Today was my first chance to get out to the water since moving to AR so with the alarm going loopy at 6am this morning I rolled out of bed and looked at the weather forecast. Supposedly it was going to stay dry and we were having a warm spell (if you can call 50 - 60 warm!). I make a coffee and venture outside ... bloody hell it might be dry but the wind is blowing me all over the place - Bugger 1!. Oh well, its a chance to fish so I'll try it and see.
Load the truck (including the newly made backsaver mk1 trolley) and head off to the lake ..... well around 100 yards around the corner before discovering I need gas - Bugger2!. Pull up to the pump and get all set only to discover I'd left my cards on the computer desk while I was buying my AR fishing licence last night -Bugger 3 !! Ok off home, grab the required card, back to the gas station and finally get a tank full. Run inside to grab the mandatory coffee and a couple of candy bars for later only to find they haven't brewed the coffee yet - Bugger 4! Tell the guy behind the desk to get a move on and finally get a coffee to go.
Arrive out at the lake to see 6 inch waves rolling down the shoreline -Bugger 5! ...... sod it I'm here now I'm gonna go fish anyways. Load the trolley with all my gear ( why the heck do I carry 7 rods, a rucksack and a carryall I'll never know). Pull the trolley (wheee it works, at least, nothing falls off and I don't run anyone down) the 3/4 mile trip to the spot I'd already picked out last weekend and collapse onto the bedchair for a smoke and that garage coffee ( you didn't forget the coffee did ya ?).
Time to get the rods out, I had already spotted some submerged trees off to the left at 20 yards, so one rod dropped just short of them loaded with strawberry flavoured maize. Second rod fired out about 45 yards to the deeper water where a creek runs the legth of the lake ..... thats ones loaded with a 18mm strawberry boillie. 3rd rod crashed out about 70 yards to the narrow part of the lake where the creek runs in ... this one can have a popped up 15mm boillie about 4 inches off the bottom ... oh it was strawberry too ?( see a pattern here?).
After getting all the rods on the pod and sorting out the rest of my gear it was time to break out the float rod as well. This was going to be fished in about 6 feet of water right at a small underwater point about 30 feet off the bank ( or that was the plan anyways). I rig a crystal waggler and get settled back to finish my coffee. By now it was about 7-30 and the walkers/runners/human type peeps were beginning to have their daily wander around the lake ... I think I scared most of them but one or two were brave enough to come see what the heck was going on. Around 8-00 the float dipped, dipped again and then disappeared ...... bugger me a bite .... reckon it'll either be a small cat or one of the numerous trout that I'd already see mooching around.
Well lo and behold it was a scrappy little carp .... on light float tackle it charged up and down the margins like someone had set a cat on it. Nothing big but its a carp and my mission for the day was to bank one carp, just to prove they were in here. Alas that would be the last fish to fall to the float as the wind was dragging the floats everywhere.
My first AR carp, a little 7lb specimen
No sooner had I rebait and recast than the 3rd rod on the pod throws a wobbly and a screaming run develops. This was the pop up rod and after a brief but fun tussle another carp graced the banks. This guy went a shade over the 10lb mark so marked my second AR carp with a double and a new AR PB too ....wow
Carp number two to fall to my sneaky ambushes!
As the day wore on I banked another smaller fish and 3 more doubles, nothing of any great size but each fish was a deep gold colour with heavy red colouring around the fins and tail.
Well by 3pm the wind was actually blowing my hangers off my rod pod. No I'd never seen it happen before but 3 or 4 times I looked over at what I thought was a run only to see the hanger was completely off the pod and blowing like a windmill in the wind.
The final score for the day was 1 small carp to hi-attract trout pellets
1 small carp to maize on the bottom
1 double to the boillie on the bottom
3 doubles to the popped up boillie
1 lost fish to my clumsiness !
Heres a final picture when the wind had dropped and the sun was out .....
All in all I was happy with my first venture out, I'd hoped to just prove to myself that there were carp in the water and I guess I did that ... I'm not sure that there is anything of any size in there, after talking to a few locals it appears the lake had been drained to the creek bed all summer and what fish are in there had come in via the creek after refilling. Next trip is a smaller pool, 3/4 of it has never been fished because its acxtually the end of an airport runway ... but with Euro gear I can cover the unfished areas and see whats there.
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