A blog we can all relate to coming into Winter time.
As always in Winter it’s a time for catching up with friends and hearing about everyones campaigns through the warmer months. Our lake of choice was Gold Lake in Burghfield on the advanced angling portfolio of lakes.
It’s ran on a lake exclusive booking system, so for a certain amount of anglers to have the lake to themselves for a period of time. We had 48 hours ahead of us just into the start of the new year 2021.
We turned up at the gate early around 6am and conversations started about would the lake be frozen. We had had a few days in a row now of minus temps and light wind so there was a chance our session could be over before it had even started. Entering the gate walking around the crunchy frozen paths of the small pond, we could see it wasn’t solid. We decided on swims in a position for a good social but still covering the whole lake. I ended up choosing an area of deeper water with it being so cold .
A few chucks with a light lead, I managed to find a lovely deeper area inbetween two big weed beds. Before settling in for the evening I flicked out two singles into the silty area. Both wrapped in foam so I could pull the lead back onto the edge of the weed bed with just the hook Bait sticking out into the clear area.
That evening we all had a lovely catch up, a big BBQ and the stories were flowing about the past seasons antics and achievements. It dropped well below freezing that night so we all decided around midnight it was time to slip into the bags ready to see what the morning would bring. The morning came round and it was freezing cold but you could feel the atmosphere building as the sun tried to break through the clouds. The mist had covered the whole lake to the point that I couldn’t see my rods at all. I decided to slide out the bag around 8am to go and see if any of the lads had a caught when I received a single bleep. I walked down to the rods just to see the swinger picking up very slowly towards the butt of the left hand rod and the line tightening out to the spot. I picked the rod up and bent into the fish. The slow steady lunges told me it could be a good fish straight away. I called for the boys to come over and give me a hand netting it as the margins were very shallow and waders were an essential.
My friend Shaun quickly put his waders on, grabbed the net and walked out slowly into the lake. It surfaced about 10 yards out and we both instantly looked at each other and said “is that her”? Once we slid the net underneath the fish we could instantly tell it was the lakes biggest resident. We put her into a retainer for 20 minutes whilst we had a quick cuppa and let the adrenaline settle down. We all got her out and weighed her up and the needle settled on 41.14 of January carp, and what a special old one she was.
Plenty of photos and some great video footage was taken, and a bucket of water followed. Which in January, I can tell you isn’t fun at all. But to go down and have a social with the boys and bag such an awesome carp was such a big buzz. It’s fair to say that night we had a good few beers and some good food to finish of what was a brilliant session again before parting ways ready for the up and coming spring campaign. The sort of session’s you never forget!!
DAN CHAPPELL