Well the cooler weather has set in now and the carp are changing their tastes a bit. I am reliably informed I should ditch the sweetcorn and look to using punched bread on the hook – particularly for float fishing, or maybe bread paste. Fishermen have a tool for everything so now I need to go find a bread punch. Apparently it stays on the hook better than bread paste, which I used almost exclusively as a lad. Also I should use fresh white long-life “wonderloaf”, cut off the crusts, microwave it for about 20 secs to make it pappy, then then roll with a rolling pin. Then cling-film the slices separately and punch as needed. Uh-huh…

Alternatively I could just stick a lump of crusty bread on the hook and hope. We shall see.

Also maggots! (yuk) are apparently favoured by carp in the cooler weather. I think I’ll try the bread. Meanwhile it looks like the smelly mix is still working for the ledger rod – I tend to use a small feeder packed with a mix of marine halibut with a 3″ hair rig holding a 8mm pellet (the same bait but more solid). The fish practically catch themselves on this rig so I wonder if it’s cheating a little.  

Meanwhile I was out again the other weekend although my usual fishing buddy Andy didn’t come. It was pretty quiet until I switched swim.  It’s weird – I began fishing about 15 ft to the left of where I’d been and started getting lots of action.   

As usual nothing massive but this fed-up looking 3 1/2 to 4 pounder was the best of several similar sized common and mirror.

It was pretty quiet out there but at least I had Val the water vole  to keep me company. Here he/she is taking a dip.

 Water vole Oct 2011

Well it was off to the members’ lake in Wakering for me and young Andy last weekend, and we weren’t disappointed. Considering we are relative novices it looked like we chose better swims than those who were there when we arrived, who we could hear lamenting they weren’t getting much. We were soon into fish and landed a good number of fair carp, mostly mirror, in the 1lb to 2lb range.

200 lbs man (you wish!) overcomes 7lb fish

For me, having pulled plenty of smallish carp out from the middle, I tried my luck in the margins, a few feet out and 10 feet to the side, and was rewarded with one of my bigger fish. I don’t know what he weighed (I really must get a scale) but a guess would be 7lb-ish (?). Gave a good fight too.