Cold weather? Limited time? No problem! Solar Tackle’s Alain Servaes has achieved one of his angling firsts, landing two 40lb+ commons within minutes of each other…
It was a freezing cold night, one where each breath created a huge cloud in the cold air, and still without a breath of wind. Stood at the water’s edge with a rod hooped over, I knew that I was connected to a big fish, which was slowly taking line somewhere out in the inky darkness.
I’d been in this same situation before, back in March when I started fishing the lake, but the excitement and anticipation of each capture just gets greater. By May, the lake had got quite busy and so I pulled off, waiting for the onset of the cold weather when I had a better chance of having the lake to myself.
This particular lake holds an old stock of special carp, and I still had a few of the biggest residents left to catch. At 5 acres it’s quite an intimate little water that sits on the grounds of an old, disused factory near where I live in Belgium. When I was younger and the factory was still operational the lake was surrounded by a big fence and locked gates. Now the gates are open and the fences are a bit worse for wear, so access is no longer a problem.
Back then it was home to a huge mirror of 65lb+, which died 7 years ago. However, the original ‘back up’ fish that are now quite old and have grown on brilliantly.
I started back at the lake with the onset of the cold weather, 4 weeks before this particular session. Being busy at work, my fishing is confined to overnighters and my plan was to fish two nights a week, and bait up in between. I’d bait up on a Monday, fish on a Wednesday night, bait up on the Thursday morning before going to work and then be back on Friday night, each time baiting up with a scattering of 1.5kg of Solar Originals Quench boilies.
From past session I knew that the carp in this lake particularly liked Solar’s E12 additive, and this is one of the ingredients in the Originals Quench boilies. Also, with the temperatures dropping I fancied switching to a fruity, seed-mix based bait, and so the Quench fitted perfectly.
On this particular night, I had actually moved swims already in the early part of the night. There is a winter holding area, which is the deepest part of the lake, which sits underneath a large pump that’s left from the old factory days. The pump is secured by 4 big ropes that are now covered in mussels and natural food, and not surprisingly, this is where the lake’s stock like to live through the winter.
While fishing in the spring I’d found a small gravel bar that runs along the middle of the lake to the pump, and so I had hoped the fish would use this as their route to and from the deep sanctuary, so this is where I was concentrating my efforts. I’d arrived at the lake at 9pm and decided that, on this session, I’d fish the bar from the opposite side of the lake to where I normally do. After an hour though, and no action, I thought I’d made the wrong decision and moved right round the lake to my normal plot. Usually the action happens quite quickly, and a complete lack of any signs for the first hour spurred the move.
Just 20 minutes after getting the rods out, which are already marked up and so is a quick and relatively quiet process, the left hand rod was away. It was pitch black and the fish was fighting hard, but slowly I drew it closer to the bank until it broke the surface a couple of rod lengths out. The size of the disturbance in the water was a good sign, but I couldn’t see the fish. During the fight my right-hand rod had let out a couple of bleeps, but with this fish fighting hard I though that it must have touched the other line. Heart in mouth it came within netting distance and I slipped the net under the fish. Flicking the head torch on a peering into the net, it was a big common. I secured the net in the margin and nipped back up the bank to sort everything, mat, camera, scales etc when I noticed the indicator on the right-hand rod was pulled up tight. Watching for a few seconds the, although the alarm wasn’t making a sound, it was definitely kiting slightly from left to right as a hooked fish was kiting slowly on a tight line. I picked up the rod and it instantly hooped over with what felt like another big fish.
Again, stood by the water’s edge paying a big carp I glanced down at the big common already in the net and couldn’t really belive what was happening. Thankfully, I always fish with two landing nets made up, because you never know what might happen, so landing the fish when it finally came into the margins was relatively simple.
Another big common was mine! On closer inspection, the first fish was a common known as Heart Tail, which tipped the scales at 43lb. I thought that the second common was one known as the Black Common, and that one pulled the needle on the scales to 47lb.
I’ve been fishing for a long time, and this was the first time I’d ever landed a brace of forties… what an incredible session!
It was the early hours of the morning when everything was sorted and the rods were both back in position, both with a Stronghold Longshank hook baited with a Quench bottom bait and Dairy Cream pop-up. Strangely all of my takes on this lake have come to snowman hook baits.
Still excited from the captures I couldn’t really sleep, but then about an hour later the left-hand rod was away again. This time, a lovely 3lb mirror, part of the old stock, was the culprit.
By 7am I was in my van, having baited the bar for the next trip, and on the way back to work, shattered but elated. Looking back at the photos, and sharing them with fellow Solar team mates Wesley and Ignace, we realized that the second common was actually the Long Common, so the Black Common is still on my hit list along with one big mirror’s that’s left in the lake, but they’ll have to wait for the next trip!