16/08/08 - Bullock Farm - Rushcombe Lake

Weight – 43lb 14oz
Catch – 152 Carp
Weather – Windy, cloudy and odd shower.
Water temp – 17.0c > 17.5c

Took 11 year old Chaz fishing. Decided Rushcombe Lake at Bullock Farm would be the ideal place to catch a few and get him used to landing and unhooking fish by himself.

This was my first time fishing this lake, but knew it held loads of small carp. Today would also serve to be a good preparation for the Veals Winter League in October.

My initial plan of attack was to fish at 3m on the deck, fishing over groundbait and then the fish the bottom of the far shelf at 11m, feeding 4mm expander and corn.

I started at 3m, but soon found myself messing around with elastics and rigs. Eventually settling on a 16 B911 under a 0.1g caster float, fishing 6ins deep attached to a no. 6 elastic. A small dryish nugget of groundbait was immediate attacked by hordes of goldfish. Double maggot seemed to be best and I quickly caught a colourful bag of fish.

Chaz in the meantime was also catching a few on the waggler, including a few bigger carp up to 12oz, as was I.

After a couple of hours I wanted to try the far bank. Again, initially I tried fishing on the deck, but after 10 mins it became obvious this wasn’t going to happen. More messing about with the rig and I eventually settled on fishing tight to the far bank fishing in 1ft of water. A kinder pot if 4mm expanders and corn, every other put in, saw me catch proper carp in the 4-12oz bracket. Corn seemed to be the best bait, expanders just weren’t durable enough.

The better fish were definitely on the far side, but it was obvious there was a lot of smaller fish to be caught close in.