A change of tactics pays off for Craig

Well it's certainly safe to say that the fishing has certainly slowed down in recent weeks. My syndicate lake has been extremely tricky of late and the previous trip before this one proved to be an unfruitful one.

I suffered my first blank trip despite working extremely hard and trying to outwit the carp even on zigs. My next trip I decided to change things up a little and I changed my baiting strategy of which would include the introduction of maggots. This time of the year I find maggots to be an extremely productive method of catching the carps interest. I guess it all comes down to the natural food within the lake being on the carps diet as we approach winter.

A trip to the tackle shop and I had my game plan sorted. I mixed up around 2kg of tutti crumb and Beta’nana crumb the day before my trip. I added hemp oil and tutti glug to this with around a kilo of finely chopped tigers. I still planned on using the same trusted hookbaits over the top that was of course the betalin and plum tigers. I grew rather confident of those hookbaits and I had seen no reason to change.

My stick mix I decide to change to crushed tutti with minimal gemz 50/50. I arrived around 3:30pm with the sky looking full of rain and the light dropping at a ridiculous pace so I wasted no time in looking at an area of the pit I felt they would be. Within 10 minutes one stuck its head out of the wind rippled surface. That was enough for me so I set up in that swim in super quick time. The rods were out into darkness and to be fair it was all a tad rushed and I thought the disturbance would have been too much. To my surprise after an hour I landed a welcome low twenty common. The previous blanks were soon put behind me and I had visions of a busy night on the fish front.

Well my hopes were short lived as I woke up on first light the next morning with not a bleep during the night. During the morning I did however see a couple of shows to my right over slightly deeper water. Soon I repositioned the rods to the area after finding a lovely clean deep gully in 8ft of water. Before long the darkness was beginning to descend yet again. Just into darkness I heard a few showing and they sounded like very decent fish. They sounded like they were also around the area of the repositioned rods too.

With the wind still blowing rippling the surface I struggled to make out where they were but I still went to sleep that night super confident of action. A few liners had me up through the night confirming I was on the right track. It was around 6/6:30am the fox Rx burst into life. I knew instantly a good fish was on the end. A powerful first run had me convinced it was a decent fish. After the initial run I pretty much reeled the fish in across the surface in the half light I could make out the fish just moving its head gently side to side as it grew closer. A couple of short runs near the net and soon I scooped up a stunning dark mirror. At a shade under 30lb I could not have asked for a better result. I popped the fish in the sling and repositioned the rod first before the photos.

Within 10 minutes the same rod burst into life. This fight was crazy compared to the last fish. The fish surged on a long line for what seemed like an eternity finding a few weed beds during the fight after a lengthy battle a mirror of upper twenties stared back at me looking rather hacked off if I’m honest.

Both fish on the mat was passing out the crushed tutti and maggots so I knew they had been munching on the spot. I left the lake by 8:30am a very happy man and it proves sometimes a small change of tactics can bring a big result.

Bag a biggun

Craig Runham