After a few words of caution, our resident diarist goes on to explain how appropriate tactics and watching the water can bring about the downfall of wise old carp…

BY ADAM PENNING

ADAM PENNING’S CARP DIARY

@adam_penning

@Adam_Penning

Sticky Baits TV

Adam Penning Carp Angler

PHOTOGRAPHY BY ADAM PENNING AND FRIENDS

I PLACED A SINGLE ROD…

As we slowly eased our way back to some form of normality, the days grew warmer and the memories of the harsh and (with hindsight) arguably unjustified restrictions, faded a little. Although we’d lost most of May and all of the preceding couple of months, the sun was shining more brightly than ever, and huge numbers of us ventured to the bankside to soak up both rays, and a break from reality.

I’D DECIDED TO HAVE a few visits to a local syndicate called Fryerning. It’s not too far from my home, and with measures put in place to keep numbers low, it seemed the ideal place to spend a few days mon- ster hunting away from the madness of the real world. I have fished the lake on and off for getting close to a decade now. Although I have been lucky enough to catch a good few of its jewels, because I have only flitted in and out every now and again, rather than campaigning with intensity, I’ve always had a few good ones to go back for. As some of you may know, it has a very good head of really big carp, with something like fifteen fish over forty-pounds and, at the right time, a couple of fifties too.

As with any really pressured lake, if you take the carp for fools, your net will remain dry. I often see anglers arrive, go straight into one of the most popular swims, mallet in their bivvy pegs and then Spomb out a huge spread of bait with zero finesse and maximum clumsiness. I don’t see this just at Fry- erning, but at many lakes I visit. Think about it: are you really respecting your quarry - a creature that is the master of its environment and highly adept at avoiding capture - or are you just clumsily making up the numbers?

As is so often the way with my carp angling, I elected to fish the lake with just one bite as the target, fishing for a single carp and then taking it from there. This reminds me a little of another lake I am fishing at the moment, a syndicate up in Northamptonshire. There are a couple of corner swims, that in the right conditions, often have carp in them. Several times I have chatted with other anglers and noted how they tend to avoid angling in those areas because they say that if you hook one, all the others will leave. I find this mindset intriguing, and if truth be known, a bit amusing too. It’s a lake full of big fish, and all I want to do is catch one! I think that sometimes, we compromise our chances by setting our sights unrealistically high… just try and catch a carp and then reassess.

My approach was to be geared entirely around simple, light baiting with boilies. This is a good and underused tactic at any time of year, but in the springtime when the big girls are rarely up for a big feed, it is a superb way to angle. I was loaded with a couple of kilos of The Krill Active, which is perfect for such a strategy, simply because it is loaded with natural attractors and it gives off sensational leakage as it breaks down. Hookbaits, as ever, would be subtle, dark brown Krill pop-ups. It would be stealthy angling using just a catapult and casting wherever I saw them, followed by just a few baits - that was the plan anyway!