Another great week at Le Moulin for 2 lovely couples from the West Country; Paul and Kath, and Keith and Jane.
29 big carp to 61lb sounds like a great headline statistic but it turned out to be a story of 2 different tales for Paul and Keith.
I seem to be making a lot of excuses for the weather this season and ordinarily I would now be saying how cold and wet it has been, but not this week. The weather has gone from being the tail-end of Winter to High Summer in what felt like hours and we have missed out Spring altogether.
The temperature in the lake rose by 10 Degrees and poor old Mother Nature doesn’t know if she is coming or going, everything is suddenly having to play catch-up. The big carp have gone from being shoaled up in the deep water because it has been so cold, all the way through to spawning by start of play on Friday.
You couldn’t make this stuff up if you tried !!!!
Paul and Keith had decided where they were going to fish before they had arrived, obviously they have both been before and had decent results from swims 4 and 5, so that is where they headed, Paul to 4 and Keith to 5.
Keith had it all his own way all week, it quickly became apparent that the big carp were shoaled up in the deep water opposite swims 5 and 6, he managed to pick up 2 or 3 each day and slowly and steadily he built up quite an impressive catch of 23 lovely fish with his best going over 61lb.
His last and final fish of the session was this absolutely stunning Common which weighed in at several ounces over 40lb:
Paul headed straight for swim 4 and applied the same tactics as during his last visit, unfortunately the lake changes hour by hour let alone year by year, and this session was going to turn out to be so different.
Paul had bought along his Go-Pro camera and unfortunately all that confirmed was that there were no fish in front of him, I cannot emphasise enough how important it is to find the fish, and if they move then you best be prepared to move with them.
Paul eventually got in to his first fish during the early hours of Monday morning, and it was his first 60 and new PB but it proved to be a lone fish roaming around and the action never continued.
He persisted with swim 4 until Wednesday when he decided that he was going to get some of the action up in the deep water so he moved up to swim 6 and picked out a couple of spots along the dam wall.
SOD’s LAW came in to play !! The sun had been baking hot all week and Paul and the fish must have crossed paths because as he was settling down in to swim 6 the big carp had decided to move on down to what was now the very warm shallow water in front of swims 2 and 3. They were enjoying the warmth and they were feeding heavily, swims 2 and 3 were looking like a big bowl of dairy milk chocolate, the silt plumes they were throwing up were enormous.
Paul stuck it out in swim 6 and did manage to find himself a very nice 41 pounder but once again that was it.
The big carp were taking the mickey at this point and even Keith’s catch rate had dropped off, they were boshing around like dolphins in swim 3 and Paul could not resist a move back to swim 4. Simple enough plan, fish from 4 and target the fish in swim 3.
Thankfully it worked out and Paul managed to persuade 4 of them to take his bait over the course of the very early hours of Saturday, in fact they showed at 2 am, 2.15 am, 5 am and 5.30 am. Good job he was fishing nights.
I did mention spawning, by Friday the carp in my front stock pond were playing the chase-me, chase-me game, and by Saturday morning they were at it full on.
As I am writing this the main lake is alive with some very happy male carp and some rather exhausted females. It is not having the effect that some people fear though and despite the spawning James and Matt who arrived on Saturday are already hunting their fourth carp of their session.
And just to rub a bit of salt in to Paul’s wounds they are catching them on the far bank directly opposite swim 4. Told you that you could not make this up.
Paul’s and Keith’s final tally was:
Zero Babies, Zero Doubles, 1 @ 22lb, 1 @ 23lb, 1 @ 25lb, 2 @ 26lb, 2 @ 27lb, 1 @ 28lb, 2 @ 30lb, 1 @ 31lb, 3 @ 32lb, 1 @ 35lb, 1 @ 36lb, 2 @ 37lb, 2 @ 40lb, 4 @ 41lb, 1 @ 44lb, 1 @ 47lb, 1 @ 53lb, and 2 at 61lb.
A challenging session but all-in-all, not a bad one.
The lads and lasses will all be back again next year when no doubt we will have a totally different tale to tell.