Another one of my local ponds that contains some lovely big commons and some very old mirrors that i first started to fish in 1982. It was basically a disused gravel pit which you could fish anywhere you wanted, even take a boat out. Back then there was only about ten fish in the lake, mostly mirrors around low to mid doubles and they were some of the biggest carp around at that time. Remember this is 1982 when most of the lakes in cambridgeshire that now have monsters in them were just being stocked, so these were some early seventies fish.
When it became a nature reserve in the 1990's most of the lake became off limits with only a few distant swims to fish from. The carp spent most of their time away from these swims but now and then would come within range.
Walking the banks often as i did in 2008 i began to notice certain areas that the fish would move from and too. Stalking worked well and i had my first few fish like that including the fully scale and apple slice. Just an hour here and there looking for them and casting a bait worked well.
The rest came to a concerted baiting and weed clearing effort later in the year. Bait is a good way to not only clear an unfishable area but also of course attract carp. So every morning for two weeks i went and put ten kilos of pellets onto it mixed in with some Berry boilies. Eventually the hand cast lead came back clean and i started to fish.
I spent about three weeks fishing the spot for just a few hours at a time three mornings a week and managed to get a good few fish. The fish were mostly caught from with in a few feet of the bank. I took hardly any kit, no alarms and just one rod. It was hard work too as i spent all my time standing in a foot of water under a bush, cold.
Among the captures the most memorable apart from the stalked fully scale was when i had a brace of mid twenty commons on not one but two wonderful September mornings.