I’m exhausted. Too tired to talk much, sorry. Blame the fish.

A ten pound mirror carp
I’ve been fishing, today. Learnt a lot, and beat my personal best – I’m so glad I started fishing at the new place.
I started out fishing the method feeder, using a mould and feeder I only bought this week – I managed a whole two bites on it. I didn’t land either fish. I have an excuse, though!
You see, while I was waiting for a bite (yawn) one or two fish decided to tease me by blowing raspberries at me. They were more or less at my feet, and they looked like they needed a spank, so I pulled the margin pole out of my bag.
The margin pole – a Ron Thompson Edge Slammer – was free when I bought something else, so I stuck a 20 elastic in it and carried it around with me. Today, it got used. I grabbed the first rig I could find, wrapped a bit of bread around the hook, and dropped it on top of a fish.
Next time he blew a raspberry at me, he had to breathe in – and he sucked my bread in when he did it. Boy, was that fight fun! All I had to do was keep the pole up in the air, and wait for him to get tired, then I slid him into the net and lifted him out of the water.
On weighing him, I found he was just over the five pound mark (5.2 if memory serves) so I crammed some lead down his thro…. ahem. I slid him back into the water, had a drink, and waited for the bloody ducks, geese, and swans to realise that they weren’t going to get any of my bread.
The thing is, though – here’s the excuse – I got my first bite on the feeder while I was playing that first fish. There I was, pole in one hand, landing net handle in the other, watching my ledger rod bend in half! As soon as the fish was on the unhooking mat, and covered with the wet weigh sling, I grabbed the rod and started to reel in.
He was still on, and he felt big – but I’ll never know, because after a couple of minutes teasing, he spat the hook out.
I cast out again, then tossed another bit of bread in at my feet. Sluuuuurp!
Another tussle, another fish netted. Just over 7lb, this time – a new best for me! (My previous best was 6lb.)
Wait for the birds to go away, cast in, and hook a third fish. Play him, for quite a while, then net him and weigh him. That was the fish you see pictured above – my new record, ten pound odd. The scales said 10.79lb, but the sling – when I weighed it after returning the fish to the water – was .6lb, so the fish was 10.19lb. My calculator says thats ten pounds 3.5 ounces – but I’m being greedy and calling it a ten pound four fish.

What am I?
I had several other carp during the rest of the day, including this one on the left.
At first, I thought he was a crucian carp, but now I’m not too sure. The tail seems too long, and as he weighed in at 4.8lb, if he IS a crucian, he’s a bloody big one.
I’m inclined to think he’s a hybrid. F1? Can anybody help me identify the type?
I’d love to be able to brag about catching a 4.8 crucian, but I’m not sure I have the right – I must find out if there are any hybrids in the lake. The website says ‘Carp, tench, and crucians’ so maybe it could be.
OK, my arms are aching, my back is aching, and my jaw is aching. (I seem to have this big grin, for some reason.) It’s time I called it a day. I’ll be back to moaning in the next post, I promise. 😉
What a great device…
I had another fishing trip on Friday, another new water to me – one belonging to the new club. On my way out, I stopped in the tackle shop and bought a couple of floats and some bait.
The floats were not cheap, but they were a new design I’d seen on a DVD (Carp tackle, tactics, and tips Vol. 3, presented by Danny Fairbrass and available free from most tackle shops).
Made by a company called Korda (owned by Mr Fairbrass, I believe) these were surface controller floats. The design is clever: you put your line through a thin tube, then slot the float body onto it. The body has a slit that the line goes through, which is then blocked by the tube so the float will not come off. The advantage of them is that it is easy to change the body for one of a different weight.
I bought one at 20g, and a spare body at 10g – I thought that would cover my needs for a start. When I got to the lake, though, I found that what I’d bought was one complete interceptor float, and one of a totally different design… The second one looked exactly like the body of the first, and was next to it on the shelf… Damn, suckered again.
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