Gary's day

Today we were back to Little Walden's Home Farm and it was a very wet drive there - I had no idea it had rained that much overnight. Thankfully the rain held off until we headed home as it was cold enough without getting wet. When we got to the lake I think we were all a bit surprised to see it back to normal levels - a few weeks ago it was 2ft down.

For me it was peg 1 and I was pretty happy with the draw as this peg normally does well - it is on its own down the narrow end of the lake. With it being colder, I started long on hard pellet - optimistically on 6mms and then quickly to 4mms when it became clear it was not going to be a bagging day. After 30 mins or so without any indications it was Plan B time - micros and expanders. That did the trick and I had a couple of indications and then a small carp. But then nothing more. So time for Plan C - micros and some dead maggots raided from the freezer. That got me a couple of indications but then I bumped a couple of fish and that was it for that line for the rest of the day.

It looked like the sudden top up of water had the fish unsettled and off the bottom as there was regular mutterings throughout the day as people hooked and lost carp. With a couple of hours to go it was decision time. Another try as far out as I could on the pole did not get me any bites and the leaves on the surface made it hard work. For the final hour it was out on the feeder (about Plan K by this time), not something I normally do here as it is quite a small lake, however, this found me a couple more carp but my final 10lbs ish had me languishing in the middle order.

Mark and Jeff at the other end of the lake had a steady day with around 5 carp each and Phil and David towards the middle had a day of catching big perch.

1st Mark Halverson 25lbs 15oz, 2nd Jeff Pearson 23lbs 2oz and 3rd David Jones 11lbs 10oz. Photo is David about to land a carp.