Summer Syndicate Carping with Craig

Unfortunately due to the current corona epidemic my family holiday had been cancelled, so I decided to keep my holiday at work and a couple of nights on the bank was in order during my week off. 

The conditions for my chosen couple of days was nothing short of awful, temperatures up to 31 degrees and barely a breeze was what I would be facing. I ain’t going to lie I wasn't looking forward to the session. I’m not really into fishing in high pressure and melting temperatures. Unfortunately it was the time I had allocated so I just had to get on with it. 

I arrived at the lake very late in the evening and found it extremely busy. Guess the dry hot weather had brought out a few anglers. I settled on a swim in the shallows in a corner of the lake. Giving the temperatures I was amazed to see the swim free and no one had the same idea as me. The swim is extremely shallow around 2 to 3 feet  in most places. I wasted no time in getting 3 rods out all fishing over a mixture of hemp, tigers, crushed tigers, C-food boilies and plum baits. To this I added a good 100ml of chilli hemp oil. A liberal scattering of Little Gemz and Elips with a Betalin tiger hookbait completed the traps. 

I awoke at 4am put the kettle on and watched the lake wake up. By 9am I noticed the first fish pushing itself clear of the water over the shallows. It was a large fish too definitely over 30lb. It was not a million miles from the left rod either. The sun was high in the sky and it felt hot already, I wondered if it was too hot to be honest. At 9:30am the left rod buckled in the rest I looked out across the shallows to see a massive eruption over the spot. The fight was typical of a big fish really. The fish moving slowly and felt heavy from the offset. After a few issues with weed beds I coaxed a very good mirror into the waiting net. On the scales the big plated mirror went 36lb and was a new one for me from the lake so I was over the moon.

An hour later a repeat of the same occurrence happened on the middle rod. Unfortunately this time a repeat of a mirror of upper 30s but one I had caught actually twice in previous years. So not to stress it out I returned the old mirror without a picture  as it was clearly spawned out and down in weight. 

The night that followed was a quiet one and in the morning  I got done on a shallow spot. Then the whole area went dead. It was lunchtime and the temperature on the mercury read 31 degrees. As much as I didn't want to I forced myself to move to a area I had seen fish showing the previous evening. I knew they wouldn’t have gone far. I was proved right as that day I managed a 24lb ghosty and a cracking 34lb 8oz mirror. The following morning before packing away a lovely scaly 25lb mirror finished the session. Three mid thirties and 2 mid twenties was a great result considering the awful stale conditions.