By Martyn Russ & John Rees
After a great days match fishing on the Willow pond at Cefn Mably myself and John decided we would do a bit of Carp Fishing & Specimen hunting at Peterstone Lakes just out side Newport. Peterstone is the home of the Birch Syndicate one of Wales’s largest Carp fishing club and has lakes stocked with some massive double figure carp. We had chosen a perfect day as it started warm with a little cloud cover and was set to become sunny around lunch time or just after.
We had decided to set up 2 rods for ledgering after the carp both on bottom baits to start. Again i was using me Bait Runner reels loaded with Carp Force Fluorocarbon Fishing line that i got from Total Outdoors. On the business end we were using Core Zero Leaders from Taska with Captive Camo Braid hook links down to a size 8 Carp Force wide gape hook. On one we put a tuti fruity boilie with a PVA full of Pellets and our special ground bait. On the other we started with a Banana & Hemp Boilie but ended up changing the rig to a Chod Rig with a Vanilla Pop up.
We both also decided that we would do a bit of stalking and hunting for the Carp instead of just sitting there waiting for the bites to come to us. I had chosen to fish the feeder rod with a running feeder rig and a short 4inch hair rig on a quick change bead. John had decided to fish a pellet waggler set up with a 6 inch floating hook link hair rigged with dog biscuits. I was the first to catch on this method with a lovely little 7 lb. common followed by John with a nice 10 lb. common that he managed to get off the top with the dog biscuits.
Now considering not many people were catching around the lake we were doing very well and continued to catch several nice carp up to a high of 15 lb. Half way through us fishing our separate methods the rod with the vanilla pop on a chod rig suddenly ripped off and resulted in me catching another common around the 15 lb. mark. I also managed a nice little mirror and a lovely white and yellow Carp.
I have to admit i had gone fishing with a bit of reservation set in my mind as the lakes we were fishing on have been heavily fished for the last 6 weeks due to the summer holidays and all the groups that had been there fishing. I honestly thought we would find the fishing hard and to get bites would be difficult but i was surprised how well we actually did. We had a great days fishing and i can’t wait for our next adventure.
Wet Nets & Tight Lines
