Arrans Lake (Entire Farm) 25-8-15

Every now and then I get the urge for an easy day’s fishing. It might just be for a bite a chuck or hopefully a nice bag of match carp, but with this year quickly disappearing and no big catches to report I bit the bullet and went for some easy fishing. By all reports Arrans Lake (Entire Farm) had been doing some amazing things in matches , so this seemed like a good time to give it a bash. I’d done my homework (methods, pegs and depth), phoned to check availability, cleaned my kit, packed extra bait and headed off before 6am for an early start.

I drew up to the venue (a new one to me) at about 0620, to be the first person there (no surprise there). I had a quick look at pegs and headed on to the far car park. After christening the portaloo, I loaded my kit on the trolley and stopped around about peg 13 – a fairly unremarkable peg with no snags but on a prominent arc into the lake.

Whilst setting up I fed the 3m line a few times with some 6mm pellets. This apparently can really produce. I got out my top sets, pole, roller etc. Set up the landing net, put on a specially tied rig on a top set (0.19 Reflo, 0.2g Drennan 6, size 8 B911X) added an 11mm expander and dropped it in at 3m where there were tail patterns appearing already. I had high hopes of a few bites since I bumped a fish while I was plumbing up.

10 seconds, bite, elastic, brief fight 3lb, mirror carp.

Feed (small amount only). 10 seconds, bite, elastic, brief fight, 4lb common carp.

Feed (small amount again). 15 seconds, bite, elastic, rig comes back (possible foul hooker or lost pellet).

And that became the pattern of the first hour. Sometimes I’d have to wait like a minute for a bite, other times it would be instantaneous. But the fish were there already in numbers. Typical fish was 2-4lb in weight with a few smaller and a few slightly better ones

By 0730 I’d caught 100lb of fish (all that is just under an hour – my previous best was 87lb of fish in 60 mins, but on that day I couldn’t keep the fish coming). Then it changed – the fish really turned up, despite being in 2ft of water they started churning on the top, almost as if spawning and completely oblivious to my actions and me catching the odd fish, and ravenous. If I fed they churned more and providing I pinged a few pellets in they stayed put from 3m out to right under my feet in 6 inches of water. In my many years fishing I’ve never seen anything quite like it, and what’s more they weren’t going anywhere.

This was the scrum of carp in my swim by 0730

I played around with the rig – up in the water produced smaller fish, down the edge slightly larger, in the scrum too many foulhookers. So I tried a short top 2 instead and at 2m out I was on the edge of the churn and fishing the bottom produced regular strong bites.

0830 and my count was up to 250lb. Another PB 150lb of carp in an hour! Hour three the same with a little freelined pellet in the scrum to pick out the bigger ones (up to 8lb) that had moved in, 400lb of fish in three hours – you get the idea.   

And on it went. By the time the owner came round and collected my £10, I was up to 450lb. Even he was amazed at the number of fish in front of me; there was easily 100lb of fish visible at any one time just swirling on the top.

This caused a few problems – the odd foulhooker, the odd smashed rig and gatecrashers in the landing net (on numerous occasions I’d net both the fish I was after and others in the way), I didn’t count the gatecrashers in my ongoing tally, but I wondered if they would count in a match?

By the 500lb mark I’d used just three pints of feed pellets, but was running out of 11mm expanders for the hook (I’d prepped a second batch earlier in the session), so a switch to a smaller hook and some 8mm expanders, then some 6mm expanders kept the bites ticking along. It didn’t take long to pass my previous best day’s tally of 554lb and it was still early.

And so for the rest of the day it was a case of feeding, changing the presentation (particularly the depth) and fishing in and out of the main scrum of fish. Trying to pick up the odd bonus fish and generally trying to keep things ticking over. I lost a bit of momentum on a few occasions, and sometimes I could wait a couple of minutes for a good bite (more 11mm expanders would have helped here I think), but the fish kept coming and the weight kept building.

After fishing for 6 hours I had caught over 800lb of carp (and one rudd) but still the fish sat there asking to be caught. At this point the rain started and everything started to get more difficult to fish quickly with the landing net and umbrella causing problems, but I now had a target in mind and was going for it.

At 1430 I caught my target fish. It might not look remarkable as a common carp, but it was a major milestone that I’m not sure I’ll ever do again. 1000lb of fish in a single sitting – under 8 hours. Amazing. And still the swim was alive with fish - even more than when I started.

The common carp took me through the 1000lb barrier

I may not rush back to Arrans any time soon and I suspect I may never catch that quantity of fish again, but if catching this kind of thing floats your boat then you really need to get down there – I suspect the world 6 hour match record will be going soon, and 800-1200lb could be quite possible to the right angler on the right peg on the right day. 

This was the scene when I packed up - amazing there must be 200lb of fish on the top alone

Catch List:

Commons: 100

Mirrors: 150

Rudd:1

Total weight: 1000lb