After suffering with covid for a couple of weeks, it felt great to get back out on the bank! As I’m between syndicate tickets my recent fishing over the winter has been day ticket lakes, I spotted there was some availability on lapwing lake near Peterborough and booked myself on. The timing for the weather was perfect with regards to temperature hitting nearly 20 degrees although the minimal wind, cold nights and high pressure made me think it could still be tricky.
I'd booked swim 6 which gave me a no fishing bank to my left which the light easterly wind was trickling nicely into. I started softly softly with a solid bag of Mini Combo/C Food Multimix in around 4 feet of water close to the no fishing bank, and a couple of zigs heavily soaked in Betalin and banana fished at 4 and 5 feet in 8-9ft of water.Within the hour my 4 foot zig rod was away, which resulted in a nice mid double to get started.
I then managed a couple more bites in the evening but unfortunately these resulted in hook pulls. Failure of the lead discharging resulted in a lot of weed round the lead and the heavy pivot point in my option caused the hook pulls.
I then modified my lead clips by cutting the arm right down at an angle to ensure this wouldn’t happen again, I know there’s divided opinions on dumping leads but I will if the situation dictates it.
The zig set up was fished with strong reliable gear, 12lb zig line tied to a sharpened size 6 wide gape with a long anti tangle sleeve on a simple lead clip would ensure that I’d have a great chance of landing a potential mid 40 with plenty of weed about. At first light both the zig rods were away again and another 2 doubles were slipped back. The bag rod had been redundant, I’d seen fish close to the area and even though I’d received a decent drop I decided to swap it over to a single stiff hinge rig with a 12mm pink XO Pop Up. Again not long after, the hinge rod was away which resulted in a nice low 20 old linear.
This turned out to be the only bite off the deck during the session. In the afternoon a lot of the fish were cruising round in the surface, so I changed my zigs to 6 and 7 feet and both to all black zig aligners.
This proved to be a good decision resulting in another flurry of bites in the afternoon and evening. So far I felt I’d been a little unlucky not to snare one of the bigger fish that reside in the lake, and I’d seen some of them in the area so felt if I kept getting bites it would eventually come good. On the final morning of the session at first light I received another bite, with a lovely old upper double scaley.
I had plenty of zigs ready to go so I quickly got the rod back out, and after barely getting the bobbin back on the same rod was away again, this time though the fight was slow and heavy, and after plodding about close in for 5 mins eventually a bigger fish was in the net.
This one went 30.10 oz and capped off a really good session.
I ended up landing 10 carp, with a 30, 2x 20’s and 7 doubles, and didn’t receive any more hook pulls after those 2 losses!
Thanks for reading and good luck.
Paul
