Thorpe Lea - 05/06/09

I've been itching to fish Thorpe Lea ever since I read about it on maggotdrowning.com, I'm relatively new to Carp fishing and still trying to catch my first twenty and this place supposedly has stacks of them. With that in mind I'd arranged to do a 24 hour session there with a mate from work immediately after we finished our shift on Friday afternoon.

When we arrived at the lake we had a quick walk round and chat to the bailiff who confirmed the fish had spawned but that it still wasn't fishing great, we could see plenty of fish rolling in the middle of the lake close to the bar that runs between the islands so my mate opted for swim 11 and I went for unlucky 13...

Thorpe Lea might be a lovely looking lake with a reputation for great fishing but it has far too many swims and a lot of them are angled towards each other which makes casting a nightmare, my mate was fishing straight out of his swim but his leads were landing in front of me two swims along!, not good when you are fishing at night and expecting big fish.

The setup was exactly as I had fished at Bluepool and Roosthole (3.25lb Free Spirit X.S.E rods, 15lb line and bolt rigs with short hairs) the baits of choice were a 10mm Mainline pineapple popup on one rod (a tip from the bailiff) and a 15mm Dynamite spicy tuna and sweet chillie bollie on the other, I've caught so many fish on the latter recently that it's rapidly becoming the first bait I reach for.

Just as I was baiting up my second rod my mate wandered over for a chat and managed to trip over my line which buried the barbed size 6 hook I was holding deep into my finger, my reaction was more of shock than anything else as there was no pain and no blood.

I managed to pull it back to the barb but despite much tugging there was no way I was getting this bad boy out of my finger which meant a visit to the hospital was in order. To cut a long story short my mate dropped me off at the hospital and returned to the lake to carry on fishing (I insisted), two hours later with the hook removed, a tetanus shot and much laughter from the girl in the hospital reception I got a cab back to the lake to see my friend had already managed a 12lb Mirror out of my swim on my rod, the cheeky poacher!

By this time the guy in swim 15 who had been kind enough to keep an eye on our gear whilst at the hospital was packing up so I decided to jump into his swim to give me more casting room. I whacked both rods out to just shy of the bar where the water was bubbling like a jacuzzi with fish activity and started to setup my bivvy.

I don't think I even managed to get my bivvy ground sheet down before the rod with the pineapple popup screamed off and after a fantastic fight I was rewarded with this new personal best 16.3lb Mirror.

In the next four hours I managed four more Mirrors of 16lb, 12.5lb, 12lb and 12lb all of which fell to the tuna and chillie boilies, at this point I thought I was in for a hectic night but it wasn't to be as the only bites I got during the night were from the mozzies and by the morning I had enough bites on my face to be mistaken for the elephant man.

To say Thorpe Lea is popular at the weekend would be an understatement as gradually throughout Saturday morning more anglers turned up until practically every swim was taken, the result was multiple tangled lines and heated conversation involving my mate and someone who was fishing three swims along. With that in mind combined with the lack of runs anywhere around the lake and rapidly increasing rain we decided to call it a day after 22 hours.

We finished the session with 14 fish up to 16.3lb but I don't think either of us will be in a hurry to return to Thorpe Lea as not only is the swim layout poor but a lot of the Carp we caught were in a sorry old state with tatty fins and bad mouth damage. I may consider another trip there but it won't be until October at the earliest and it would have to be in the middle of the week.