Earlswood Carping with CFM
07/06/2010
Due to recent promotion and drawing the short straw a lot when it comes to the late shifts I haven’t been out on the bank as much as I’d have liked the past two months, with the weather warming and the fishing now spawning chances at my local syndicate water are slim to none and with the addiction I have towards carping I had to catch a fish before I went crazy. With my day off looming and my order of boilies from ocean fresh on its way all I could do is set my rods up, tidy up the fishing shed and sort all my gear out for a cheeky 12 hour session down at my local day ticket water, Earlswood lakes. My day off arrives, Wednesday, my preferred day to fish as everyone else is at work and the lakes are usually empty. I arrive with little gear, just my brolly, pod, two rods and a bag with only the essentials; I figured I’d go for a walk around the lake firstly to see who’s fishing where and who’s caught. I settled on the Dam wall with a gentle breeze blowing towards me, I scattered about 30 boilies about 20 foot out whilst I got my rods out and pod set up. The fish are crashing all over the place as it’s that time of the year, spawning. Fishing the damn wall means if fish are in the deeper parts they are more than likely on the feed rather than in the margins havin’ a bit of carp-lovin’ so better my chances of getting a bend in the rods from the deeper parts of the lake.
My approach was pva bags of boilie crumb and a critically balanced boilie (15mm Chilli Fish & Meat 15mm Carp Bait )on a size 8 wide gape, any carp even sucking near this will hopefully get a mouth full of korda wide gape. With both rods out and 20 minutes later the first run, it was a small common, about 7lbs. I had 8 carp in the first 2 hours by just throwing boilies out by hand and getting a good scattering, the biggest being 16lb and the smallest my first common of the session, the rest of the carp were all between 10lbs and 15lbs, typical for Earlswood lakes as the average carp is about 13lbs now. The runs dried up after the first two hours so if sat in the warmth of the sun and enjoyed my time away from work. The next two hours that passed went without a bite by this time it had gone 12 in the afternoon and the fishing was getting slower, beeps on the alarm every so often which made me jump for the rods every time!!! I’m sure we all know how this feels. Come 4pm in the afternoon my right hand swinger dropped a little, stopped, dropped a little more then stopped then come back up and hit the buzzer and I ran for the rod, kicked my tackle box over losing quite a bit of stuff over the edge of the damn wall into the water, swivels, hooks, bait, baiting needle etc....all the stuff I’d need to stay for the rest of the day really so as you can imagine there was a lot of four lettered words being used i remembered cursing and saying “If this is a bream I’m gonna be pissed”...it was heavy and plodding and usually that’s a sign of a big carp, it fought for about 5 minutes which seemed like forever when you know this is the last fish of the day. Small whirls were ascending towards the surface like mini tornados and between them the flicker of the carps tail, I hadn’t a clue how big this fish was as all because the fish fight like they’re on steroids so it’s hard to tell, once on the surface I saw this was a big-ish carp I thought about 18,19lbs at a guess until I saw it on the unhooking mat.
My second 20 from the lake in the last 4 months result. Over the moon and forgetting id just kicked a good £50’s worth of gear in the lake I packed up after getting a cyclist to stop and take some photos for me. With my next lot of boilies I’ll be down at my syndicate hoping to get the big one, with 6 known 30’s and 50 twenty plus carp I look forward to writing my next report with an ambition of having a 30+ carp in my hands...easier said than done.
Tight lines