Well I’ll tell you what, “It was cracking the flags” that day! It was so hot the cows were coming in to cool off.
We went for a short days fishing to a local club water that is renowned for being extremely shallow, but loaded with decent Carp in. There were 3 guys fishing the entrance bank, so we decided to head over to the far bank and rough it with the cows, who were very inquisitive.
As we made our way around we could see fish topping everywhere and after a few minutes you could see a pattern of behaviour forming.
First thing for me is to get a surface bait set up and straight out free-lining, before I set up my usual pop-up rig on the carp rod (the one I keep banging on about). Within 20 minutes I had a bite on the surface, but I was far too excited and struck way before it had a chance to munch down that ‘Durable Hooker – Sweet Tiger’ from Dynamite Baits, which I have to say are pretty good, they are easy to get on the hook and they do stay on for a decent amount of time. The leakage is good, it slowly disperses on the surface, while the best part of the hook bait is still intact, you can also pinch them in half and use as smaller floating baits as an attracter. They are not great of you are casting any great distance repeatedly as they will come off but for closer in; stalking work they are awesome. Anyway, I missed the next two takes off the top by whipping that bait away just before its taken it. Note to self…Calm down and wait until the carp has made a run!
In the meantime I had set up the carp rod with a 21g lead on with a short hook length and the pop-up rig I have previously mentioned. Well the boilies worked again, here is my first Common Carp of the day.
Second Carp in the net using the double pop-ups again…another long slender fish with bright coloured anal fin and lower tail.
You can see in the video below that the hook and the double pop-up was right in the corner of the mouth.
Below is the double pop-up presentation video I have shown previously. I change the position of the Dark Matter Putty and the length of the braided hooklength depending on the conditions of the bottom of the pool I’m fishing. This particular pool is very solid clay-like so there is not much silt for the rig to disappear into, so I keep things short. Also the water depth is very shallow, maybe 1 foot in places.
Third Carp in the net using the double pop-ups again…another long slender fish.
Well my swim had gone quiet by around 1pm, the odd fish feeding deep under the overhanging tree. However my mate who was fishing with that day was having bites, fishing the method feeder on the far bank close to the reed bed on his quiver tipped feeder rod. On the other rod he was float fishing corn on his match rod. He had missed 3 good takes on the feeder but they evaded capture.
It wasn’t till about 2pm that his float rod had a decent take on it, this fish took him out to the centre of the pool and must of taken about 10minutes to land as it was on light tackle
Let’s see the light tackle in action…..
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