Taming Angry

This year I have decided to fish a venue that has been on my peripherals for a few years, but to be honest I’ve never really had the bottle to fish it because of its notoriously hard nature. Approximately 20 acres, around 35 carp and only 5 of them being originals left in the lake. I’m not going to name the venue out of respect to the regulars who fish it but it’s a park lake in Manchester. The main pull to the lake is, in my opinion, the ultimate prize in the North. A 40lb park lake dinosaur that holds massive prestige round these parts.

I started fishing the lake in April during some horrendous conditions for spring! Temperatures were dropping below 0 pretty much every night but on my first night I had my first fish. One of the smaller residents of 17lb, under a bush on a little margin spot, over a handful of CB4 on a little combi. Following that, I really struggled on the bottom. However, I caught a handful more on zigs going in to May.

When the weather started getting warmer, I started introducing bits of bait in the margins. I ended up getting lots of bites just over a mix of sweetcorn and CB4 in the edge. After catching consistently through June and July, including some nice scaly stockies and a 36 and a half grass carp, my confidence was sky high! I knew all I had to do was keep doing what I was doing, finding the fish and feeding them little bits to try and create competition with such a small stock and eventually the big girl would slip up.

So last weekend I turned up at the lake and looking at the storm forecast I knew we were in for some mega conditions. Low pressure, big south westerly thunderstorms and heavy rain. The chances for a bite were high if I could get on ‘em. I spent two hours walking the lake in the rain, climbing trees and checking the snags in some horrible weather but eventually my efforts were rewarded, when a stocky gave the game away and showed near where I had caught a few the previous week.

I mooched back to the van, loaded up the gear and flew round to the peg in the pissing rain. The marker was sent out to where I had seen the fish showing and I found a real hard spot next to a weed bed, so clipped on the Spomb and sent out 3 Spombs and a couple of combis. Fish were showing over me and within no time the left hander was away and absolutely melting off. I played it back through a weed bed with the line grating horribly. Eventually, everything went solid and I was just heaving back a dead weight. I thought I’d lost the fish until it was right in front of me and the weed bed started wobbling. I quickly netted the lot and after sieving through a load of weed found a little 16lb mirror in the bottom of my net. I got the rods back out on the spot but the fish had moved off, so I topped up the bait with another 3 Spombs knowing they would be back.

No more bites that night or next morning but later in the afternoon I saw 1 show just behind the bait. So, I knew to just sit tight as everything was perfect. I went to sleep that night with dreams of the biggen as I did every night on there. At 3 o’clock I was woken by the Delkim just letting out a couple of beeps. The fish took no more than 12 inches of line and I was on to the rod. It hit the surface straight away and came in like a baby. Playing it, I was convinced that it was just another stocky but as it rolled and went in the net, I saw its mouth in the light of the head torch and knew instantly ‘that’s Angry’. I sacked her up and woke up the boys to come down for an early morning photoshoot with the King of the North. ANGRYYYYYYYYYY!!!

8 years dreaming was now a reality. I have got my own slice of northern carp fishing history. Epic! No way I could imagine catching it so quickly but sometimes I just think the stars align and they’ve got your name on ‘em.

A massive part of my angling is location and confidence. I spend many hours walking, watching, climbing, hiding in snags but once I know I’ve found ‘em the gears on the barrow and its game on. Second is confidence and I just wanna say thanks to the boys at Core for supplying me the CB4. Top quality bait that leaves no doubt in my mind the fish will feast on. Pretty much confidence in a bag. Job done. Onto the next. Doin’ it!