Whilst I wish I was amongst those that have been out on the bank making the most of the surprisingly mild wet weather during  December unfortunately my total fishing amounted to only two trips, the first being a quick overnighter and the second being a short five hour day session.


This was down to several factors the first being work. As it was the run up to the holiday season it meant we were extra busy due to the educational fishing courses we deliver coming to an end and having to prepare for the winter shut down of the site. You see I am the event manager and lead angling coach at For Life Experiences, I have been working there for over three years now and we deliver a variety of educational courses themed around angling and have just been granted College status so come February 2013 we will be delivering accredited fishery management courses to a variety of pupils. Pupils that benefit from our government funded courses range from children struggling at school, to adults recovering from substance misuse, to families trying to build stronger bonds and adults and children with learning difficulties. I love my job and get a great sense of satisfaction helping others and seeing the enjoyment they get from spending time in peaceful surroundings.

My First trip was a short overnight session on a southern syndicate lake as a bit of a social for a friend’s birthday. My friend Martin is new to the sport and I first met Martin nearly two years ago when he came to me on one of our six session courses. Martin won’t mind me saying he has had a troubled history but is doing much better these days and has stayed a close friend and as such taken up carp fishing.  The lake we were to be fishing holds a good head of upper doubles and low twenties but the conditions were unfavourable from the off. We arrived at the lake and there was a cold wind blowing with on and off rain that felt like ice water when splashing down on your face!

We quickly set up on the back of the wind and I decided to fish with solid pva bags on two rods fished roving style until I stumbled upon some carp, well that was the plan anyway. Out in front of my swim was an island at around 140 yards so one rod was cast around 10ft off the left of the island in the lea of the wind and the second rod was cast in to a deeper channel behind a gravel bar at around 80 yards.  My solid pva bag consisted of some mixed size Mainline Cell pellets supplied by Kent Particles and Salmon fry crumb so that all the gaps would be filled within the bag thus aiding casting. To try and boost my chance for a quick bite I added some of the Cell stick liquid to the bag and fished with a 10mm pink or white pop up rolled by Kent Particles on the hair. Rigs were kept simple short 4” 20lb black Trickster hook links with my ever faithful size 10 Continental Muggas from Gardner.

I used a very small 4mm section of silicone tube to trap the hair to the bend of the hook and hold the 10mm bait in place, this was balanced with the smallest split shot possible so the bait act as naturally as possible.  Once we were all happy with the rods we sat back and celebrated Martins birthday with a few beers and a take away but the alarms remained silent. Between four of us we had 8 rods covering half the lake and we were all trying different tactics to try and get a bite, around 3am my Friend Matt who was fishing to my left had a screamer on his left hand rod fished on a solid bag. After a short spirited fight he managed a pretty 16lb common and upon releasing the fish our other friend Graham walked in to the swim saying he had literally just returned two fish of around the same size meaning that was three bites in no more than half an hour. All of the fish were caught on the solid pva bags that were near enough identical to mine but a few swims away from where I was fishing. That was all of the action that was forthcoming for that trip and it just goes to prove that there can be small windows of opportunity at this time of the year where the carp are willing to feed especially when the conditions are poor.

After this trip I was again caught up in work and then of course all of the Christmas Festivities and in all honesty fishing didn’t event enter my mind!  That was until my little brother James said he would like me to take him fishing as he had not been for quite some time. We planned a short five hour day session on the 28th December to a local British Waterways Reservoir known as Clattercote.

The alarm clock went off at 7am and my little brother was full of excitement as we made the short fifteen minute journey to the reservoir. On arriving the conditions were awful with strong winds and gale force rain so we remained in the van for ten minutes until the rain eased up, from previous experience I knew roughly where we would want to be and we set up a third of the way up the far side of the reservoir on the side of the surprisingly warm southwest wind. The water we had out in front of us was the deepest area of the lake with depths of up to 22ft in the middle at around 80 yards.

As soon as the shelter was up to keep everything dry I set about getting my brother fishing and decided to keep things simple, a 5ft fluorocarbon leader was coupled with a Covert lead clip from Gardner and a 7” rig made with the new 10lb Target Fluorocarbon  and a size 10 Incizor. A small 4mm section of silicone tube was again added to keep the bait tight to the back of the hook and balanced with a no1 split shot. Bait choice was simple a 10mm white cell pop up from Kent Particles with a pva mesh bag of fry crumb the size of a twenty pence piece. We were just looking to try and get a bite each time and not over feed the carp or even put them off which can be easily done at this time of the year. After around an hour my brothers rod melted away and he was in to a small feisty mirror carp, I helped my brother guide the fish to the waiting net and he was soon holding up his prize for the camera and was more than happy with the fish weighing 8.02lb.

He got the rod back out and half an hour later the rod was away again and after a hairy scrap close in next to the wooden platform legs the 8lb mirror was safely in the net and my brother was grinning like a Cheshire cat! After helping my brother get the rod back out I set about getting a rod sorted for myself and followed suit tactic wise after the recent success. By about 10am we had not received any more action so I decided to try an adjustable zig to search the varying layers of the 22ft depth in front of us. I have often found on deeper venues that the fish will tend to spend most of their time off of the bottom in the winter in the warm pockets of water called thermoclines. My plan was to attach a 1ft zig tied using 10lb Gardner zig line and a size 12 mugga coupled with a piece of white foam to a running subfloat set up so that I could wind the zig tight to the lead and it would be 1ft off the bottom, my plan then was to let an extra foot of line off the spool every fifteen minutes.  Hopefully by doing this I would eventually stumble upon the fish and then I could easily reset the float to this depth and hopefully catch again.

Well after letting off the sixth foot of line the zig melted off almost immediately and I was in to my first fish of the day. The offending culprit was a small common of around 8lb and I was more than happy to be off the mark as my little brother took great pleasure in reminding me he was ‘winning’!

After taking a quick snap of the fish I reset the rod to 6ft off the bottom and was away almost immediately again and soon after netted my second fish of a similar size. We continued to catch steadily through the day on my zig rod and my brother had a few more too on his pop up and pva bag tactic and even managed the biggest fish at 9lb. In total we managed ten fish between us and lost a few and we didn’t see another person on the lake catch and I’m sure this is due to the fact everyone was fishing on the bottom and the fish were sat 7ft off of it. The fish my brother did catch off the bottom were almost instantly after casting out and I think they could have been following the bag down as it sank through the murky depths. So unfortunately that concludes my fishing this month but next month I plan to get out at least once every week on my syndicate lake and hopefully visit a few day ticket lakes too, so if all my good plans come together I will hopefully have some better pics for next month, until then be lucky.

Tom Oliver