Saturday 24th November 2001

Carping In Winter by Aidan Rich

After a few days of frost, Saturday was a warmer than normal late November day, Myself and Alan Davis set out for a winters day carping at Willinghurst, armed with various new methods of catching carp ( well new to us anyway ).

Alan came along with a new self adjusting float so that he could fish on the bottom, and popup boilies and bait dip. I came along armed with a similar baiting method, with pop-ups and a in-line method feeder.

Alan's boilies were strawberry flavour with a strawberry flavour bait dip, my boilies were squid flavour dipped in Activ-8 bait dip.

We arrived around 10am, with two other anglers already on the top lake, we set up on our usual hot spot just by the blue pipe up the slope leading to the lake, and cast in and waited.

We waited, and waited, nothing happened until around 12pm when Alan suddenly took hold of a 6.3/4lb mirror (see picture right)

It wasn't long before Alan hooked into another 7lb Mirror, these were the first fish he had caught using boilies, so was pleased with the results.

As for myself, I also managed to hook two fish, but both got away. These were the only bites we had, normally in the summer months, we would have had at least 5 Carp each by 12pm in the 4lb to 10lb range, so even on commercial lakes, the winter really slows things down.