When you fish the river Great Ouse this is what you can expect, hard fighting beasts.
Wild as you like they roam freely but, they do have their habits.
I've now finished my third week fishing the Great Ouse river and in that time I've concentrated on two areas and kept my eye on one other. The distance between them is many miles but they all have similar things in common. High traffic areas, bottle necks so to speak, places where the carp will pass through at some point and on a regular basis.
The method I have been using is to try and fish each area a few times each week. This means early morning rises at 4AM at this time of year and fishing till 2:00PM. Then on the way home I visit the other area and stay a while, get the marker rod and Deeper out, perhaps put in a little bait.
This fish came at 7AM and only gave me the slightest of rod top knocks and on the second nod I picked the rod up. I seemed to have gained the advantage from the off and perhaps caught it by surprise as I managed to easily wind down and pull it from the area I had placed my bait. Once I had done that it woke up and as if I had connected to an unstoppable force it rapidly took thirty yards of line off the spool driving up river.
At this point I waded out into the river as far as I safely could to get the line out past the lilies which litter the margins of the Ouse. Once there the rod went over and I piled on the side strain tightening the clutch a little in an attempt to stop it.
This wasn't going to happen and only made it angrier as it took way too much line off me again. Then just as I thought it might kite into the lilies goodness knows how far up the river it turned and started to head back downstream on the other side. Back up on the high bank I followed the fish back down pumping it slowly toward me, then once more into the water and back out to net it at the edge of the lilies.
It's a beast isn't it, well pleased :-)