Hello and Welcome

Hello and welcome to my first post on TP Angling.

The first week in 2017 has been a busy, but sadly, fishless start to the New Year. I have been busy setting up my YouTube channel and other social media profiles, along with arranging fishing trips for the year, and identifying which waters I want to fish over the next 12 months. Not to mention setting the targets that I want to achieve in 2017.

My brother in law Phil and I have decided to embark on a new challenge together. With Phil wishing to move on from his previous syndicate water, and myself having never really thrown all my ‘Boilies into one lake’ so to speak, it will be an interesting combination of Phil’s experience in Carp fishing, with my normal chuck it and chance approach, that has never really seen me fail in the past.

The water we have picked is a club lake, which I’m not able to disclose any further details on. Unfortunately one rule of the ticket is that the

lake and any fish caught can’t be publicised on social media of any other form of media. I suspect this is to protect the knowledge of fish stocks from the wider audience. This suggests to me that there could be something special lurking in the depths of the disused clay pit.

We don’t know exactly the size of the fish stocks, but the club president has informed us both, that the Carp do go up to a whopping 40lbs. One reason why little is known about the fish stocks is due to the lake being situated very close to the River Nene, which is renown for bursting its banks when the water levels rise during the winter months. With venues like this, its more than possible, that some fish stock is lost to the river, when the river in in flood. However the reverse also applies, what has come into to the lake? One thing is for sure it’s going to be an exciting year. I will be creating a number of videos related to our campaign on the lake, which you will be able to view on the TP Angling YouTube channel. Look out for the ‘Secret Lake Campaign’ series!

If at times the secret lake isn’t producing any bites, I can always retreat to other local notorious venues such as Drayton reservoir and Castle Ashby, to get a bend in my rod. In addition, I have planned, a 72 hours session at the famous Linear complex, Oxfordshire, the week following Easter bank holiday. This is a venue that’s quite close to my home, but I have never fished. High-pressured waters can be very unpredictable, so I am sure the Oxfordshire strain of Carp are going to give me a run for my money. I also have a second 72 hour session planned at Tanyard Fishery, West Sussex. This is a venue that has been made famous by YouTube sensations ‘Carl, Alex Fishing’. They have both caught a number of large Carp, and a wide range of other species, including Catfish up to 43lbs! This is a trip that I am really looking forward to.

Back to this weeks fishing, which has been very slow, tiring and not to mention frustrating. New Years Day, I fished an 80-acker reservoir that is very close to my home. This is normally a syndicate water, however the head belief, kindly let me fish it as a guest. My main target being… PIKE!

The resey is so close to my home I could in fact walk to it. However I wasn’t feeling ‘oh so fresh’ after the madness of New Years Eve, so I chose to load up the car and drive down. I woke up to a frost on my car, but as dawn broke, the frosty, winter wonderland melted into my memory as quickly as the festive period had.

I arrived at the lake, with a view to ledgering a dead bait on one rod, and fish a lure or spinner on a second rod. I wanted to keep active to stop getting cold. With the lake being so vast, with no real features to fish to and the fact that Pike very rarely show themselves, locating fish was going to be really tricky. I started in the bottom South West corner bay of the resy, by a boat launch. This was an area that the head belief had said he had caught all his pike from in the past. After an hour of so I moved further round into the bay, and worked each swim, until I ended up on the opposite side of the resy to where I started. Still nothing to show for my hard work.

By this stage, I still had one line, ledgering a dead bait. With the second rod, I decided to swap from spinning and chose to fish a Pike float, and have a dead bait slightly elevated off of the deck. With the idea that the wind would slowly drift the float around in the swim, covering more water. This would give me a better chance of the bait coming into contact with fish. I continued with this approach for the remainder of the day, working a number of other swims, but to no avail.

The following weekend, I decided to fish a stretch of the River Nene towards the East side of Northampton. The stretch I picked, I know is loaded with silver fish. Where there is plenty of silver fish, a Pike isn’t to far away. Also I know a couple of friends of mine had had 6 Pike out, up to around 16lbs, a week prior, in the same stretch. I was confident that I would eventually fall upon a Pike. However the conditions where not perfect for predator fish, even though the temperatures had risen to about 11 degrees, the sun was very bright. It was a beautiful morning, more likened to the start of spring rather than the first week in January.

I followed the same approach as the resy, however I only fished the one-rod, on a Pike bung. I wanted to stay mobile and having my rod pod and bite alarms only added to the load. The stretch of the river has many features. Slack water, where the main river splits to a small backwater, over hanging trees and dead read beds. All prime spots for where Pike normally hunt, out of the way of the main flow of the river. But again the Pike remained elusive. At the end of the session, I stopped and spoke to a guy who was fishing with his two sons. They had worked over 2 miles of the river and didn’t have one fish between them. However this did tell me that they had a whopping 34lb Pike out of a lake on the Newport Pagnell ticket, the week before.

Looking back over the two sessions, I think I fished well. If I were to put this string of blanks down to anything, I would say it might be down to my bait selection. I was using dead Sprats, which are obviously salt-water fish. I know the Pike caught the week before, were on dead Roach. However the cost of a bag of frozen Roach is probably double the cost of a big bag of Sprats. I could have caught a few roach at the start of the session, however the rules of the ticket I was fishing prohibit this. On its day, Sprats will work if Pike are hungry enough. But I can't help but think that using a bait that’s not naturally found in our waterways, may have been the difference between landing a fish, and blanking. Fingers crossed I can end this run of blanks next week!