Apr 2007

The Wine Starts Flowing For Lake Record Carp, 1st Apr

James Barr and his party have been fishing the banks of Lake Lauren since 21st of April and have been soaking up the sunshine during the hot days early in the week.

With temperatures hitting 102 degrees, the fishing has been a bit slower than normal during the day and the fish have been mostly hitting the banks at night. On Tuesday, it started to cloud over, and by nightfall it had started to rain, and because it was raining the fish decided to keep the anglers up all night!

Team leader James, hit into 3 Carp before coming across one of the real biggies. The 40lb 2oz lump known as ‘Golddigger’ was hooked in the shallows on Quests ‘Special Crab’ boilie and landed in the early hours of Wednesday morning.

A personalised bottle of wine has been awarded to the new “Lake Carp Record Holder”. All that precise baiting and rod planting paid off!

Congratulations and well done James!

Jan 2007

One Last Carp for 2006, 1st Jan

The weather had warmed up a little over the last couple of days and I had seen some Carp activity in the shallows this morning when I was feeding the lake. It looked as if it was going to be a dry day and I couldn’t resist having a dabble. I shot back to the workshop and got my rods, tackle and bait and dashed back to the lake.

By the time I got set up, it was 11.30am and the sky was black and I couldn’t see any sign of the Carp that were there earlier. I decided to stick it out for a few hours and see if I couldn’t winkle one out.

I put three rods out, all in the margins up against reeds with Quest’s Fruity Trifle boilies combined with pop-up fake corn on the hair to act as a visual beacon for the bait. I also scraped the entire surface off the boilies to reduce them to around 13mm and release a bit more scent in the cold water.

Around each hookbait I put only four or five broken boilies for additional attraction - bear in mind I am competing with 8kg of high protein feed going in the lake every day in the winter just to make the fishing that bit harder!

By 2.30pm, I was sitting miserably in a hurricane with torrential rain, already thinking about packing up, when I noticed the line had gone slack on my third rod. This was when I realised I hadn’t turned the buzzer on! I reeled in the slack and struck it to find after a nice 15 minute scrap, a beautiful peachy 27lb 9oz mirror on the other end.

Well worth sitting out in the storm for. The last three sessions on the lake have also confirmed that the weight of the fish is well and truly on the up with many of them at least 4lbs heavier than last recorded, some as much as 7lbs over and we expect the weights to continue to rise further through to the spring.

Happy new year to all at Angling Lines and all of our customers, Lee and Tracy

Jan 2007

First Fish of 2007 Sets New Lake Record, 1st Jan

On the 6th of Jan, I went down to the lake to try a bit of testing on rig presentation and had me a nice surprise.

I put 5 rods out in regular hot spots all with differently presented end tackle i.e. some popped-up baits, stiff rigs, long hairs, light leads etc. After getting all rods in the water I only had about a 15 minute wait and the first and only run of the day came (it had to be on the furthest rod away, about a 100 yard run to strike it!).

It took about 5 minutes to get it to the bank, at this point I saw how big the fish was and then it decided it wanted a real fight, it hung on for another 10 minutes with my heart banging out of my chest before I managed to get it in the net. I really wasn’t expecting a result like this while experimenting, not only a new PB for me but also a new lake record at 40lb 2oz!

Incidentally, the set-up that caught the fish was a 22mm boilie cut in half with a pop-up grain of plastic corn on a 10cm soft braid rig with a long hair and light lead. Pop-ups don’t seem to produce many fish on our lake but they do seem to produce the bigger ones for some reason.

I am fairly convinced this record won’t stand for long as I know of at least 2 other mirrors which I suspect are bigger, and recently I have seen a common feeding in the deep margins which looked a fair bit bigger than the 40 I’ve just caught.

Good luck to all our guests in 2007

Lee