Mystery Lake

Dan "The Fisherman" (not a crap angler) and myself, the crap angler visited a mystery lake in Oxfordshire early on Monday the 1st October. We arrived at around 6.30am, just as dawn was breaking. The lake was fairly narrow, quite long and had a few islands of varying sizes in the middle. Most of all the venue looked "fishy"! Neither of us had fished the venue before and so didn't know what, if any fish were stocked.

We both chose swims next to each other and started to set up, before we had a rod in the water Dan had spotted a snake swimming towards him, so after he had shit himself and almost climbed up a tree we continue to set up. Both of use were using method feeders with hair rigged boilies. I was using a method mix that consisted of Bait-Tech Special 'G' Green Groundbait, tuna, sweetcorn, strawberry flavoured carp pellets, rock salt, breadcrumbs, crushed boilies and sugar puffs. On my first rod I was using 14mm strawberry flavoured boilie made by ... On my second rod I was using pineapple plus 15mm boilie. It's irrelevant what method mix and bait Dan used, he blanked!

The first few hours were pretty slow, then after about 3 hours I received a run on my strawberry boilie. The reel started to scream like a banshee on crack! I struck and after quite a good strong, wild fight I landed a common carp of around 5lb. After this run the lake went pretty dead. No signs of fish and no bites for either of us, not even a line bite. At around 1 o'clock Dan asked me if he thought we should move to Clattercote Reservoir as he was desperate to catch some fish, but being the stubborn git that I am I refused saying that I thought that we would catch fish. I also didn't want to walk my fishing tackle round 63 pegs at Clattercote!

The next hour or so was just as quiet as the previous few and then just after walking around for a bit I arrived back at my swim and just as I did my left hand rod with the strawberry boilie went off on a "clonking" run with my bite alarm going mental. I struck into the fish and at first it ran straight for the island. I managed to get the fish under control and then continued to play it for a while before eventually landing a beautiful looking Mirror Carp. In the net the carp weighed 19lb 12oz but after taking the weight of the wet net off it weighed exactly 18lb making it my personal best. I was so happy and was especially pleased that I hadn't given in to Dan and moved venues.



Again the lake went very quite, Dan got a run (not the runs) at around 4 o'clock but to continue his bad luck for the day he missed it, I was gutted for him as it's not nice for anyone to blank, but especially when your mate lands a "clonker"! At around 5 o'clock I had another nice run - again on the strawberry boilie, this fish fought well and in the end I landed a wild looking common carp of about 5lbs.

We kept on fishing until it was sunset and then called it a day but decided to fish Clattercote Reservoir the next day at 6am. On the way home I decided to buy some crazy baits for our fishing tomorrow. As I have fished Clattercote Reservoir before and caught plenty of fish I thought I would have a bit of fun and see what baits I could catch fish on. I bought the following baits:

chick peas in masala sauce
meatballs in tomato sauce
pepperami
cheese strings (multi-coloured: yellow+orange)