By Martyn Russ
With a heatwave hitting the UK and the weather forecast looking great for the entire weekend we decided it was the right time to visit the new venue that we had joined this year. As specimen anglers we are always on the look out for chasing the larger fish and a chance to join one of the local syndicate waters with carp in the high 30's meant that myself and Club FAW's co-owner Brian Chandler joined the syndicate down at Lamby Lake in South Wales. The venue is closed all through April so as soon as March approached we prepared our gear and booked the days we wanted to fish and off we went. Due to both of us having to sort out personal things to clear the time for fishing we ended up making a late start and didn't get down the lake till around 10 am the morning of Friday 13 th March 2016. We had planned on fishing right through till Sunday evening around 8 pm and we were both really looking forwards to the session. Upon arrival i was the first to unload whilst Brian returned to get his gear so i was the one to choose the swims that we were going to fish. As i started walking around the lake i noticed fish topping in the dead centre of the lake at its deepest point so decided on the two swims at that point known as the Morning Swim to the locals.
As Brian was a keen margin fisherman and one swim having better access to the margin than the other i decided to take the swim with the cast to open water and the area that the fish were showing leaving the margin swim for Brian to fish. We both set up our rods and picked or areas to target. Both of us opting for one rod on a pop up and the other fishing bottom baits we cast our rods out and started the long wait and work to get our swims going. For the first day we didn't put out to much bait as we wanted to get to know the area before we committed to a full on baiting session and it wan't long before Brian was into his first carp of the session (not known at the time it was the only one). 2 hours after casting his rods out, the margin rod he set out with a pink pop up just in front of the reeds shot off and the alarm screamed into action. Brian jumped up and grabbed the rod and struck into his fish and to his surprise a huge head of a carp popped up and he was shocked, in his words "blimey she's big", not knowing the exact size he carefully played the fish into the entrance of the swim guiding it carefully away from the reeds. I was the one lucky enough to land the fish for him and saw straight away that it was a huge common carp with amazing scale pattern. You could see it was very heavy when Brian lifted the net to take the carp over to the cradle to unhook it and I saw the strain on his face as he struggled to get her over.
After Brian removed the carp and ensured no damage was done to the mouth of the fish he then allowed me to secure it in the weigh sling and I lifted the carp up on the scales. At first Brian said its 15 lb , both of us looked at each other in surprise and said no way the scales don't lie, that's got to be the biggest 15 lb'er i have ever seen. Brian had not realised he was actually looking at the Kilos so ran to his bivvy and grabbed the digital scales to make sure. It was at that time, when weighing it for the second time, I realised he had broken the 30 lb mark with an amazing 32 lb 5 oz fish on the bank, this smashed his personal best by a long shot as he was stuck at 19 lb for a couple of years. You could see immediately he was over the moon and couldn't stop shaking with excitement as i carried the lump back to the waters edge after Brian had given it a small thank you kiss on the head and i released her back into the lake. It was such a pleasure to be there at the moment that Brian had caught a new personal best and one of such size and beauty. The fish is a known carp called peanut and it wasn't long before the news was buzzing around the lake,.
The lake had only been open for the new season a couple of weeks and was completely packed with no spare swims available for new anglers turning up during the weekend. The weather was so hot it was actually melting us on the bank and this makes the fish become lethargic so i was shocked that he caught so quickly. The amount of anglers on the lake also meant that the angling pressure was immense and the fish tend to hide away when there are lots of anglers and lines in the water. I myself wasn't so lucky during this trip as i managed to bump one off in the early hours after experiencing a very strange bite indication and then just before we packed up early to leave because the weather was so hot and we couldn't take the heat any more i managed to hook into a big pike around the 10 lb mark that turned and bit clean through the leader after playing it all the way into the bank. We tried everything we could to get the fish feeding and catch a few more but the weather was just against us and the amount of anglers was crazy. We only saw a couple coming out here and there and had to give in, in the end. Even though we didn't get many fish on the bank we had an amazing weekend fishing at Lamby and it was just great that my fishing partner got a new PB and a fish of a life time. Now we are members of this syndicate i can't wait for our next fishing adventure and hopefully we will back back down the lake very soon.
Brian's NEW PB 32 lb 5 oz Common called Peanut
Wet Nets & Tight Lines
