It was a bright sunny morning and everything was looking very good for a nice warm day. I was thinking that as I have nothing planned for the whole day, what is better than to go fishing? I planned to go to Priory Lakes as I won’t be able to use the car in the afternoon; Priory Lakes is only a mile walk from me. In the morning, I was able to use the car, so I went to Dave’s Peg in Sleaford to get my maggots ready for a session at Priory Lakes. I thought about what I did wrong at the last time I was at Priory Lakes and I couldn’t think of anything, so I decided to try a new peg and get a good bag of fish catching more than 4 species in the process.
Target Species: 4 Species must be caught, doesn’t matter what.
Net Weight: Doesn’t matter, this will be a target net weight IF I fish that peg again.
Pre Session Plans and Rigs
Once I had loaded all of my gear onto a trolley, I was thinking to myself that I use the pole a lot and maybe it’s a good idea use the rod and line for this session and just use the pole for the margins. I left my house at roughly 9:30am and I just couldn’t help thinking about what a nice day it was. It wasn’t too hot and it wasn’t too cold. There was a tiny breeze which helped me decide where to fish on the lake before I even got there, that was Peg 1. The best peg in the lake and the peg that wins the matches. I was thinking about the fact that I should use the rod and line more often, the only method I could use perfectly was the waggler, I had maggots for this and thought, I’ll start off with the maggot waggler casting to basking carp to see if they’ll take the bait. If that fails, I’ll have to think of an alternative method. I had a bite alarm and a straight lead, but I didn’t want to use the bite alarm due to the fact that they are noisy and it’s a place that usually has other anglers on it. I had to think of an alternative and the best idea I could come up with was to use a maggot feeder, but I had a light carp rod which is suitable for multiple casting over a long period of time. I wouldn’t be able to sense a bite very well, so I had to fix the feeder on the line so when I get a bite, the rod tip flies around as it would do for a method feeder.
The minute I arrived at Priory Lakes, I immediately went for Lake 1 and checked to see if Peg 1 was free, it wasn’t as it was occupied by what looks like an angler teaching a young child to fish. I did see my friend fishing on Peg 41, which is the second best peg in the lake after Peg 1, this was close to Peg 1, so I thought I’d set up next to my friend and share a good few banter with him as I was fishing. I set up on Peg 40, which is a very dull looking peg in my opinion, the most attractive feature I have to say would be the reeds in the margins on the right, I was expecting a bad day’s fishing, but anything can happen.
As you can see above, this is my margin swim, please excuse the rod, I took this picture whilst waiting for my rod tip to wrap round. I loved how the reeds actually go out into the water by a fair bit because in my mind, I thought... this is asking for fish, a great fish holding feature. I had a good look at other spots where I could fish on the maggot feeder. I noticed that the majority of the lake was pretty much flat and featureless, so I opted for another tasty looking feature on the far bank.
I have plenty of options on the far bank and I thought it would be a good idea to fish near the reeds and around that area. On went the straight lead and I casted out to the feature and lifted my rod high up and slowly reeled in keeping my eye on the tip to get an idea what the bottom was like and to see if there were any other features nearby. Turned out that the peg was roughly 2ft deep as it seems to be in every margin swim around the whole lake, and then it slopes down all the way to 6ft.
In the depth picture, it has a shelf which is where the reeds are sitting on and I aimed to cast every time onto that shelf as I feel that most fish would rather feed there because of the fact that they have protection in form of reeds to try and snag me up against.
The picture above pretty much tells you everything you need to know about the swim. Its 2ft deep on the shelf and slopes down to 6ft into the open. I aimed to fish in a small gap near the reeds on sweet corn.
A cross section may explain clearly as to what my tactics may be.
I planned to use a maggot feeder onto the shelf, with the first few hours casting every 5 minutes to get a good bed of feed down there, then less casting during the final few hours. As you can see, the it goes straight down to 2ft deep from the island, then slopes down to 6ft. If my feeder ends up down there, I will leave it there anyways to get a good feed on the shelf, the slope and at the bottom of it. This will make up for any casts that come up short.
The gear I used for the maggot feeder was a Leeda reel, which I would recommend to anyone because it’s very strong and durable, this was connected onto a Browning Hot Rod Commerical Carp rod. The line I used in the spool was a Drennan 6lb line due to the fact that the biggest carp in the lake is about 10lbs, although a few 12lbers have been seen cruising on the surface. The hook length was 5lbs hook length with a size 16 barbless hook from Preston Innovations. The feeder its self was just the average plastic maggot feeder I have had for years.
In the margins, I had a top 2 kit rigged up with grade 16 elastic, 6lbs Preston Powerline straight through to the hook which was a Preston PR21 size 18 hook, the set up was a Drennan Choppa float and the shotting pattern was a bulk of no 8’s near the hook to get the bait to the bottom quickly.
The Fishing
I loaded up the rod and line rig with a waggler fishing 12 inches shallow, I used a clip swivel to put a self cocking float with a double red maggot to cast towards the basking carp to see if they were feeding. After roughly 10 attempts at 10 different carp, only 1 took the bait and gave me a good strong scrap. I landed this carp after a few uncertain moments as it veered pretty close to some marginal snags. It was a rough looking Mirror Carp which I unhooked in the net, then took a photo of it and released it. To me, it looked to be about 2lbs.
The next cast proved to be an exciting affair with one of the best battles ever! I casted out a few metres in front of me and the float sailed away and I lifted into the fish. It felt like I missed it so, I decided to reel in and to my surprise; there was a small Perch on it!
Quite possibly, the smallest Perch I have ever caught, but it was welcome none the less, by this time, in about half an hour, I had already caught 2 species and needed to catch 2 more species to achieve my target.
I felt happy about this and re-rigged the rod and set up the maggot feeder as explained earlier. Then put the rod down to have a bash on the pole in the margins, the reason being the fact that I saw some of the reeds move about. It didn’t take long for the float to register some activity and within the first few seconds, the float sailed away and I struck into some solid resistance. I saw the tail slap the surface before the fish made a run for the open. It was a carp and a good one it was too, it was fighting like train. It didn’t take long for the fish to tire out and it was netted. Proved to be a 1lb Carp, 1lb... and it fought like a train, god knows what they have been feeding these fish.
The next put in, yielded a small Tench which added up my tally to 3 different species, all I needed was just 1 more fish, and only an hour has passed.
I felt it was time to go onto the maggot feeder and to stay on the maggot feeder because no matter what happens, I had a good time and that’s all that matters. Going onto the maggot feeder proved to be the best choice of the day because the first fish hooked was a small Crucian Carp which met my species tally to 4, thus meeting the target.
The maggot feeder at Priory Lakes is just devastating because virtually every cast there was; a Carp was on the end of it. My overall weight was getting higher and higher as time went on. I’m very sure that they are queuing up for the feeder in the swim because I had no time to sit down, break wind and enjoy the sights because the tip kept flying round the minute the feeder hits the water. This happened for roughly 2 hours. Then it started to quieten down and then eventually went dead, finally, I could relax and break wind. In this time, I also took photographs of the swims as shown earlier in the report and I notice the tip was tapping, it wasn’t flying round, it was tapping. So I reeled in and a good looking Rudd was on the end of the line.
The silver fish moved in and Roach and Rudd were biting bringing my tally of overall species caught to 6. I was catching and landing Roach, Rudd and the odd Perch for the next 2 hours. By this time, 5 hours have passed and I was out of maggots and I thought it was time for me to go home. But, I noticed some activity in the margins. I went over to my mate and asked for a loaf of bread because I wanted to try something. So I dropped a small chunk of bread in the margins and laid down on my jacket which wasn’t used and got my phone ready to take a picture. SLURP and SNAP were the next two sounds heard and this is the end result.
A pristine looking Common taking the break off the surface, I enjoyed watching the fish taking the bread off the top and I didn’t want to try and catch one, no matter how tempting it was, just watching them take the bread was good enough.
I was about to go, and I notice a big white shadow appearing and I thought, wow, this looks great, so I went to get ready for a photo, it disappeared, I wanted to get up and pack up to go home, but instinct told me to keep watching. I trusted my instinct and the shadow came back and snap, got the fish on camera.
A beautiful looking Ghost Carp at roughly 5-6lbs.
Summary
Reflecting back onto my aims, I achieved it easily, I caught 6 species surpassing my target by 2 species. Yet again, the fish were pretty much biting and taking the bait all day and a lot of sport to be enjoyed. Although, I really enjoyed catching the fish and it was a lot of good fun, I fear that if every peg delivers a lot of fish like this visit and the two other sessions before, I feel I may get bored of Priory Lakes easily and venture elsewhere for a better challenge.
Species Caught
Carp: 60+
Crucian: 1
Perch: 10
Roach: 30+
Rudd: 10+
Net Weight: 130+lbs
From this session, I taught myself how to use the maggot feeder rather effectively and improved my casting skills as pretty much every cast landed within inches from the reeds. I hope to take these skills from this place and hope they work at a more challenging venue such as Burton Pedwardine or Haverholme Park.
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