Articles: Targeting Day Ticket Lakes in The Winter - By Lee Pollard
At this time of year the carp are still catchable, and at some venues it can be just productive as the warmer months. Now its
alot colder I spend my time targeting day ticket lakes that I know holds a good head of fish, because of work and other
commitments I have to plan my fishing in advance and only manage to get out there at weekends at the moment so theres no
point me trying to spend my weekend sat a on ultra hard vanue. As many of you know its nice just to put a few kippers on
the bank at this time of year no matter what the size is.
On this particular occasion I left on the saterday morning about 6.30am to get to my local day ticket venue, and arrived
about 7am.As soon as I got out the van I realised how cold the wind was, it was blowing a bitter easterly right across
the lake through the bear trees. I started to walk round, but there were no carp giving them selfs away, which made it
difficult for me as I think in the colder spells location is critical, if your not on fish they anit going to come to
you!
When I got round the far side I could just make out a gravel patch in the gin clear water about 10-15 yards off the back
of that chilly wind and roughly 30yards out from the bank, which I thought would be a good starting point. Once I carted
my kit round I cast a lead to the clean gravel area and counted it down, 1,2,3,4,5, 5ft deep, perfect I thought out of
the wind and as carp are cold blooded I assumed they would visit the area as its a lot shallow than the rest of the lake
and would warm up the quickest.
I started setting up, bivvy first because it was so cold and noticed some dark shapes slowly moving across the area, but
soon had to abandon that job, as I couldn’t miss this opertunaty. I tied up two small pva mesh bags filled with low oil
trout pellets and three of the new Ashford Tackle boilies which im testing crushed up in each. The bags were no bigger
than a fithy pence piece, just a mouth full for them. I was using a 2.5oz inline lead arrangement with a short flooro
carbon hook link, critacaly balanced with a 15mm yellow pop-up that had been soaking in the Ashford Tackle dip for
some time. I quickly hooked the bags on and positioned the rods making sure to over cast the spot a little just so
I could feel the lead down on to the gravel and not to cause to much disturbance’s cant stress enough how important
it is to keep every thing pined down and camouflaged at this time of year and especially in this clear water
Now the traps were set all I could do is wait but it was getting quite frustrating being able to see the carp on the
area write by the rigs. I carried on putting up the bivvy, just when I got to the last peg my right hand rod was away
and line been torn from the spool rapidly leaned into the fish with it kiteing to my right, heading for some reeds in
the far margin, but managed to turn this hard fighting creature right at the last moment before it tryed to bury its
self deep in the reeds, before I new it she was swimming in the margin and I persuaded her in the net after a couple
of attempts. It was a stunning low double common in her winter colours of which I was chuffed with, the pics were
taken and she was carefully slipped back.
I quickly got my rod back out and every thing set up, the runs continued and I banked another four mid doubles
while it was light. It got to about 9 o clock and tiredness started to set in so I thought it was time to get
the head down. As I climbed into the bag I heard on the radio there was going to be gale force winds over
night of which I was'ent looking forward to!
I must of been asleep a couple of hours when my alarm let out a one toner, I was out the bivvy like a shot and on to
the rod, as I hit into it the fish came straight to the top of the water, with a bit of a short scrap it was soon on
the mat in the shape of a thirteen pound mirror it was a proper cracker. I looked at the time, it was 11.30 and the
wind was definetly getting stronger I quickly got the carp back and I retired back to the bivvy. Luckly the alarms
remained silent through all the gales, at one point it was raining that hard it sounded like it would pierce the bivvy,
I did'ent fancy getting out in those weather condition. I slowly drifted off to sleep again, it did'ent seem I had
been asleep that long when I was woken by another vicious take and rapidly had another in the net. As it was 7.30am
I had to think about packing up and managed to bank one more which was the biggest fish of the session at 16lb. I
was very please with what I had caught as it shows you can still bag up in the winter.
So get down to you local day ticket water and stick it out for a night you may be surprised on what you catch.
