After arriving at the lake at 07:45 it was a relief to see there was only a couple of other anglers on bank, very strange considering it was a Saturday and the weathermen had predicted glorious sunshine and toasty temperatures.
I was even more pleased to see the now legendary swim 18 was free, this swim had recently been dubbed the aquarium by my friend because of it's ability to provide big weights of Carp despite being completely featureless. Being the diplomat I offered the swim to my friend but he politely declined and instead set up just ten yards to my right in the next swim.
I've always had success at Roosthole fishing boilies on semi fixed bolt rigs so the plan was to do exactly the same, the only difference this time I planned to experiment a little and opted for a much longer piece of tungsten rig tubing to pin the line near the lead down. I attached a Dynamite Baits spicy tuna & sweet chili 15mm boilie to both rods as well as a small PVA bag of trout and halibut pellets and dropped both rigs into the deeper water in the middle of the lake.
Neither me or Graham had to wait long before both of us were into fish and by 10:00 both of us had each caught four Carp with the biggest being around the 8lb mark.
It was at that point that the action began to slow a little so I decided to try something different by switching my baits, I swapped my boilies for two 11mm Sonubaits soft halibut pellets. I figured that since temperatures were still high the Carp would still be keen on fishy/oily baits plus considering the amount of halibut pellets I've put into this lake over the summer via PVA bags the fish probably regarded them as natural food by now. The change in bait paid immediate dividends as I was rewarded with run after run and fish after fish, something I'd never seen before in 15+ years of fishing. The action became so relentless that it got to the point where I couldn't make up enough PVA bags to keep up as my rods were screaming off every five minutes, worse still the bottle of beer which I had opened an hour before but hadn't had time to drink was now warm!
I filmed this clip on my mobile phone to show how fast the runs were happening:
The fish continued to be caught right up until we called it a day and by the end I had managed twenty one Carp for an average size of about 8lb with the biggest fish weighing in at exactly 15lb, definitely one of my best ever days and only the second time I had managed to catch a ton. Despite fishing the same bait and tactics just ten yards to my right my friend Graham could only manage ten Carp which is still well above average for Roosthole.
Other than changing my bait I think the key to my great day was nailing my cast as I managed to drop my rig and therefore PVA bags in the same spot each time without clipping up.
Whilst walking back to the car I had a quick natter to another angler who revealed that he had caught a couple of Carp, even though I was desperate to I refrained from telling him about my red letter day for fear of looking like I was gloating.
Even more importantly it meant I took another point in mine and Graham's 'match series' to give me a 5-2 lead even if it meant my shoulder was now aching from playing so many fish.
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