Good Evening.

It has been a long old day. I started packing up at 10am this morning and made my way across to Chez Pierres to my parked van, with my dogs as accompanying passengers. Flash is a good traveller, but Charley (bless her) has to whine all the way! Lee arrived on cue, to help get my boats unloaded and we then popped round to see Danilo in Aviron. He had a 21.5kg common last night which was great news to hear. He has picked up about a dozen fish since he moved into the swim towards the middle of April to 23kg. I hope you get the ‘Big One’ Danilo.

We then went for a look in the reserves. Lee had made an earlier visit in the morning and had observed a lot of carp mooching around. Some looked like they have spawned and others are still chasing each other round. It was about 2pm when we both turned up and we saw some very big carp milling around under the surface. There were certainly three swimming around that were over the 25kg mark!!

One of the smaller carp I saw in the reserves.

A common lazing around!

This shallow area was teeming with carp.

The afternoon has been spent sorting through all of our equipment and once again scaling down for the looming mission. I have been Ming the merciless and I am travelling as light as possible. The inflatable will go on my roof, leaving my other boat and trailer behind, and the tackle I am taking in my van is organised so it can be taken out and set up quickly, should the need arise. I normally always have two landing nets set up, as you never know on some waters when you might need two at once! At Cassien last year I had just netted a fine 22kg mirror, when one of my other rods was away. Ten minutes later I had a 19.5kg mirror in my other net..that is why two nets are always useful. However, two nets where we are going would be ever so slightly optimistic. Hence we are also just taking one set of scales between us!

I am cooking the dinner, Lee is on particle duty!!

As well as boilies we are also taking a selection of particle; tiger nuts, hemp with chilli flakes, and maize. I think on a really big waters it is important to be able to bait up using a little and often approach in as many areas as possible to begin with and particles are ideal for this. We will be looking in the boat each day at areas we bait up to see if it is being taken and then we can work of this. There are apparently very big chub and other nuisance species (as per normal) in the lake, so the challenge of presenting a bait, intended for Mr Carp, is going to be even more difficult with greedy, big mouthed chub swimming round.

We have decided that as we are like two excited kids, going off to explore a new water; we are going to leave our base early at 5am. This means we should get to our destination as it is getting light. The plan will be to park up somewhere, and then get walking round. Hopefully the sun will be on our side, and we may get a glimpse of some carp on our first morning there. Tomorrow is just going to be a groundwork day. Exploring all possible areas to fish and trying to spot the fish as they move around. Lee has been to the lake before for a look, but I haven’t. I have this picture in my head what it will look like, but I know when we arrive it will be nothing like I imagine it to be.

My session at Cassien finished with no carp. It wasn’t a surprise and in no way was it disappointing. I kind of knew that it wasn’t going to happen, yet it was very interesting last night. I had no bream activity at all whilst I was fishing there, till last night. I then had four of them throughout the night all on two big 28mm baits!!! I think they have also just finished spawning and now they are seriously on the march for food. I had popped down the West arm a little way to see two ‘mature’ English guys, earlier in the evening for an hour or two; Dave and Dave! They come out every year in May and October for ten days each visit. I was treated to their kind hospitality (wine, fillet steak and brandy coffees!!) and my rods were then put out in the dark when I returned to my swim, into depths of 17-18ft. They had only been out thirty minutes when the first bream showed up, followed by another and then another and then at some time in the morning the fourth appeared. Dave and Dave were getting pestered by them whilst I was dining with them, and I am sure the shoal must have followed my boat back to my swim. Cheers guys!! Great to meet you both and I know you will have a great time, with or without carp!

It’s now time to eat some food, get a little sleep, and then it all begins again.

Catch you tomorrow.

Jake Langley-Hobbs & his two dogs!
Team Imperial Fishing-We love to fish!!…..
www.carp-gps.com

Tags: aviron, boilies, carp, common, imperial fishing, jake langley-hobbs, mirror, particles

This entry was posted on May 9, 2009 at 9:30 pm and is filed under The Big Lake. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.