Acorns from the ashes

Sunday 9th May
On my way back from the night fishing trip the other day i passed a lake which suffered a major fish kill a couple of years back which killed virtually every Carp in there. It was a shame because the place was starting to chuck up some decent fish too. The following year the lake was restocked with some small carp and left practically unfished .
Anyway, as i passed i saw a Carp leap out of the water so i stopped and watched for a few minutes and soon enough a couple of other Carp leapt out too. I made a mental note to come back one evening and catch some to see how theyd grown since stocking which is how i came to find myself on the bank there this evening.

I took my Tench and Bream gear as i wasnt expecting anything of any size and id also made up a batch of boilies to test out as i intended to use them for Barbelling come the glorious 16th.
I cast a stick rig on one rod along the margin and then began to set up the other rod, as i did so the first rod was practically pulled into the lake! after a lively scrap a chunky little mirror of about 9lb hit the net.


The bait worked then! bolstered by the early success i cast the other rod to the far margin and catapulted a couple of dozen freebies over each. The lake seemed to have gone dead as i didnt have any more indications for over an hour after that until a fast take on the nearside margin rod had the clutch screaming as a fish powered across the middle of the pool. I locked up and applied some heavy sidestrain to try and turn it but it proved to be too much because the hook pulled.
The lake died again after this with just the odd fish topping and it was a good hour before i had another take. This time the fish, another small mirror, was landed and i decided to pack up. Even though i was only there for about 4 hours and the fish were small, i was really pleased to have been down. The stockies are coming on nicely and my new bait proved itself to be a good fish catcher. Its great to see the lake getting back on track after its previous catastrophe, give it 2-3 years and it will be somewhere near where it was before i reckon.