Suitably encouraged by a thread on maggotdrowning.com, I decided today to have a go at Toddington fishery, just north of Luton. I'd made one previous visit which was less than successful, so this time, armed with better information, I focused on the top lake for what I hoped would be some easy fishing for small carp.
Arriving a little before 7am, I paid and settled up on the top lake, which was reassuringly empty of anglers at the time. The lake is fairly small, typical of most commercial venues, with a small island that looked just out of pole range. I positioned myself round on the southern end where the island was closest to the bank and set up my usual pole set-up for pellet.
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| My peg for the day |
Plumbing at 11m revealed about 4ft of water and the same depth at 12.5m, so this looked a good place to start – I could always push further over the island later if needed. Expecting great things, in went an 11mm expander over 4mm feed pellets to await some action. Two put-ins, two knocks, no fish. Then a proper bite, a brief fight and an immaculate 4lb mirror was in the landing net. Not bad, now I needed to keep them coming. Within 25 minutes I'd added two more carp, but these were smaller at 2lb each and then bites went a bit iffy. A skimmer and goldfish followed, which explained quite a lot. But where had the carp gone?
Typical stamp of the carp (all of which were immaculate)
I fed again and set up a lighter rig with a 14 hook for soft 6mm pellets. This was a complete failure. Nothing, almost as if the swim was devoid of fish. Back to the heavy rig and some more small fish, so I pushed over to 12.5m to see if the fish had backed off. A few more carp, but in the 1-2lb bracket, then more tench, goldfish and a crucian carp. But it was slow, there would be a few bites, then a lull then the odd bite, and the fish were smaller than I would have liked. The light rig was tried again, and again it failed – why didn't they want the small pellets that looked like the feed? Puzzling.
At this point I was getting a little frustrated. Surely there was more to be caught than this, or at least more often? Then I started to see a large tail emerge from the water at the edge of the island. A decent carp none-the-less, not huge but an easy 6lb+. Time to go to 14 metres.
Duly set up at 14m I started to attack the island line, it was about 3ft deep, with the last metre to the island being full of dead reeds and miscellaneous stick ups, so this was the limit. I started to get a few bites on 11mm pellet – a few small carp, some tench and a crucian. Then is slowed down again. Try as I might I could not get it going properly. Small pellet and maggot both failed, for some reason they wanted the big expander, which is unusual. I tried on the bottom (tench), up in the water (foul hooked F1) and found that an inch off bottom seemed to do the best. But it was hard work, a few fish, a few bites then nothing.
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| 14.5m across to the island |
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| Small tench |
I was thinking it was just me, but the other anglers on the water were doing even worse. Two guys fishing feeder to the island were blanking completely (in fact they packed up after 4 hours having caught nothing and they were regulars) and another pair of anglers fishing two rods each seemed to be blanking as well. So maybe it was just one of those days.
About 10:30am is started to get really hard as almost everything switched off. I started to try some other lines, including the margin and the deepest line at 8m, but apart from a few rudd on the inside, this didn't help. After about an hour of trying different things, the island line started to produce the odd fish again. I wasn't ripping up any trees, but at least I was catching a fish or two. Over the next few hours I caught a few carp and tench and added a 5lb mirror (best fish of the day) but the typical carp was about a pound, while the tench were 6oz on a good day.
I carried on for a while, but it was clear something was not quite right, of the other 7 anglers (11 rods in total) I could see, I'd not seen a fish caught all day and a chat with a regular said this was unusual.
So I bit the bullet and packed up about 1:30pm. I thought a few brownie points for getting home early would be worth missing 90 minutes of hard fishing.
As I packed up I saw 2 small carp caught by some of the other anglers, but clearly it was hard going. I think I made the right call.
View from top lake looking down on middle and bottom lake
So all in all, a tough day. I managed a little over 40lb on a lake that seemed to have switched off. On a good day I imagine the venue could throw up an easy ton, but not today.
Catch list:
Common Carp – 15
Mirror Carp – 15
F1 carp – 2
Goldfish - 3
Tench - 8
Crucian - 1
Rudd – 5
Skimmers – 1
Total weight - 41lb
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