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JOCK’S
DINTON DIARIES
Hi
there everyone, I am Andrew ‘Jock’
Downes, and welcome to the first instalment of
Jock’s Dinton
Diaries. For the past 6
months or so I’ve been working part time in the
shop at Hinders and generally helping with all things
carpy, particularly on the bait
side. Since I am a long term member
of the Dinton Pastures syndicate, Bryan and Shaun at
the shop thought it would be a good idea to describe
my fishing at this difficult but rewarding
venue.
The
diaries will not be exclusively about Dinton Pastures
however, as I will throw in information about fishing
in France and other UK venues to give the reader a
balanced view about how to use the various bait
products available at Hinders. I
don’t always fish for big carp and neither do
the majority of customers at the shop, so I will
include plenty of hints and tips that you can use to
catch carp of all sizes at many different types of
water.
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Dinton
Pastures is a Country Park covering several hundred
acres near Wokingham in
Berkshire. Owned and run by
Wokingham District Council, there are numerous lakes
on the park, but the only fishing lake is White Swan
Lake. The carp fishing is very, very tricky
with a large head of very shy carp to 50lb +
inhabiting the weediest lake you are ever likely to
see. The waiting list for night syndicate places is
about 8-9 years long, with Wokingham area residents
given first shout on vacancies.
Although a
small head of carp was already present, a big
stocking in 1978-79 is the source of many of the
biggest residents. Astute fisheries
management by Derek Brant initially, but mainly in
the past 15 years by Simon Bartlam has resulted
in an astonishing head of big carp. In addition
to the lake, the nearby River Loddon offers big
Barbel and Chub.
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Dinton
Pastures on a misty October morning, looking from the
river bank towards the car park end.
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The
story really begins in November 2005 after a terrible
spell where I had lost 6 carp one after the
other. I had been unable to land them
from my chosen swim due to the horrendous weed which
had grown up during the year. The
bait I was using at the time was a milk protein
boilie of my own formulation, with which I had
already had a degree of success. The bait
was just too expensive for long term use though, so I
was in the market for an alternative. Not just an
alternative bait but a completely alternative bait
approach.
In
the previous couple years I had been moderately
successful at Dinton using the Method, principally
using scalded pellet mixes, but I got the feeling the
Dinton fish just knew too much about pellet mixes and
were naturally shy on my scalded
pellets. I enjoyed developing and
rolling my own baits, but to be honest I thought I
should be catching more. A new approach was
needed, but with the winter turning out to be the
coldest for many years, it was hardly the right time
to experiment with bait.
Having
just started a part time job at bait and tackle
superstore Hinders of Swindon, it was an ideal time
to try out the new range of baits they had just
developed. As the long hard winter continued
and catch rates everywhere fell, I turned to Hinders
new range of boilies and matching groundbaits,
pellets and liquid foods.
With
the Dinton close season fast approaching, I was
determined to get in some decent time at the lake
despite the freezing weather. Well, to
cut a long story short, the trip was an unqualified
success, as I took a fabulous old mirror known as the
Chanteqoc fish at 40lb 4oz. The
lake was fishing at it’s very hardest, with
only about ½ dozen carp caught in the previous
4-5 months (there might have been more but
everyone’s (understandable) usually a bit
‘secret squirrel’ at
Dinton!). Here’s the story in diary
form.
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Thursday 9
March
Arrive at
the lake early afternoon. Freezing
bloody cold! Its already snowed 2
days this week, and less than a week ago the lake was
frozen solid, but it’s milder than some of the
weather we’ve had. Got some
new bait stuff from Hinders to try though, so I am
hopeful. Not too many other
anglers, but a ‘30’ was caught yesterday,
the first carp I know of for certain since early
November! At least one or two fish might
be feeding. Swim choice was easy-it
had to be a swim I had caught from before in winter,
with plenty of weed, and should have a couple of hard
gravel spots I could rely on. I
didn’t want my rigs sitting in smelly silt or
dead leaves and weed.
Got
set up and cast out all right, rigs on 2 rods on good
hard spots over a light sprinkling of particles
and Blitz
Groundbait. 3rd rod
not so good – on a clear spot but hard to find
consistently in the weed.
Friday 10
March
Nothings
happened overnight so refresh the spots with a couple
of small spods of stuff and recast. The
Solicitor comes round for a chat – he’s
not sure where to fish but I can’t really
advise one way or another as I haven’t seen a
definite carp roll at Dinton for 4
months! You’re so often
fishing blind here, it is soul destroying
really. Not to worry, curry and Guiness
for dinner tonight.
Saturday
11 March
3.30am—a
screamer on the middle rod!
Out of bed into the freezing fog and into a
powerful fish that gave a good account of
itself. In the light from the head
torch a big, scarred old mirror lay on the unhooking
mat, the Size 9 ESP
Longshank firmly embedded in its bottom
lip. Hookbait was a 12mm
Hinders Blitz boilie, with Hinders
Blitz Stick Mix in a tiny 2” PVA stick
fished over a light bed of spodded Blitz stick mix
and Partiblend.
I weigh the fish at just over 40lb-fantastic!
8.30
am– Jim Carpenter comes round to do the photos
and identifies the fish as the Chantecoq
mirror– after fishing the lake on and off for
25 years, here was a fish I’d never caught
before! Jim’s caught this one
before but is delighted for me as he knows how hard
the fishing has been in this coldest of
winters.
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Jock
Downes with the Chantecoq mirror the first time he
had caught it in over 20 years of fishing
Dinton
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My
thoughts that day
Now
this was interesting. I had spent
hundreds of hours fishing boilies only, like everyone
else at Dinton this winter, with only moderate
success, yet first session with particles and
groundbait and I catch a
forty. Was it the case
that we had all become so focused on boilie fishing
that the attractiveness and flexibility of groundbait
and particles had been overlooked? OK, it
was only 1 carp, but to catch this 1 fish on the
first session using the bait, when thousands of rod
hours by those fishing the lake with boilies had been
unsuccessful, left me mightily
impressed. More experimentation was
needed, but the season was almost over!
Maybe I
could fit in a couple of close season visits to a
runs water somewhere, but to be honest I hate
‘easy’ fishing– I usually find it
too difficult! My next big
fishing trip was due to be a 1 week trip to Millstone
Pool in France in mid-May, and having been to the
lake before I knew it would be the ideal venue to try
out the new Hinders baits. I
won’t go into the full story here, but you can
read about this incredible trip my article there
titled French 40s
Bonanza.
Thursday 8
June
Down
at Dinton for the mandatory work party, I had a
chance to see the lake for the first time since my
end of season success. Fish
were in all the usual spots they inhabit – on
the shallows, down in the car park end and patrolling
up and down the margins in various corners and
bays.
Such
was the success of the French trip, I was full of
confidence that the Dinton carp would quickly accept
the bait once the season began on June 16, if I could
get on the fish. Having
caught the 40 on my last session before the close
season, and having done well in France, a picture was
beginning to emerge of how to successfully fish the
particle/groundbait approach.
Large quantities of cloudy, milky sludge, mixed with
liquid foods such as corn steep
liquor and tiger
slime, with tiny particles and pieces of food
drifting down through the water, seemed to set the
fish into a feeding frenzy.
Including plenty of different food items gave a
choice of hookbaits – small
boilies, pop ups,
plastic
baits, sweetcorn
etc.
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