Good Evening.
The short session continues into its third night, and the carp count is now at number four. I have not long ago returned the fourth and biggest of the session; another common and an 11kg/24lb 2oz specimen. The rod is back on the spot, the carp has been photographed and released, and I am sat in my bivvy drinking tea, so I thought why not write a quick blog too!
hmmm...I wonder if dad will let me sleep on his bed tonight!?
Carp number three appeared yesterday evening at 9.15pm. Caught from the same long-range spot as the previous capture, and although it put up a better fight than its earlier 20lb cousin, it weighed a couple of pounds less. I released the fish immediately after weighing and whacked the rod back out in the dark, using a distant tree on the horizon as my marker.
Nothing else happened during the night so at first light and after a coffee I got the rods sorted for the day. I firmly believe in certain situations that it is better to move rods in the daytime to increase your chances of a take. For example the carp at Brava do have a habit of going out into slightly deeper water from about 10-11am. You can often see fish topping in the morning as they move out towards the deeper areas. I started doing this technique last year, and it generally works. A small bright pop-up, a one bait stringer, and a few boilies put out with the throwing stick. The idea is you cast as far as you can, but not as far that you can’t reach it with a throwing stick for baiting up. The number of bolies does not have to be huge; 20-50 is ample, topping up after a run/fish/recast. As the day begins to draw to a close, I then normally bring the long-range rods in, and put the rods back to their close range spots. It is effectively doubling your chances of catching in the day and catching during the night.
Close range combat.
Tonight’s carp has come from the close range tree where carp number one was caught from. I put out about 3 kilos of spod mix this evening using the Vital hemp/halibut mix I showed you in yesterday’s post. I added some maize flour, maize, tigers, and 15mm Banana GLM boilies. It was windy when I put this out with my spomb so I made sure the casts landed to the right of my marker, as the wind that was blowing to the left. This just ensures the spomb mix trickles to the bottom, roughly where you want it, and not away from your intended spot. I got these rods out by 6.30pm and had the take at 11pm. A four and a half hour wait for a nice looking carp is always welcome.
A sunset to take your breath away!
I will be packing up tomorrow morning and heading back to my house. It is going to get very cold here in the next few days and I am hoping to get back out after the cold snap has passed.
Cheers till then.
Jake Langley-Hobbs
