Against all recommendations

Going against all recommendations
and breaking my personal record

My first carp session of 2012 - by Pali

Finally I was able to get out there for a full weekend Carp session; this was my first overnight fishing trip of 2012. I have had plans to go out for so long, but then the water froze solid, my daughter got sick and so on. The following weekend I had everything packed from the weekend before, had charged up my camera and nothing could stop me. At least that’s what I thought - Thursday morning I cracked a tooth and had to get it pulled Friday morning, so with that start on my weekend I didn’t feel like going anywhere. Tho half my face was still numb you just know, that’s only going to last till the anesthetic wears off and then pain will follow. Not really the best combination for a fishing trip and sleeping outdoors in match, with a bleeding bone deep crater in the jaw. We still have cold nights, some below freezing. Normally that’s not something that would bother me, but let’s face it I’m not Bear Grylls.

My daughter canceled the following weekend, as she had some school things she needed to take care of. So now I was determined to get out there, but where to go? Last year I have been fishing all the local ponds on the island I live on, also visiting a few not so local ponds and lakes. I wanted this to be a great start of 2012, now that I had so much trouble getting started.

A few years ago I moved from the mainland to the Island Fyn, moving in with my wonderful girlfriend. I used to live in a small town called Haderslev, where there are some wonderful areas with great nature. A wonderful forest, a few good size ponds. One near an old water mill, a place I have spent many summer nights, mainly drinking a few around a campfire with good friends. But I have often seen carp fishers around the lake, also I found some information that the carps in the lake where old. (15-20 years or more)
I figured that there would be a fair chance they had grown huge, if not savages with bbq’s have eaten them all or thieving basterds have moved them all to ‘private’ ponds. Why I’m not very specific with lake names and locations, but again if your local or have a bit of insight as an Danish carp angler you will know what lake I’m talking about. (If your a catch and release angler, you can always write me for locations) 

Everything is planned; I have even called the local angling club about prices for the fishing. One of my team mates going out with me, write me about the location I have picked for the weekend. Thrilled about my idea of a great nature experience, with nothing else to really go by I send him the location I picked. Let’s just say he was less than thrilled, I get an reply that he did some research and the last report from the lake was in the 90’s and everyone he spoke with told him not to go to this lake. On some closed Danish carp forum the lake is rated difficult or very difficult, but I’m like who cares? It’s a great spot and I have a good feeling about this!
After a great deal of writing back and forth we decide to change the location, I find a pond rated easy, with a big carp population that another carper I know was going to visit the same weekend. A place I have never been, so I have no idea what to expect. I write my mate and ask what he thinks about that location and he’s super thrilled, that should be a great spot and he have before thourt about visiting that spot.

Friday morning I pack the last things and leave for Esbjerg, type in the location in the GPS – Nature and carps here I come!

Arriving to the pond, I find out there will be no nature experience in this. It’s an urban park pond; there is a group of scooter riding teenagers on one side of the pond. I find my local friend in the other end of the pond, right next to a church. I’m thinking what the hell, just thrilled to finally be out carping. But as the after noon and night go’ without a bite and annoying teenagers racing each other around the pond on their noisy scooters and slowly their group go from a few kids to a regular youth party. Around 2 am we have three way to drunk teenage girls asking us a million questions and only after we get impolite and simply start to ignore them they move on. The night go’s without as much as a single bleep or indication of fish in the area, the next morning I get woken by holy spam in the shape of huge church bells ‘DING’ ‘DING’ ‘DING’ going on for 10 min or so.

I’m like come-on, stop that noise. No one is going to church anyway, why are you ringing those bells spamming the whole neighborhood with your ‘holy’ spam?

At that point I had it with this location, my mates are anyway going home today and I was the only one who had plans about a full weekend session. So I pack everything up along with them after breakfast, at the same time a few new carp anglers show up looking for a spot to fish. I tell them they can have our spot as we are leaving, I’m going to go to this spot I had in mind all week. A few of them tell me not to go there, it’s a very difficult spot and if I haven’t been there before and if I haven’t been prefeeding for weeks I will not have a chance to catch anything.

I don’t care about all that, also one of the reasons I’m not a member on any Carp fishing forum. The general attitude towards other anglers and specially if you’re not a “well known” carp angler, also if your member of one club then some people from other clubs will not talk to you at all and stupid shit like that. I could not care less about what club people are members of, what brand of bait they think is the best or whatever schmucks like that thinks of me just because they don’t know me. Maybe they are just trying to be nice; telling it’s difficult location but the way they talk to people they don’t know with a dissenting tone is not cool.
After I’m done packing, I say good bye to my mates and the new arrived anglers. I drive to the lake I really wanted to visit, pay the 30 kr. (5.5$) for a 24 hour fishing session and start looking for a good spot. Now I have a fairly good idea where I should go, as I do have 9 years of local experience with the nature around the pond. I have seen where many other carp anglers have been fishing from; I have also spent many an hour reading of the net and talking tactics with carp anglers. Especially on a worldwide basis as I might not be so well known locally, I have a huge international network as a member and moderator on the worldwidefishingclub.com

I find a few good spots, but decide to scope out a bit more of the area. That was a great idea, as I find a spot with a clean gravel bottom and low water levels, where I also can see a few freshwater clam shells that have washed onshore. So I jump in my waders and simply walk’s out into the lake to check how far I can walk out before it get real  deep, how the bottom is and what do I find? A huge clam bed 30 meters out in the lake and I’m only in a bit more then waist deep water, so I change tactics where I had plans on fishing across the lake. I end up fishing an angle across the clam bed I found on low water, spreading out a bit of spot mix made from boiled corn, peas, grain and hemp seeds with paprika and curry. I also spread out some 6 and 8 mm pellets, a few handfuls of small 14mm homemade freezer boilies from last year and a few broken up bait boilies from Northernbaits.com

Now I bait up my favorite rigs, very simple basic hair rigs with ‘The Frank’ and the ‘Winter’ boilies I got sponsored as test boilies from Northern baits. I cast out and now set up camp, put up the bivy and get everything ready for a nice 24 hour session. I’ve pretty much only got to the part where I got a campfire going, so I a bit later could heat up my left over goulash from yesterday. As I have a thing for cooking goulash when I’m out fishing, where I have the time to let it cook 4+ hours and get it just perfect!

I sat down in the bivy as I was about to do a video update, when my bite alarm went off and I get my Video camera turned 90 degrees in the same fluent motion as I run for my rod. Where my line is just flying of the reel, the line break is not set to handle this big carps so after I close the bait runner it keep taking out a lot of line. I normally fish waters where a 15 pound carp is a fairly big fish. It takes me a bit to get the break set, so I’m able to reel in but also giving room for the fish to pull out line. I don’t want to lose this fish; here I am at the lake where everyone told me not to go. I caught a carp faster than I ever done before, so it would be such a shame to lose it and not get to prove everyone wrong.  After a 10 min tug of war with this wonderful fish I safely land a huge and beautiful Mirror carp, at an astonishing 12.2 kg (26.8 lbs.) breaking my old personal best.

The rest of my time there, I had a single take that didn’t get hooked. It was a great trip; the nature around me and the calming sounds, of the waves hitting the bank was good enough to make up for the rest of the trip. Now that I against what everyone told me, I caught and landed a beautiful carp and not only that I also broke my own personal record doing it.
Proving to myself that you can only learn so much from other anglers, you have to take it all in with a grain of salt and make your own assumptions. You learn way more by getting out there and test all the theorys you read about on the net and see on videos, no matter if it’s on YouTube or expensive DVD collections.

Pick out bait you trust, find a tactic and rigs you think will work and get out and test it. It might work for you, it might not. It might have been pure luck that it worked for me this time around; I will not know till I have fished the location a few times. And trust me I will be back at this wonderful location, with my bait from Northernbaits.com. Too see if I can’t break the pond record on 13 kg. (28.6 lbs.) with their ‘The Frank’ boilie, I came pretty close this time around.

  Session video

   Short version

If you read so far, give me a few more seconds of you time and leave me a comment! Thank you - Pali