Good Morning!

Specchi is the Italian for mirrors and it seems a very fitting title to today’s post. I have been very lucky and have caught three stunning mirrors this week and the third little peach of a mirror was caught last night. At 12.5kg she is not the biggest mirror I have caught by a long way, but what a picture she is! The tiny pearl like scales near her tail are very beautiful and I was chuffed to bits when I peered into my net in the torrential rain! The rain is the real problem at the moment but not for the fishing. The rise in level is great, but the nightmare scenario we are now faced with, is we are running out of ground – we are literally being flooded out!

I moved both my bivvies back a few yards very early this morning. One bivvy already had water creeping underneath and my other was close to the edge. I have been very impressed with my Armo as the groundsheet has remained dry for the whole time I have been here. It is just as well as the dogs beds are on the floor, on top of an old sleeping bag cover; and it is my dogs that I am obviously most concerned about. They are both outside now as I write this as the sun has peaked out for a while; however, it is not fun for my dogs when they are confined to a bivvy all day.

I have now moved up to 28 carp in total. Five more have been caught since the (make that 29 in total…I have just caught another amazing looking mirror – a heavily scaled long specimen..he must have seen me typing the blog, and obviously wanted to be included too! I will have to post the pictures later, once again.) great mirror was captured yesterday morning. I think with the amount of mirrors that seem to be cropping up, they have obviously moved into the bay in groups to spawn. There is a really good chance of a big mirror before I finish the session and still a good chance of a big common. The commons I am catching are all in the 15-30lb bracket and I have caught so many recently that I am actually bored of taking pictures of them. I ask them where their mother is, they get blown a kiss, and are released quickly from the boat.

The deciding factor will be whether or not the session will have to end prematurely and we have to leave because of the serious water problems, but at the moment whilst the sun is out, and it is not raining, all seems rather good. The water level is still rising though, and yesterday there was so much water moving through the lake, it was like fishing in a river. The debris was horrendous and I was back and forth in the boat all night clearing it off my lines. I resorted to heavy rocks as lead substitutes, in order to get a piano wire, tight line, on the way back in the boat. Otherwise you ended up with a massive bow from the flow, and then huge amounts of debris would catch on the line, which inevitably will drag your rig out of place. With the heavy rocks there is no way on earth they will move, you just end up with a huge bend in the rod tip, as the debris starts to slowly cling to the braid. It is jolly hard work but this is what you must do in order to carry on fishing. I have been in similar situations before and can cope fine with it, the only problem I have is my boat motor is not working well. I have borrowed another from a friend and his does not work well either. I came up with a solution and I have both in the boat to get the desired power…I have a twin turbo boat! I have decided that I am going to invest in a Minn Kota when I get the funds available as they do seem to have the best reputation for reliablity. I have seen a 70lbs thrust version which uses two 12v batteries and I am considering this model.

That is all for today. I have some tidying up to do, and as all three rods are in the water, there may be some more carp to be had today…fingers crossed!

Ain't she pretty!

Self-takes in the rain are never easy!

I could do with a platform on stilts!

It now looks rather different from yesterday's rod shot!

It takes a bit of practice to control both at once, but I have learnt quickly!

Cheers

Jake and the dogs

Tags: Armo, bivvy, common, jake langley-hobbs, Minn Kota, mirror

This entry was posted on May 13, 2010 at 12:15 pm and is filed under The Italian Job!. 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.