Two And A Half Hour Winter Carp Challenge

Saturday 24 February 2018

It's cold... So cold! Maybe too cold to fish?! Naa... And as I had a two and half hour window late in the afternoon this Saturday I decided to put it to good use and see if I could catch a winter carp or two.

If you've been following this blog or my YouTube channel you'll have noticed I've been fishing up at The Holiday Inn Lake (otherwise known as 'The Crest Lake') quite a bit recently and it's yet to let me down in terms of bagging up (a rare thing in winter!). So after dropping my daughter off I headed to the lake, pulling into the car park at 3pm on the nose and then ran round to the 1st swim to get set up.

As it was late in the day I decided to fish a swim at the top end of the lake where the sun would've been on the water for the most amount of time. It's also shallower at the top end and my thinking was the fish may have moved into the warmer water as the day wore on.

The proven tactics so far have been a feeder rod with liquidized bread and sweetcorn hookbaits and today was no different as I had my 1st bite within 10 minutes of casting out! And amazingly, the bites kept on coming with 6 fish in the net and two lost. Baring in mind I've had this number of fish to show for a whole day session in the past, it wasn't a bad result. Just goes to show that reading a lake to figure out where the fish might be and getting on them can result in bites even in the coldest of conditions.

The weather is set to get mind bogglingly cold over the next couple of weeks and with chilly winds, heavy frosts and snow predicted so this might be the last lake session for a while... I'm really glad I braved the elements today even if I couldn't feel my face or fingers by the time I packed down! The heater in the car never felt so good...