This weekend was a social session with long-time friend Steve Guy on a little deep lake not a million miles from Bundy's Pit.
The lake hasn't got much in it but there is quite a sought after leathery one that is very old and, I think, very good looking. I really wanted it in my photo album. It's not huge and is usually 28-30lb and ounces.
We had the lake to ourselves but as it was more of a social session we both fished from one large swim where we saw half a dozen carp in the edge and we spread our rods around the margins. We fished various depths ranging from 15ft to 32ft with our six rods. I spread a few kilo of boilie and some pellet between my rods and fished a pop-up over the top with a sight tipper on my favoured and trusted multi-rigs.
The first night was warm, overcast and very quiet. We didn't see or hear any carp anywhere. The next day I continued with what I was doing and added a bit more bait to the spots. The sky cleared and the night was much cooler but the carp responded and we could hear a few rolling in the night. I was convinced it was going to happen.
Early Sunday morning around 6:30ish it was just starting to get lighter and one of my rods was away. There is a few old pads in front of the swim and as I struck my line pinged off one of the dying pad stalks.
The fish soon came near the surface and swirled but I couldn't really see how big it was in the half light. I thought it was small. But it then started to fight with a lot of power and took me all over the place and dived deep a couple of times. Anyway, as it came over the net Steve said it looked leathery and although it looked wide it didn't look particularly long. I was amazed to see I had only gone and bagged the one I wanted! Speechless in fact.
We settled on a weight of 29.15
Here she is. A very old character and a stunner in my opinion...
