Wednesday 11^th October

I’m back at Dinton now and Bryan is going to be a bit late, so I’ve set up in the swim next door to the Beach, but the Beach itself is taken by Welsh Dave.    The stunning news is that Dave has just landed the Twin from the Beach at an incredible 49lb 15oz.     Now the Twin is an impressive muscular fish built like a Bulgarian weightlifter, so she must have been fantastic in the flesh at such a weight.     Dave shows me the photos on his digital camera and she looks brutally good looking.    Was this the fish Bryan hooked and lost last week?     I don’t know for sure, but Dave tells me that although she didn’t have a hookmark where Bryan might have hooked and lost her, Dave’s hook left no visible mark either, so really we are none the wiser.    The fish could have been on a feeding spree and both hooked her, or it may have been another fish.    Bernie Loftus hooked and landed Sid at 51lb 8oz a couple of days ago, so the lumps are clearly on the feed.

Bryan is rightly moved near to tears by the news that the Twin has just come out, and he’s equally irritated by the fact the Beach is occupied, but that’s carp fishing and Bryan is too experienced to let it bother him much.    He has got the next best swim at the moment, and that is the Social swim, where again there are an astonishing number of fish moving.    It’s much milder than last week, so the fish are more visible moving in and out of the weedbeds, occasionally rolling and bubbling.         

Thursday 10^th October

430am and the Blitz rod that took Heart Tail last week is off again and after a hard fight in the drifting weed a large beautifully coloured mirror is in the net.    With a large ball of weed around the fish’s head and the line tangled in the other rod, I have difficulty getting the fish up the drop-off and onto the unhooking mat.   On the scales it hovers around 40lb, but to be honest I’ve stopped caring how heavy my Dinton fish are.     They are all a joy to catch whether 40lb or 14lb.    I’m not sure of the fish’s identity  but it’s another peach.      The noise and disturbance has attracted Dean and Welsh Dave who proceed to verbally abuse me in the nicest possible way for moving in between them and catching from under their noses.   

It’s all part of the fun and pleasure of angling with friends I’ve known for over 20 years.     At dawn I nip down the bank to tell Bryan, and he is just as pleased about the capture as I am.    

In the daylight the fish looks superb and we weigh her at 39lb 14oz.    She is identified as Measles and this might be her first capture of the season.    The fish only has ‘measles’ at certain times of year and in fact she looks fantastic at the moment.

Welsh Dave is going later on today so Bryan might move into the Beach.    He is highly motivated to catch from there so he moves his kit down as Dave packs up

Friday 11the October

We have seen more activity in the Beach area so we are hopeful of more action, but it is not to be.    Bryan packs up later in the day vowing to catch one of Dinton’s lumps soon.      

Despite a building workload I stay for 1 more night.

Saturday 12^th October

The extra night has given me some time to reflect on the season so far, and to consider what I might do over the winter.   So far this season I’ve caught 14 Dinton carp in 18 nights fishing.     I haven’t caught such a high ratio of carp per night fished for about 12 years, and perhaps more pleasing than the number of fish caught, I haven’t lost a single carp this season.      Last season I hooked approximately the same number of fish as this season, but I lost more than half of what I hooked last season.

One thing that I do have total confidence in is the Hinders baits.      It’s only to be expected really – this year so far in all fishing in France and at Dinton, in a total of 35 nights fishing I’ve landed 55 carp on Hinders stuff, of which 2 were 50lb+, 14 were 40lb+ and the majority of the rest were 30lb+.    It’s clear the fish love eating the stuff and I know that if the carp are feeding I’ll catch them.

However, quite what I’m going to do this winter I don’t know.    Last winter was so persistently cold and gloomy and the Dinton carp so unresponsive, that I don’t want to go through that again, and lots of other syndicate members are saying the same thing.   Last winter only 4-5 carp were caught between early November and the end of the season and that is pretty hard fishing by any standards.    I don’t have to make any decision yet, but the time will come sometime in November when we get the first impression of what this winter is going to be like, and at that point I will make up my mind.     Mind you if everyone else is going to stay away………………………….

NOTES ON BLITZ BAIT

The 2 fish I’ve had these past couple of sessions have both been caught on 12mm Blitz boilies.    I like small baits at Dinton as I believe the smaller the bait the less likely the fish are to spook from it.     The majority of boilie anglers at Dinton use 20mm-24mm boilies, so 12mm or less is a good way to differentiate your offering from the run-of-the-mill, while capitalising on the Dinton carps’ clear appetite for of boilies.

My Blitz boilies have been carefully air-dried, then rehydrated for 3 days in lake water (to appear washed-out and safer) to which I have added a stinky blend of Hinders Blitz concentrate, Hinders Bloodworm liquid and Hinders Fish Pro Squid.    The resulting boilies look faded but are still quite firm and have a good stink to them.     I think it’s possible the carp see the baits as having been in the lake for several days, while still having an appetising aroma.     I will carry on with this experiment and let you know how it goes.    If you want to try it yourself please let me know how you get on.