PVA Bag Brace!

Once again my brother had decided to do a night at the very last minute, but of course I wasn’t really complaining. My plan was to fish for a fish at a time and hopefully manage to fish through the smaller carp to get to the more decent specimens, however like most of my recent sessions it would probably fail miserably…

Setting myself up in a small snaggy swim I was confident of a few fish from both my left and right margin. The left margin had a large overhanging tree where carp were cruising on top. Only small, but it gave me confidence! Reeds and brambles lined the right margin. I often fish both margins as they produce the better fish, where as mid-water will produce far more fish, but a far smaller size. After running a lead through both margins I confirmed that the lake bed was clay, so I threaded on a length of clay rig tubing to the 12lb mainline in an attempt to make it blend into the lake bed.

Bait-wise, Chapel Baits Plum & Black Pepper boilies was the choice, fished in conjunction with pellets in big PVA bags fished tight to the margin features. Before putting the rig and bait in with the bag I squashed a PVA nugget and folded it in half over the size 8 hook. By doing so it gave me complete confidence that my rig wasn’t snagged on any underwater snags. With both rods cast out just before dark I set the baitrunner on both reels tight (almost locked up) and sat by my rods ready for a thumping take on the rod tip.

When carp fishing I almost always fish 2 pieces of critically balanced fake corn, as it is such a great, and underestimated bait. I still find it strange how fish would eat rubber, however fished with quality bait fed around it, it will almost always score!

Throughout the night I caught countless numbers of carp; however they were all small, averaging about 5lb. I was starting to get very frustrated being woken up for a carp of this size, but I fished on in hope I could fish through the small carp and the bigger fish would move in… and they did.

At about 4am the right hand rod screamed off and after a good battle on my 2.25lb test curve carp rods I netted a far better fish. With it lying on the mate after just being unhooked the other rod wrenched round too. ‘Oh no, not another 5lb carp’ I said to my brother as he dealt with the other fish, but soon I knew I was wrong by the way the fish was fighting. It kept its head down and kept plodding peeling line off the spool. I’m sure if I was using ‘poker sticks’ -as I call them- like many anglers of today I could have dragged the fish in, but where is the fun in that? Within about 10 minutes I had 2 far more decent fish on the mat and I knew at this point my tactics had worked. Of course though, the inevitable happened and I was plagued by more small carp for the rest of the session, but a good session all the same!