A trip to a big-carp mekka, a grand-paln baiting campaign and an old, original 40lb+ common. Just another month in the life of big-carp expert Wesley Lagaert...
September was a great month fishing wise, it seemed like the carp were already stacking up there fat reserves for the coming winter.
It came a little bit sooner then in previous years I think, but carp were getting caught all over the lake so they were well and truly on the munch. In the last week of September there was also a Rainbrow trip plannend and hopefully the fishing would be as good as in Belgium.
Well, we had a sunny, enjoyable trip in swim 5 at Rainbow, but the fishing was pretty hard. Alain Servae and I managed 6 takes during the week and landed 5 carp. Luckily we were amongst some good fish and had 4 over 40lb, with the biggest being a mirror of 50lb+.
Back home in Belgium I'd hoped to get among some other good fish, but it seemed the lake had switched off and getting takes was getting harder by the day. Stubborn as I am, I'd baited a swim with a mixture Club Mix and Red Herring boilies, putting in 25kg over 3 days. I then left the swim to rest for 3 days and then started fishing over the area using a spread of 3kg of boilies.
The fist night I had only 2 twenties and the second night I blanked. Okay, not the result I hoped for and definitely the sign to keep the bait levels very low in the hope that the fishing would pick up again. Over the following weeks I caught more carp, but I also blanked quite often. The bait definitely got eaten, but there was nothing I could do to trigger the fish in to more bites.
The only good news was that I wasn't the only one struggling! Later on I'd noticed some carp showing closer in so I decided to trickle in some bait at short range. I baited up in the dark as I didn't want anyone else to see it and I would only fish short nights midweek, as there are less anglers to keep an eye on me then. I'd baited 8 days in a row, a kilo of boilies spread over a reasonable area each night.
From the 3rd day I already saw some activity and I had to sit on my hands not to get a rod in. I was eagerly awaiting my first night on Monday, but it took a turn for the worse. Just before getting out there on the Monday I got a phonecall from a mate telling that an angler fishing to my left had a big haul over the weekend, landing a good head of carp. In fact, I'd even received a text (which I didn't notice) from the angler in question asking if I would fish that certain weekend.
Oh well, that was my primed-up spot ruined as I'd been informed by others where some bites have been coming from. Well, you win some, you lose some and now I definitely lost.
I kept on fishing and finaly after regularly landing some smaller carp up to mid-twenties I'd got lucky enough landing one of the original commons at 40lb on the 11th of November. This was the biggest fish off mt late season campaign and more then welcome!
Hopefully I can get another before winter arrives.
Wes