Gazumped By Poor Planning

When you pick up a carp magazine and read it, you only ever get to see the success story, you seldom get to read about the disasters a carp angler might have to suffer along the way. Writing a weekly blog about carp fishing you have to give a sort of fly on the wall view of things. It’s nice to be consistent and catch carp every week but the truth of the matter is it’s nearly impossible to find that level of consistency, specially if you’re a short session carper like myself, and you are trying to target big north west carp rather than small to medium sized fish. I have my fair share of blanks and disasters just like every other angler. I strive to catch carp every week if I can but sometimes, despite my best efforts, it just doesn’t happen. I believe we can learn something from every carp session we fish, its just a case of either being observant and watching what’s going on around you or sitting down afterwards and going through the events of what’s just happened. This weeks carp session was a sit and reflect affair, things couldn’t really have gone more wrong, in fact the session was a disaster!.

With a long weekend off work and life getting in the way on Saturday, I’d decided to do just a day session on a new water this week. I’d looked at this Shropshire carp lake a few weeks previously and I was keen to give it a go. The first thing that went wrong on this particular session was me over sleeping, I just thought I’d rest my eyes for 5 minutes when the alarm went off at 7.15am and when I finally came round it was 9am and I’d lost nearly 2 hours. Breakfast, sandwiches and a flask took another hour and there was another hour on top of that to get to my chosen Shropshire carp lake.

Despite my late arrival at the lake I still had most of the day left and I could spend some of it sat behind the rods and some of it wandering round the swims looking for carp and getting a general feel for the place. I opted to have a walk around first which prompted the lake owners skanky mutt to start barking. This dog seems to be well known for barking all the time and it was a good 15 minutes before it finally got bored and left me alone, so much for quietly creeping round the banks looking for potential carp hotspots and trying to spot fish!. It was a cold day anyway so I wasn’t expecting to see very much which was just as well given the dogs behaviour.

Eventually, I set up in a peg up the far end of the lake, there where some vicious snags up this end of the lake and it just screamed carp so I figured I’d set up here then sit and watch for a fish to show itself. I got the first rod sorted out with a PVA Mesh Bag and an 18mm boilie bottom bait cast into open water. When it came to the second rod I hit a bit of a stumbling block. I’d taken the rigs off the other two rods to use the tubing the previous week, I’d been short of Rig Tubing on my last session and taking it off these rods was my only option. I’d bought new rig tubing from Ebay in the week so all I had to do was tie a couple of new rigs and I’d be in business. If only life was so easy!. I rooted through my tackle box looking for my Swivels but they weren’t there. Of all the things to ruin a session it had to be a humble swivel!. I had no spare rigs tied and no swivels to tie any.

That was enough for me, I packed everything away including the brolly I’d not long put up. I’m not easily beaten so I made a new plan on the spot and that was to drop into daves of middlewich to pick up some Swivels then maybe go to one of the local carp waters in that area of Cheshire. Daves of middlewich was roughly 20 miles away so I set off with the Sat Nav for guidance only to run straight into standing traffic as I tried to head north to daves. After 10 minutes of being stuck in this jam I’d had enough, I turned the car around and plotted a new course for home. When things go wrong, sometimes its just best to cut your losses and call it a day!.

Looking back at this session, I was completely unprepared, I’d just left all my carp gear from the previous weeks 3 night session and hadn’t payed any attention to it, something you can’t afford to do when your short session carping. I actually re-learn this lesson a few times each year although this year my poor planning lesson has come a little early!. I’ve actually lost my little box of swivels, I’ve since been through every fishing bag I have but I just can’t find them so next weeks session will start with a trip to the tackle shop and I‘ll still have to make the rods up on the bank. The good thing is, next weeks fishing trip won’t be any worse!.
Tight Lines
Mark.