By Martyn Russ
This year we had decided on having a bit of a social down at our local lake in Cardiff. Myself, John Rees & Anthony George Ron Potton plus other members of the club who came down to visit us during our time on the lake. The session was to turn out to be one we wont forget in a while.....
Day 1 – Friday Midday
We had both decided to fish in similar ways, me with a naked running Chod on the one rod fished with a small pink candyfloss bait and the other with a Whipped D rig presented on a heli set-up using Tungsten tubing with tungsten Chod Beads as the safety system so they would just pull off the tubing in the case of a snag. John was also fishing the Naked Chod but on his other he had tubing down to a lead safety clip and then a Ronnie Rig on an extended boom due to the silt. The bait we was using was the Candy Floss from Solar Baits and The Z-Mix Plumb from Legacy Baits. We had chosen the plumb as it was a bait that was fishing well on the lake the previous year and we wanted to make sure we had a bait that they saw as a food source as introducing a new bait can sometimes be difficult. We mixed 7 Kilos of Candyfloss to 2 kilos of Plumb. For the spod we added hemp, corn, particle mix and of course our secrete sauce plus a selection of small feed pellet's and allowed it to soak in all the liquid over night. This meant we had to use boilies and sticks for the first night with several free bats thrown over each rod to get the carp routing around for the food.
The weather forecast for the weekend wasn't as good as we hoped as there was high winds and a lot of rain forecast but at least it wasn't raining when we loaded up the gear and went down to the lake. Hendre Lake, situated in St. Mellons on the outskirts of Cardiff towards Newport, is a large lake that was originally built to drain the local area to reclaim the land to build houses on. This lake has an island at the one end as a main feature and a small shallow bay down the other. Half the lake is actually protected and is a no fishing zone so you are only able to fish from the top half of the lake. We had decided on a swim that I had fished in a previous session so I knew some of the features that were there. The lake ranged from 4 ft in the edges to 7 and 9 ft in the centre with a small hole to our left at around 13 to 14 ft but this was only the size of a house plot. The lake has deep silt all over the lake with a few areas around the island having some gravel patches.
The lake itself was actually fishing quite difficult as it was still recovering from the opening week at the start of the season where a lot of bait was going in and a lot of fish were being caught. Myself and John Rees decided to target the first day using just single High Attract baits and stringers with small PVA sticks on the hook. This would enable to see what was going on and hopefully where the fish were feeding. I placed one rod at around 12 rod lengths (wraps) and the other at around 10. It wasn't long before John was the first one off the mark with a lovely little common around 14 lb followed by myself with a nice chunky little 10 lber who fought like nothing I have experienced before. Talk about a fish full of beans. We continued to fish like this into the night using one rod on high attract hook baits and wafters and the other on a naked chod which we were casting to any fish showing.
In the mean time Anthony George Ron Potton managed to hook into a couple while fishing his own home made baits, peach and coconut and was joining in what was turning out to be a great start to a session with a 9 lb and an 11 lb carp and they were real hard fighters. I had started to see a pattern forming with the bait and where we were catching the fish so I knew these were the areas of the lake to target in the morning when I prepared our swim for the long session. I prepared the spod mix ready for the morning and made sure we had our hook baits ready and sticks all made up to enable more time in the water and less time on the bank messing about with rigs. We then set our rods for the night and tried to get some sleep. ...... Continued...
