With the Burghfield Common banked and ultimate accolade in carp fishing achieved, Scott Lloyd looks to maintain his good run of form on a certain boating lake, targeting a fish which had been in the shadows of the mighty Brute… the Baby Black

BY SCOTT LLOYD

NO BULLSH*T, JUST GOOD SOLID ANGLING

There’s plenty of water in that part of the country!

PHOTOGRAPHY BY SCOTT LLOYD, DAN WILDBORE AND TOM GIBSON

HOW ON EARTH DO YOU FOLLOW THE COMMON…?

FROM YATELEY, to St Ives Lakes’ Shallow Pit, and staying with the biblical year that was 2017, we’re going to look back at my time immediately after I slipped back the ‘BC’. I was left at a little bit of a loose end, and the obvious place to go was to the lake across the road, to fish for a carp called Baby Black. This was a fish I actually knew nothing about, until I considered my options after Burghfield, but it’s a mega carp. I knew about the Brute, and once that fish had passed, I guess that’s when the Baby Black began to shine as the main fish anglers would target. I always refer to the lake as the Boating Lake, and those who know it, know it. If you really do want to catch the fish, I guess it’s not hard to find out where it lives.

KEY PART 1

TRAVELLING TIME ISN’T WASTED TIME; USE IT TO YOUR ADVANTAGE!

It was around March when it happened. It was something you can’t process, even if you think you’re close to catching it… you can be so far away from it without even realising! I fully expected to see myself slogging it out for another year in Reading, so when my time with the Common came and went, it left me without a back-up plan which, as I said in my last piece, left me flitting around with no real idea of what to do. The Baby Black, then, seemed like a good shout. It would be the same mileage, and the same amount of fuel drained from the tank in the van most weeks, as I made my way south. The water was about 170 miles from my house, if I remember rightly. Although it’s some distance to the Boating Lake, the slog of the drive provided me with a lot of time to plan ahead, and process what I was going to do during each session.

This time might not have been pivotal for the first session or two, but later, as I got my teeth stuck into it, those hours on my own with nothing but the open road and either a wet or dry net in the van, would do wonders for my thoughts and plans moving forward. You’re either driving down and thinking of the session ahead, or returning home with thoughts of what you could’ve done differently, using the time to process the snippets of information you’ve gleaned on the bank. There’s nothing better than that time on your own to reflect and think, rather than trying to work everything out whilst sitting at home, with its many distractions steering you away from your train of thought.

The lake had an old-school vibe, in the sense of its syndicate etiquette

KEY PART 2

FRESH CHALLENGE, FRESH MIND! RELY ON EXPERIENCE, AND DON’T GO IN WITH A PRECONCEIVED IDEA

Although I was starting with a blank canvas, my usual approach of staying mobile, and even being up during the night were to pay off massively for me. I quickly learned that the fish were quite active at first light. You’d soon find them tucked away. When I arrived, they’d just found their new lease of life after winter. Although I’d love to have chased them around, planning my next move to intercept them, I soon learned too, that the anglers already on there had started their seasons way before I rocked up from Burghfield. The lake had an old-school vibe, in the sense of its syndicate etiquette. Some were getting certain areas going, spending a lot of time and effort in one place.