We arrived at the lake at around 10:00 am, to find the lake we were targeting full of anglers! We had a walk around the lake and talked to some anglers who had been there for the night, they said the fishing had been slow but they were hopeful for the rest of their session.

My friend and I decided we would fish a double peg which had a large span of water out in front of it, this way we could target alot of the lake in the hope that we would entice a bite. The weather was in our favour as it was relatively overcast and we had a strong westerly wind blowing towards us.

While setting up we noticed a few fish showing to the right of the swim, near a reed bed approximately 50 yards out. Unfortunately this was in my friend’s side of the swim!

Still full of confidence I decided to take my hooklink off and have a quick lead around on one side of my swim, I wanted to make as little disturbance as possible and only had to make around 4 casts as I instantly hit a short distance silt patch on the lake bed. Having spoken to most of the other anglers around the lake they were all using bottom baits, this made my choice of approach easy.

I set the rod up on a chod rig, with a hooklink of around 4 inches. I thought by presenting a bait off of the lake bed I was being different to everyone else on the lake and I was hoping this would be a key factor in success! As Boilies are banned on the chosen lake I opted to use fake Corn, I decided to use two grains of white artificial corn as this colour will stand out on a dark silty bottom.

Once I had placed the bait on the targeted area, I wanted to put some free bait in. I could achieve this very easily from the other side of the lake and as I thought this would be beneficial I left the swim with a catapult and some pellet in order to put a few pouches over the silty area. My other rod was a halibut pellet fished in conjunction with a Stick mix. This was cast at around 70 yards towards showing fish. Then it was time for a brew!

After 2 hours with only some line bites to my name I was starting to wonder if I had approached the lake right. While thinking of other options I could use to trick the wary carp, my friends left rod burst into life with a one toner. This action didn’t last long as the line went slack after only a few moments. Gutted! With no-one else around the lake having any action this was also a slight confidence boost for my friend as the fish where in the area and willing to feed.

No sooner had he repositioned his bait and sat down my left hand rod rattled off, this took me by surprise, unfortunately this was one of two carp lost in the space of 30 minutes! But that’s carp fishing for you! I checked the hook, rig and presentation for any faults and none were found. The bait was repositioned and with the fake corn starting to do the business, I was sure that another take was on the cards! A little while passed and we were coming to the last couple of hours of the session, I was still confident and as I was making another stick mix for my right hand rod, the left one screamed off! Fish on!

This fish seemed to have a greater amount of weight than the previous ones and stayed deep. I kept the pressure steady and constant and after an immense fight I slipped the net under a Mirror that looked around the mid double mark. The fish was weighed, pictured and returned safely, it went 16lb 4oz on the scales.

I was very happy to have been the only person to have landed a carp throughout the course of the day, so far.  The rod was cast back onto the spot and I sat back relived not to have blanked!

With around 45 minutes remaining I had started packing away some items of tackle. While doing this, the same rod had a slow take, followed by a drop back and after a slight lift into the fish, battle commenced with another heavy carp!

By this time other anglers were beginning to question why I was catching and they weren’t, even my friend! The fish was landed, weighed, pictured and returned with little fuss so that the next angler could enjoy catching it as much as I had, the lovely common weighed 17lb 12 oz and really made a good account of itself! By now I had, had more runs myself than all of the other anglers on the lake put together!

As the session came to an end a few of the other anglers came round to my swim and asked what I was doing to catch, I simply said ‘being different to everyone else’! It just goes to show, by asking around, doing your homework and carefully presenting a bait that even on a heavily pressured day ticket water, the rewards are there to be had!