DAY-TICKET DIARY WITH MAT WOODS
Mat turns Dambuster this month as he heads to one of Baden Hall’s lesser-known pools, targeting the shallow, warm areas for bites on PVA bags...
WHEN the wind is in the east, the fish bite least! Or is that just an old fisherman’s excuse?
It’s certainly much harder to catch a carp in an easterly, although most springs we end up with a lot of them, which arrive just as air temperatures start to increase.
What tends to happen is the fish go in search of the warmer areas, which aren’t always on the back of the wind. It stands to reason that if the surface layers are being warmed by the sun, the warm water will move to wherever that wind is blowing – something to bear in mind before you go dashing for the peg that resembles a mill pond!
It was with this in mind that I decided to visit Baden Hall Fisheries in Staffordshire, somewhere that I spend a lot of time fishing on the Specimen Waters. All three specimen lakes require pre-booking and hold some truly magical fish, but what a lot of people don’t know is how good the carp fishing is on the other lakes at Baden.
The Middle, Dam and Lodge Pools all hold fish in excess of 20lb, and lots of them too. As runs waters go, there are few better in the area. I’ve had trips on the Middle Pool where I’ve caught over 50 carp in a single day’s floater fishing. Most of the carp are between 8lb and 18lb, with the outside chance of a twenty. In fact, if you catch the 27lb ghostie in the Middle Pool, you get 48 hours free fishing!
My favourite of the three is the Dam Pool, which is loaded with those special commons that Baden Hall is famous for. It’s a great venue to learn on too, as the carp spend 90 per cent of their time swimming around near the surface, making the fishing quite visual. The floater action can be hectic at times and, as the pool is quite deep, the shallow margins produce carp at all times of the year.
The Dam Pool used to be two pools. The first side you come to is shallower and narrow than the second, which is deeper with more overhanging trees and marginal features. When I arrived at the lake, the first side had five anglers fishing, while the deeper end was devoid of people. I knew exactly where to start looking, and it didn’t take long to find the fish. Had I been doing the night, I couldn’t have picked a swim – they were everywhere!
Rather than start off by casting all over the place, I decided to just underarm a lead out a short distance in front of a swim which looked like it had no fish in it, to get a feel for the depth of the lake. I was surprised when the lead dropped down into about 8ft of water. Had I started casting at showing fish, I’d have been sorely disappointed, as when the sun came up I could clearly see most of the
carp were on the surface. This enabled me to watch them and observe their patrol routes in more detail.
I soon noticed that particular margin spots seemed to be part of their routine lap around the lake. It was as if every fish used one of the reedbeds as a navigational tool, and each corner of the lake was a cul-de-sac they always ventured into, no matter which direction they arrived from. It was clear that carefully-placed margin traps were going to do the business.
Now, unlike on the Middle Pool, the carp in the Dam haven’t received much angling pressure and therefore aren’t preoccupied with eating pellets and boilies. I knew from speaking to a few lads who’ve fished there before that the carp loved hemp, corn and other particles. Perfect, then, for baiting a few spots and roving between them.
It wasn’t warm enough for surface fishing, but they were feeding on edge spots, especially those containing some sort of feature. I baited four or five and moved around between them with little bags of Sonubaits Hemp & Nutty Particle mix. With a couple of grains of maize on the hair straight out the same bucket, it was the perfect mouthful for a carp on the mooch.
The set-up was my usual German rig, using a small flat pear lead on a QC Lead Clip Stem. It doesn’t get any simpler. I lowered the bags on to the sloping margin gently and with a super slack line waited for the inevitable fizz, boil and screaming clutch.
My first fish was a gorgeous scaly mirror, a perfect example of the type of carp in the lake. That was followed by a dumpy mirror with a characterful single scale on his flank, and a battered old common of similar size. All the fish came from the same swim, and I wish I could have stayed for longer as the fish were regularly visiting the spot and feeding confidently over it.
And do you know what the best thing about it was? It was right on the end on a freezing north-easterly wind – the kind of wind you’d expect them to be avoiding. So remember, don’t seek the sun, seek the warmth this month and let those margin spots do the talking.