ by other anglers having some 4 acres of island and open water to myself.
The first night proved uneventful using only single hook baits however, for the rest of the session I decided to give them a bit of bait after firstly seeing how much damage the crayfish could do to a few of them in the margins. 5kg of 15mm N-Blend baits were sticked out to the area and over the following three nights I managed 4 takes, a 29lb 2oz fully scaled, a 33lb 8oz mirror, a 34lb 2oz mirror and lost one.
Suffice to say I packed up a very happy angler that weekend, especially considering that only 2 other fish were banked for the next week and half of angling on the venue. Any way that’s me signing off just to let you know I’ve just finished my third session and banked another 3 up to 34lb but that’s for next time. Tight lines.
Thursday of the Bank Holiday couldn’t have come any quicker and I rushed about first thing to make sure I was back a the lake as early as I could. Well as luck had it there were only five anglers on with the swim in question (‘The Box’) completely free for me to carry out some carp tramp activities for four days which is a seriously long session for me since I normally fish for a 24hr period at the most.
The fish were very much still in the area from the week before and with a strong south westerly wind on the cards all bank holiday, I was not only on the fish but in a perfect area where I couldn’t be ‘bombed up’ by other anglers having some 4 acres of island and open water to myself.
The first night proved uneventful using only single hook baits however, for the rest of the session I decided to give them a bit of bait after firstly seeing how much damage the crayfish could do to a few of them in the margins. 5kg of 15mm N-Blend baits were sticked out to the area and over the following three nights I managed 4 takes, a 29lb 2oz fully scaled, a 33lb 8oz mirror, a 34lb 2oz mirror and lost one.
Suffice to say I packed up a very happy angler that weekend, especially considering that only 2 other fish were banked for the next week and half of angling on the venue. Any way that’s me signing off just to let you know I’ve just finished my third session and banked another 3 up to 34lb but that’s for next time. Tight lines.
James.