Callum Mcinerney-riley’s Fishing Diary - Carp Fishing at Carthagena Fishery, Broxbourne

Captor’s Comments:

I was down for a 3 day session as the weather conditions were spot on. The pressure was nice and low for the duration of my session. I had been told there was a few fish lumping out at "The pipe" end of the lake so after having a cup of tea with my mate I decide to do something about getting my rods out for once. I was working my way round the lake trying to spot fish to determine my choice of swim but nothing showed in any of the swims until I reached the swim called "the bream" were a fish lumped out just infront of me to the right just to the side of a overhanding tree in “The cave” swim. I tied up my dump lead choddy and armed it with a mach1 pop-up fished over a handful of free offerings. I was halfway through the handful of offerings when another real kippersaurus lumper over my spot. Spot on! The other rod was positioned on the backside of a silt channel infront of me. A short rig and a large pva bag was adopted but the bag simply sank into the silt rendering the rig usless. Not good. I was awoke in the morning to the sound of an alarm. Quickly looking at the spot expect a coot to pop up but nothing happened so I hit into it. At last a fibleep Ever the optimist I though it could have been a bream but it had a bit more welly than a bream and it went crazy under the rod tip trying desperatly to get under the tree. I could see it wasn't a monster but hey, it's a fibleep The little stunner turned out to be “scar”, one of the new Italian stockies at 14.4lb. The next night was quiet and the fish seamed to have moved out towards the open water but I stuck it out in “the bream” in the hope that the calm weather would draw them back towards the pipe were my traps were awaiting. I decided to fish one of my own milky mach1 bottom baits to the silt patch inbetween open water and the pipe with the idea of intercepting a fish. A few spods full of munger and some mach1 offerings over the top for good measure. I added some White Amber Attract glugged in Mach1 that matched my hookbait to give a visual effect. That made me confident that if the fish were going to get there heads down and start feeding they would troff the whole lot including the hookbait but if they were only going to pick up individual baits then my hookbait would more than likely be the one that's picked off from the bunch. I'd just awoken and was midway through... lets just say “watering the flowers” when my alarm let a few little beeps out. I finished my horticultural maintenance when I investigated the rod to find the line even slacker than it was originally so I hit into it and the fish headed straight for the weed and went solid on me. After a hairy fight trying to move a fish through a HUGE chunk of weed a managed to free the fish and was soon engolfed by the net mesh. Amazingly even though I have limited knowledge of the fish in the syndicate I instantly knew it was Summo when I lifted it out in the net. She weighed in at a healthy weight of 34.8lb! After jumping in the water for some water shots and a few naked starjumps I reeled in and went for a cup of tea completely chuffed! I must say thanks to Swampy for the photo's :).

Conditions:

• air temp
  
  16°C
• water temp
  
  Unknown
• water depth
  
  4ft
• water clarity
  
  High clarity
• wind speed
  
  Slight Breeze
• wind dir
  
  SW
• weather
  
  Overcast (mostly cloudy)
• air pressure
  
  1007 mbar Steady
• moon phase
  
  New Moon