I quite like to have a little bit of material ‘in the bank’ because it enables me to skip a week when I have a ‘can’t be bothered’ moment or when something unexpected happens as it has done recently.
I was back on the river dee carp trail for my third dee carp session a few weeks ago, I was hoping to emulate my previous two sessions and bag myself a few fish, I’ve still been baiting the river a couple of times per week with tiger nuts, chick peas and boilies but despite keeping the bait going in session number 3 turned out to be quite tricky fishing.
There was a full moon beaming down from a clear blue sky for most of the night and it was like someone had flicked a switch and turned all the fish activity off. Nothing showed and nothing happened until first light when the left hand rod pulled round and finally flew off!. Unfortunately the carp won the day this time as the hook pulled out under pressure, 1-0 to the rocket powered river dee carp this time!. This run came at 5.45am and I was due off the river at 7.00am in order to avoid being detected. At 6.45am the same rod was off again, no such problems this time and after the usual long dogged fight I slipped the net under a rather tatty looking common that turned the scales to 14lb exactly. Well I guess that particular carp saved my bacon that morning, I came within 15 minutes of my first river dee blank!. The photo didn’t do the carp any justice, it had clearly been in the wars and being a full on daylight shot it would never see the light of day on here. With a last gasp blank saver under my belt I peppered my swim with a few more kilo's of tigers, chick peas and boilies before heading off home.
I don’t actually go after these river dee carp alone, I have a mate who fishes with me, he chooses to keep his catches quiet and I respect his wishes, which is why neither he or the fish he catches ever get a mention. My mate cried off our 4th dee carp trip, he wasn’t well so I arranged to drop onto the same Cheshire carp lake I had my 20lb 12oz common from a few weeks ago instead.
I finished work at 5pm on Friday and headed home to have a bite to eat and collect my fishing gear. Ah the best laid plans!. I’m not quite sure what happened to me on the Friday night?. I caught some kind of bug/virus and it completely pole-axed me!. You know the sort of thing, aches, pains, shivering cold one minute and burning up the next!.
Whatever it was I picked up it lasted for all of last weekend, most of which I slept!, and most of this week up until Thursday. I didn’t fancy the river dee on Friday evening and on top of this I have a long standing barbel social session coming up next weekend. I formulated a plan, I needed some pellets for next weeks barbel session on the river severn so I decided a trip to gp pellets was in order on Saturday morning, I could kill two birds with one stone here as the lake I intended to visit last week wasn’t more than 10 minutes away from middlewich. Unfortunately gp pellets was closed which has kind of stuffed up my barbel fishing plans for the moment. I could have headed for daves of middlewich but the thought of over paying for bait, helping greedy dave buy his next merc and having to put up with some snotty kid telling me I wouldn’t catch unless it was a ‘dynamite’ pellet was just too much so I went straight to the lake instead!.
The lake looked in good shape, I couldn’t see any carp showing so I had to take my best guess, I opted for a ‘snags’ peg, there was a line of trees down to my left and the fish liked to tuck themselves away down here, they could be reached but it requires the use of chest waders which I’d remembered to bring this time. I was fishing by 2pm and the peg I was in is usually a flier. Things remained spookily quiet. It was gone 5pm when I saw the first carp show, they’d followed the wind all they way down the lake into an out of bounds area and after seeing the first one I began to notice one after another boshing out early in the evening. There was nothing I could do, the nearest peg to the fish had a bivvy in it and my best option was to stay put and hope that a few fish might drift into the snag area where I was, after all, it was a daytime holding area. Needless to say they didn’t arrive and I finally conceded a blank at 8pm and headed for home. I'd sat all day in a pair of chest waders and I have to say I was glad to get them off at the end of the session, I think I might have to invest in a more comfortable neoprene pair sometime soon.
This brings my writing bang up to date, my short blank was yesterday, next week I’ll be heading down to the river severn armed with a 1.75lb test curve rod and hopefully a bag of pellets. This severn trip is a bit of a social with a few mates but it also has a flip side, it’s a recce with a view to going after some river severn carp sometime next year, most probably June when the season starts. The Barbel fishing itself should be good fun, I’m of the opinion that they don’t fight as hard as river carp but on lighter gear they provide excellent sport and hopefully I won’t blank.
Tight Lines
Mark
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