Ash specimen lake again, 4 fish banked in flood conditions

Right so I hit up Ash again, had two days so I packed the car in prep for a night IF I wanted to stick it out for two days. 26th November, very wet, raining 80% of the day (which the Carp loved!) flooding across the south west and very bad in Somerset. The venue has 3 ponds but on this trip every field around the fishery were lakes due to the flooding! I have a short video below, 3 or 4 minutes of fishing and the last 7 odd minutes is a tour around the flooded fishery and surrounding fields. Very interesting!

So I was at the lake and fishing nice and early, probably around 7 am. This time I fished the far end of the lake which I believe was the deepest part and the back of a new wind. I baited light using nothing but boilies. I found a nice over hang to the left, deep water in font and another margin in the easy lake behind me just in case the main lake wasn't doing anything. I fished the over hanging tree and the easy lake with a pop up rig with a bright b5. After around an hour I had a small scaley mirror from the easy lake, off the mark. But with no joy in my main swim I moved to the end of the main lake where I have had fish before but in the hotter months. I had also seen one fish top the surface at that end so with nothing else to see i went for it.

Once set up, I kept one pop up rig on and put it out under a tree to my left. I then changed another rod over to match my third rod. I had the lake to myself and with the conditions I wanted maximum chance so I used three rods. The other rig which I had on my second and third rod consisted of a boiled tipped with a trimmed pop up the same size to create a well balanced double bait. One rod went into a margin and the other in front of me next to some dead Lilly's. These were the rods that produced.

At around lunch time things were looking slow but then my right hand rod( the margin rod) went mad, I lifted into it and after around 5 minutes my long awaited prize rolled over the net. My target was a 20 from this lake as they go up to around 29lb. This was an upper double Mirror at just over 17 and was a great moral boost! Through out the day I baited little and not too often of around 4 or 5 baits that matched the hook bait along with 3 boilies on a pva string which went on the rig each cast. I recast my rig into the same spot and the trap was set again.

Within an hour or so, from the other spot in the dead Lilly's, another fish was tricked into taking the bait. Got this fish in the bag and I was happy to see that it was a Common. I am certain that this common is the one I had on my previous trip, as it weighed the same and looked exactly the same. I weighed the fish to see if it was a similar size and it was 10lb 10. Not the biggest fish but lovely to bank a Common and a Mirror.

After these two fish I was very happy and thought about doing the night for a chance to get a 20 as clearly the lake was fishing well. Shortly after I had another run from the margin rod again and managed to pick out another Mirror at around 10lb. It was starting to get dark and I made the decision to stay the night, as I set my bivvi up I had to move my car as the car park became fully flooded. As I waded back from the car I found a deep puddle which went over my waist. Although I had spare clothes and was warm and dry within half an hour, I decided to take down the bivvi and leave for home on good note with fish on the bank!

 So a nice day session at Ash proved worth while, with 4 fish banked and 2 wellies full of water. The best thing I took from the day was how well my new rig worked, simple but perfect. Each fish were nailed in the bottom lip, and since this trip I have used the rig and bait at each session and has worked brilliantly. So I think I know what I'll be using most of the time this winter. 

Here you can check out the short video on my session...

Creedy Lakes - 3 sessions to find the fish

Process of finding the fish at Creedy over 3 sessions.

A quick summary of the 3 sessions at Creedy including process of elimination to find out how we could trick the beasts into rolling over our net. I fished alongside notable blogger Clark Adams who runs the Devon Carp fishing videos (link at bottom) and Nicky Land another local Carper.

Session one

Between us we have only ever fished Creedy for about 2 hours. We have never done a proper session, so for us we were very excited knowing that if you hit this lake right you can have a non stop day. Armed with buckets of bait and no real idea we were up at 3, off by 4 and fishing by 5:30am. The lake was dark when we got there so we set up just the rods and chucked out pva bags randomly until the sun came up. As soon as we had some light we checked out the stunning old lake and stayed in the swims we picked. I was up at the water fall swim and Clark the next swim down. Nicky wasn't with us on this trip. After picking our spots, we put out some bait. Both of us decided on spods and spombs to get a bed of bait out. It was the end of the summer season so we didn't put out too much, my bait consisted of boilies and pellet. Throughout the day I swapped from bottom baits to popups to try and work out what would catch. All day fish had been topping on the surface all across the lake so we were very confident. Around half way through the day things weren't looking good, we stayed in our swim and hoped that something might find out bait. At this point I decided to make a fail safe spot and feed in a lot of bait into my right hand margin. The day slowly went by with another local angler taking A couple of fish on his bank. It got very late and we only had a few hours remaining, so I put one rod on my baited area in the margin. Around this time before it was dark, Clark had a screamer and banked a lovely mid double common. As it got dark we only had a few hours left, and saved by the bell my margin rod went. I also managed to bank a common on a yellow popup. Probably the smallest Carp in the lake.

Session two

Not alot to report on this session, very similar to the last. Although I tried a very different approach. Since the last session we heard the maggots seem to work very well. With this in mind I ordered a huge amount of maggot and some house boilie hoping this would give us the edge. On our first session we noticed that the local who banked some fish had a large amount of fizzing over his area. Whether this was him baiting or not the first place I wanted to fish was there. Same as last time, we waited for the sun to come up to find the fish. It seemed that when the sun came up the fish and fizzing were in front of us, so no need to move. I think that in our excitement I was too keen to try my maggot out, and so I spodded in alot of bait. Sure enough the disturbance from both mine and Clark's baiting had spooked the fish out of the swim. Using a maggot blowback rig I cast and hoped. On the other rod I used a double hook bait of bloodworm boilie in case they weren't keen on the maggots. Throughout the session I hoped the fish would return, but they never did. I had a very heavy weekend, and moving across the lake didn't seem like a fun idea, so I stuck it out in the same swim all day with no joy. Not alot to report on that session, but the prize came in our next trip.

Session three - The result

Right, so on our second session we spoke with the local that had success on the first session, and had told us a lot of things that were very important about the venue. He had said, along with the bailiff that the swims we were in were some of the best, and that the fizzing we had seen was natural feeding and thoughts that it may have been bloodworm they were feeding on. This session was colder, leaves were dropping and it was the start of autumn. He suggested we tried single baits. Same time as ever, when it was dark. My plan was to hit that swim again knowing that fish naturally feed there its going to be my best chance. Armed with less bait and some new ideas in my head, we got fishing. This time I was joined by Clark again and also local Carper Nicky. My first choice of bait was to run with bottom baits and pop ups, but after watching the fish jumping so much I changed to zigs. The whole lake was covered in leaves and amoungst it I could spot areas of low pressure causing the leaves to spin and the fish were loving it. I found that if I fed small 10mm baits into my swim I would keep them in the area, and feeding. After an hour or two Clark and Nicky had moved swims twice to find fish and it payed off with Nicky taking some fish. Around the same time I had some fish. The first fish came off the bottom and it fell to some 10mm boilies. Meanwhile on the zig rod things were hotting up. I had liners but more importantly it was banking me some fish. I found that the boilie I was feeding in kept them interested and as it was shallow water, I put my zig around 2 foot off the bottom(foot from the surface) I could catch on bottom baits and the zig. Another note was that casting in didn't bother them, and if I didn't cast my zig right into the low pressure swirling leaves, I wouldn't get a bite. By the end of the session Nicky had banked 2 lovely mid double commons and I managed to find 6 fish, 5 commons up to 15lb and topped the day off with a 18lb mirror on the zig. So all in all, this long boring summary explains what we needed to do to find the fish. Zigs worked very well, as did small bottom baits, but more importantly if your not on the fish, you have no chance!!

Here are 5 of the fish I banked..

View the video here and subscibe to Clarks growing blog!