On this rare occassion I had a Saturday afternoon free so I decided to take my carp gear for a short session to a local club water in Messingham, North Lincolnshire.
The venue doesn’t have any monsters in there but there is an abundance of carp between 2 and 10lb.
As I’m relatively new to the specialist carp fishing world, I thought this sort of venue would be ideal for me to hone my skills before moving onto low stocked, big fish waters.
On arrival I walked the lake. The two best pegs were occupied by a couple of float fishermen targetting silver fish. The southern end of the lake where they were fishing also has a bed of lilies that I’ve often seen carp feeding around, both on the surface and hitting the lily stems whilst feeding on the bottom. I was disappointed.
That said, the wind was in a south easterly direction so I decided to set up on the north west corner of the pond with the wind blowing into my face. The logic behind this was that the breeze would be pushing food items and also the carp my way.
Leading around
One of the reasons for picking a carp fishing session today is that I wanted to test out my new spombing/marker setup.
I’ve created my own setup on a budget using the following items:
Cheap carp rod – 12ft/3lb test curve. Get the name! it’s a DIP Dyna Carp Evo (I actually purchased this rod for deadbaiting a couple of years ago)
Okuma Skyliner 8000 reel – You can see a unboxing of this reel below
Magreel fishing braid – Purchased from Amazon here
Avid carp marker float set
Spomb – mini
I had no idea what depth I’d be fishing, what range, or whether there was a weedy bottom or clear sediment.
Having spoken to the bailiff, who described the lake as ‘deep’, on a previous trip there with the boys, I was surprised to find I got no tell tale ‘donk’ when feeling the lead down and the marker float indicated a depth of 2 to 3 feet. The lead was clearly hitting the bottom almost immediately after it hit the surface of the water.
Retrieving the lead indicated that there was some weed on the bottom but I managed to find a clear patch aiming directly at the opposite corner of the lake. I clipped the line into the line clip and proceeded to count out the distance using a couple of makeshift distance sticks (aka bank sticks).
My patch of clear bottom was at 9 wraps.
I then baited up with a mixture of a cheap red spicy fishmeal based ground bait, 14mm halibut pellets, and red/yellow fjuka 2 in 1 pellets. After 10 mini spombs it was time to set up the rods!
Casting out
As I mentioned, I’m a new carp angler. My setup consists of a couple of barbel rods (13ft/2.5lb tc) I bought for fishing the tidal trent.
These are easily strong enough and will chuck 8oz if pushed.
I screwed on my freespool reels and set up a running rig setup with 3oz leads and 18inch hook lengths.
It was also the first opportunity to try out my new ND Tackle Teflon T3 bobbins.
A 14mm halibut pellet was chosen to be hair rigged to a size 8 hook.
I marked out the distance and clipped up at 9 wraps on each rod and cast to my marker on the far bank. Both rods were cast to fish the same area.
I put the rods on the rests and made sure I was fishing with slack lines to avoid line bites where possible.
Blanking in style
Although I blanked, the session was not without incident.
I had 4 absolutely screaming runs and lifted in anticipation into nothingness each time. The fish had ‘done’ me.
With some further research and advice from more experienced anglers, it appears my hooklengths are somewhat too long. I should have the hook around 6 inches from the lead when using a running rig.
In all likelihood I’ve been missing bites and indications due to the amount of slack line between hook and lead and not getting the ‘bolt-rig’ effect that causes the fish to hook themselves when moving off with the bait.
Later in the afternoon, the float fishermen departed and I walked round with a single rod in hand, searching for that elusive blank saver.
There was a lot of spilled bait on one of the fishing stages and carp were moving extremely close to the bank, cleaning up. A large fish of around 8lb rolled in front of me so I gently lowered the hookbait as close to the lilies as I dare.
Half an hour of cat and mouse ensued as I got indication after indication until eventually, the tip of my rod surged round and I hooked a fish.
Then the most infuriating thing happened. The fish shook the hook and my hook and lead pinged up into a bankside tree to leave me climbing for it and my chance of saving the blank, gone.
The sun was very close to dipping below the horizon which meant an end to the session due to fishery rules. I left frustrated but with a lot of learning points for my next carp session.