After helping Winks girlfriend's brother catch his first Carp the previous weekend, both Wink and I had decided we fancied a crack at the same venue ourselves. It's not a difficult venue, but does come in handy for trying out new things and also brushing up on the stalking skills prior to the coming River season! We arrived at the venue bright and early, tactics being two ledgered 8mm pellet rods and a stalking rod each, with the plan being to take it in turns to creep around the lake taking advantage of any Carp that may be cruising the margins.

To start with the water seemed dead, with wink being the only one who had caught anything to start with, in the shape of a couple of small Tench. We both then managed to wrinkle out a couple of near doubles to freelined mixers, but it really was hard going. We then sat back and concentrated on the ledger rods. I had been trying a couple of Dynamite baits Almino black pellets on the hair apposed to my usual Hailbut pellet approach and before long realised why I was struggling; they were breaking down after only a few minutes!! By the time I had discovered this Wink had move into the lead with around 7 fish to my 3, with his swim still providing plenty of action.

A change back to the halibut pellets however, proved to be all that was needed, and at the end we finished on 10-8 to Winky. It had been a fun session with most of the Carp just scraping double figures and all of these falling to both ledgers and stalking tactics. It was nice to get out for the Carp just to experience the screaming runs again; after a seasons Piking you soon forget just how voilent these guys tare off with the baits!

Although todays session was great fun, I'm looking forward to this coming weekend when I'll definitely be getting back on the specimen hunt with my sights set on Bream and Tench, hopefully it will make for a good catch report this time next week!!