Out of the starter blocks

Having thought about the problems the blanket weed was presenting me at the shallow pit, and based on my previous experiences with particles I decided that it was time to adjust my approach away from PVA bags, PVA sticks and other similar methods of shielding the hook and jump on the 'Choddie' band wagon! I'm not normally a follower when it comes to tactics and methods - I like to beat my own path and learn from my own experiences, be they good or bad - but in my mind the advantages of the presentation on a chod rig really were perfect for the situation I was finding myself in.

As I had found previously I could easily clear areas in the weed by using particle, obviously I could have raked the weed as well, but due to the crystal clear water, and depth of the lake I knew the fish rarely visited the margins during the day at this time of year, so I would be gambling on marginal spots in the evening. I opted to create feeding areas rather than fish existing known spots or busy swims - this had a two-fold advantage of giving me a greater chance of always getting in my chosen swim, and also being able to keep my captures relatively secret.

I opted to just use hemp as my particle, you really can’t beat it as a fish attractor and I always fish with confidence over a bed of hemp as it’s irresistible to most fish, which would mean all the lakes residents would be on my spots pushing back the blanket weed, and exposing the lake bed. Also with my decision to change to chod rigs it meant that even if the weed was not fully cleared I could be relatively confident that the hook bait and hook would remain weed free and fishing effectively even if my casts did not land exactly on the spots I was trying to create when casting at night.

Finally on the 9th of April I had my first screamer and after a great scrap I had finally landed my first carp of the year - a very pretty common weighing in at 19lb 60z. The weight was largely irrelevant at this stage - I was just over the moon that my campaign had started to produce carp, and that my new bait was working. However the fish had not fallen from the hemp baited spot, it was from my rod on an island margin baited with only boilie. The amount of line bites on my hemp patch did however suggest that there were fish in the area and that it was only a matter of time before I started catching.