More Course (Carp) Fishing

Have been fishing a lot more commercial waters recently in the hope of nailing some early summer Tench but all I seem to be catching is Carp.

Most of them being around the 5-12lb mark and all looking pretty much the same. Most of the fish have fell to floating crust, which is a hell of a lot of fun especially when the weather was as nice as it was today (24c!!) with the odd one here and there falling to sweetcorn or worms intended for Tench.

Had a go at fly fishing for carp today, which proved a lot harder than I anticipated, the flies I ordered from Ebay turned out to be a bit pants, the bread replicas were way too small and the Carp didn't seem to pay much attention to them, the dog biscuit replicas proved a bit more promising but I forgot to bring the dog biscuits so they were pretty much ignored as well!!

Anyhow, Below are a few pics of Carp caught recently by myself and Spack from the Waterend Fisheries in Maulden.









Below is the biggest of the last few sessions weighing just over 12lb.



These lakes hold some of the ugliest carp Ive ever seen probably due to the fact that they get caught so often, most of the fish we caught seemed to have some kind of deformity or another going on. This one was probably the ugliest, the Frank Ribery or Scotty Styrus of the Carp world.

Something Different

With the rivers closed until the 16th finding a decent lure fishing venue is proving diffucelt. After trying various stretches on the GUC around Milton Keynes as well as a couple of local lakes I decided to put away the lure gear for a while and try something different.

After a visit to the local tackle shop (Bleak Hall), I was advised to try the Water End Fisheries in Maulden in search of some Spring Tench. The venues located 9 miles south of Bedford next to the Clophill roundabout. Day tickets are £7 on the bank, £9 for two rods and £4 between 16:00-21:00. (www.waterendfisheries.co.uk)

I opted to float fish maggot and corn over a small bed of maggots, which were topped up every ten minutes or so to keep the bites coming. After a slow start, a group of small Perch moved in. After catching a few small Perch, a Rudd and a small Tench I whiped out my heavy duty carp rod, loaded with 10lb Mono, attached to the end a size 10 barbless hook and a piece of floating crust.

After a few near misses a big pair of lips sucked in the bread, which was cast in a small gap in a dense weed bed, FISH ON.





A nice Comman estimated at around 10lb, which was my first carp for a long time and put up one hell of a fight compared to the Pike of similar weight, which ive been catching recently.

Spack then had a go on the crust and managed this 7lb Mirror



All in all a very nice day and a welcome change from the lureing. Not really a fan of carp fishing but I do love the excitement of surface fishing for them on minimal tackle especially when they put up the kind of fight that these fish did.