James Hart loses and gets the ‘Trophy’!

James Hart and Dan Mitchell have just enjoyed a fabulous weekend staying in Pochard Lodge on Cherry Mere where they have both broken their PB’s at least twice. James and Dan, who are both long term anglers, whilst being new to Carp Fishing, shared 15 doubles over the weekend with Dan catching 8 Carp to 18lb and James 7 Carp to 17lb.

On meeting the two guys on Friday afternoon they explained they were fishing for a trophy, the ‘winner’ being the angler who did NOT have the biggest Carp of the weekend.  As you can see from the ‘Trophy’ shot below, the Trophy is a little over the top and not one which my wife would like to be prominently displayed in my living room. As James ‘won’, it remains to be seen if his wife lets him display it in his!

Despite the obvious poor conditions, very high pressure, bright sun and cold misty nights, the guys fished well to catch regularly throughout their stay. They used a good quantity of largish boilies, or sometimes double baits, to defeat the lakes smaller Carp which are now getting to a size to enjoy a boilie.

Cherry Lake has been slow this weekend for the three anglers on the lake with just one Carp landed and several missed runs. The Carp are very active, enjoying the sun, and playing hard to get, which is very predictable given the conditions. They are also clearly feeding on naturals. Indeed I watched the Carp off the house bank roll, bubble and fizz for several hours yesterday on some sort of natural hatch. It was a shame no one was fishing in the Cottage!

As I have said recently, I am convinced small baits are the key at the moment. Whilst some anglers have caught on small baits (the 31lb Common last week was caught on a 10mm Cell boilie), no one has fished over an area and baited heavily with the small baits. It strikes me that when the Carp are on small baits, a winning approach must be to give them lots of them to get them pre-occupied and encourage some competition amongst the Carp. Small PVA bags will only ever pick up the odd Carp, particularly at this time of the year when they are obviously a little wary of boilies and small patches of bait.