Good Morning.

I hope you all had a good weekend. I am very glad to say that I didn’t waste 90 minutes on Friday evening, watching England play a game of football, that was by all accounts a truly dull affair. I will listen to the next game on the radio this week, but as usual England are making it very difficult for themselves. This is a true and classic England scenario; struggle at the start, if they win the next game they are through, but they always blunder their way through the group stages. It happens every single tournament they play in and it seems they have to take every England fan to the cleaners and back. Where is our consistency? I am not really a football fan and I couldn’t care less really, but I am patriotic, and I like to see my country do well in any sporting event. If we do get through to the knockout stages will the usual penalty fiasco be relived? I am not a betting man (anymore), but I would definitely stick ten Euros on England losing to yet another penalty shoot out… It is written in the stars!

Three rods a piece!

I am fishing again and set up with my English acquaintance Jon who lives 30km from the lake in question. We are sharing a small swim, so it is a slight squeeze, but more than manageable if fished sensibly. We have already caught three carp, Jon taking a couple, and me the one. It seems the prebaiting that Jon carried out may have been worthwhile after all, and judging by the number of carp we have seen show since we have arrived, there are certainly a few in the area. The biggest so far is a 25lb common that Jon caught after an early morning recast, more to check the state of his boilie, more than anything else.

My little mutant carp!

My carp was caught from the edge of some pads to my left. I used corked tiger nuts, fished over Frenzied tigers and hemp. My other two rods are sporting the Mussel and Oyster pop-ups which I am fishing over the Carp-Tec Mussel and Shellfish boilies; these are what Jon had been prebaiting with. I decided to start off trying pop-ups, and Jon went for the bottom bait. His two carp therefore came on the bottom baits.

Jon's early morning recast carp!

When we arrived yesterday the rain was in full flow. It drizzled for most of the day, so we got the shelters erected and then slowly got the rods and other bits sorted. I took Jon out for a recce in the boat and using the echo sounder we identified a large bed of Canadian pond weed in front of us. We have decided to fish in front and behind this feature, and that’s exactly where Jon’s two carp came from. It seems our placement for the first night was spot on and I am sure the carp have been returning to look for boilies that they have been coming across for the past two weeks.

There has been a close season on this lake for the last month so the carp can spawn. The lake has therefore been devoid of carp anglers and the lack of bait going in will have had an effect on their feeding no doubt. This was the reason we decided to prebait for the last two weeks to give us a start on the competition. This is a public lake and you actually have to book a swim, you can’t just turn up and fish. The booking procedure is quite tricky and complicated and involves phoning three separate towns that surround the lake. The swim you wish to book must be allocated to you, then you must fax in completed forms with license numbers and ID etc; a public lake with a difference. The old Italian carp record was apparently caught from here a few years ago at 72lb (a common) and that fish is still in here.

Steep mountains surround the lake - they're quite a sight!

The lake itself is long and thin. Four kilometres is the length, we have two hundred metres to the other side, boats are permitted but only for feeding, searching, and playing of carp. No dropping rigs from the boat is allowed, so it’s casting only – just like Lac de St Cassien actually, although sadly not many people pay attention to that rule!!

The Armo in action, and fishing out of the back of the van - love it!

Unfortunately my Colossus bivvy is somewhere in Europe! It was dispatched from Trakker on Tuesday and should have arrived on Thursday. TNT… where is it? I actually think it would have been too big for this swim anyway, plus my van is at the back of the swim so I have my extra storage space. Dave Mills at Trakker is now trying to trace where my bivvy has vanished to, and as I will certainly be needing it at the next lake, I am also keen to know what has happened to it. I have decided that I am not done with Italy yet and after this two week session I am going immediately to another lake and fishing for another two weeks. The Italian job is far from over! I am now going to tie up a few bottom bait rigs in preparation for later as it does seem that they prefer these to the pop-ups which certainly makes a change of late. I will report back tomorrow with more news from the “new lake” for the next two weeks.

Cheers

Jake and the dogs

Tags: Armo, Carp-Tec, cassien, England, frenzied, jake langley-hobbs, Mussel and Oyster, TNT, trakker

This entry was posted on June 21, 2010 at 10:58 am 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.