Earlier in the week, I had a look round an old familiar haunt in the Lee Valley. I hadn’t fished this lake for a number of years despite it being close to home and the place where both myself and a few close friends cut our teeth on big pit carp.

This visit I was more interested in the Tench fishing and so, wanting to stay focused, left my floater kit at home…big mistake. There were fish all over the place and the Tench were soon forgotten,. So much for staying focused!!! I still found a huge female Tinca but the Tench had spawned and were down in weight so those plans were put  on hold and I vowed to return the following day fully prepared for Carp and a spot of floater fishing.

The following day the temperature was about 4 degrees cooler and the fish decided it was time to have a little of the other and so I left them in peace to get their tails away, and so jumped back in the car and headed off to look round a different water.

I looked and looked but couldn’t find any fish anywhere, until I stumbled upon a little back bay with what I thought was a group of people splashing around . That was until I saw the number of huge fish going absolutely beserk, spawning in the nearby snags. I stood there for ages watching  in awe as the massive females were chased around by the smaller males spraying their eggs in the air !!That was the end of the fishing for that day and so I returned home, planning on catching up on some work to free some time up for when the big girls fancied a feed to help recover from their antics.

 The weekend was nearly over but the weather was warm, well hot actually. I thought the fish would still be  in the surface layers and hoped it would be too hot for them to be spawning, and so threw some floater kit into the car and headed off for a couple of hours of mooching around the same water that I’d had a look at earlier in the week.

The lake looked perfect with a northerly breeze still blowing into a corner of the lake that had had a few fish in there earlier in the week. There were still fish milling around, the only problem was that most were doubles with only two slightly better fish mixed in. I started feeding a mixture of 11mm sonubaits Expanders and Oily Floaters and soon had the group of  smaller fish feeding in a tight area about 20 yards out, with the larger fish tending to prefer to hold back a little and pick the baits off that the smaller fish had missed.

Keeping the little un’s where they were I managed to get the controller over their heads and into the oncoming path  of one of their larger friends. The fish approached the  bait, came up slowly and in when then hook bait. Strike!!! Fish on and it was definitely one of the better ones, plodding up and down  slowly using its weight rather than speed throughout the fight. Safely netted, she was weighed at a little over 23lbs. Not a bad way to spend a Sunday afternoon I was thinking, when out of the corner of my eye I could see another group of fish coming down the margin to my left.

I had seen the same group earlier and knowing they would turn and head back up the same way from where they had come, carefully punched the controller out to hopefully intercept them. For once everything went to plan and the lead fish came up and took the hook bait, and then shot off like a stabbed rat!! It took over 50 yards of line on its initial run but soon tired and was netted after a brief visit to the lily bed on my right. It was a stunning fish, probably one stocked the previous year and clearly doing well. It looked about 18lbs and so I quickly did a picture and slipped her back

Not a bad Sunday’s afternoon. Much better than following the arrows on the floor in Ikea! (eh Lee?)

Til next time, tight lines.