All day I was looking at the sky as grey clouds scuttled past

To be fair, the weatherman had forecast very bad weather but I was determined to go as it had been almost a week since my last visit. All day I was looking at the sky as grey clouds scuttled past. I prayed it would stay dry long enough for me to get down there and set up. I was amazed when finally I managed to get away from work that it was still dry though darkness was not far away. The traffic was as usual a nightmare. Isnít it amazing how the slowest drivers get in front of you when you are going fishing. Finally I pulled into the back of the swim to find that the water level was on its way back up again. The lake was badly flooded a few weeks before with even the second car park going under water, I guess around four feet of extra water was in the lake covering at least three quarters of the available bankspace, in fact at it’s worse there were just two fishable swims and these needed waders to enable any sort of cast. It looked as if the water level might reach those heights again as the forecast was for another couple of inches of rain over the forthcoming 48 hours. I had no time to think about it though as darkness was upon me so, putting on my waders I took both rods out into the flooded swim. I made several casts to find, on one rod, a clear patch of gravel in open water and on the other rod, the back of a gravel bar. The carp had been very active during the floods and although being across most of the lake, they were concentrated in this general area. They had at one time all been gathered up in one small bay in fact. I was quite concerned about that behaviour as we had lost at least four 20lb plus carp when they turned up dead over a the space of a few days. Thankfully no more had appeared over the last two weeks. Now though, the carp were once again leaping and rolling, so hopefully the worst is over. I got the baits in position, both bottom baits as I was happy that they were on clean bottom. As usual PVA bags of trout pellets accompanied them together with a couple of pouchfulls of boilies and trout pellets. The rain just began to fall as I packed everything away so I put up the Hutchie oval shelter right at the base of a large oak tree. The forecast was for 70 to 80 miles per hour gusts of wind so I thought the base of the tree was best. No way would the tree fall but the branches were looking feeble. I then drove the car away into the car park proper, where there were no trees. The rain got heavier and heavier over the next couple of hours really hammering it down. From under cover I saw some headlights shine into the swim. I knew a mate was fishing the water during the winter but we usually fish alternate, different days so we had not bumped into each other for a while. But, I was fishing on one of ‘his’ days on this occasion. I looked out and saw he was sitting in his van demolishing a burger so I ran over and opened the car door. He said he planned to fish the swim a couple to my left as a couple of days before two carp had crashed out over the back of a bar there. A sighting that I too would have followed up on indeed. I went back to my shelter and half-hour later he came over and got under in the dry. We sat chatting for a while with the rain still hammering it down. At one point he considered calling it a day but quite rightly he said he would not catch anything at home so he decided to get wet setting up. We discussed what we had seen on our separate sessions and both of us had witnessed the carp moving around so, despite the flooded conditions, as the weather was so mild, we were both super confident. This even though my capture of the 17lb common a few weeks before being the only carp caught in the previous two months. We feel it is just a matter of time so we both have to be there, if not weíll be sitting at home frightened of missing out. When you get feelings like that you know you have been bitten bad by carp fever! He went off to set up and I phoned for the latest forecast, rain until 10pm then the winds would pick up, accompanied by even more rain, lovely. I went down to inform my mate who was most grateful, he was just putting in the extra pegs to keep his bivvy on tera ferma. Back in the dry I soon fell asleep to the sound of the rain. I awoke to the roaring sound of an express train, except it was not, it was the sound of frightening gusts of wind in the branches above me. I checked all was safe and pulled the blankets up looking out across the waters surface. The wind was blowing from behind us so we were quite safe but amazingly. in the blackness and grey scuttled surface of the lake a carp leapt, any sound it made was whipped away from me to the far bank. Unfortunately it was not long before the rain indeed returned, the wind continued to blow. At one time there were two massive flashes in the sky somewhere near Staines, probably branches hitting powercables, dodgy stuff! Soon it was time to pack up and as I did so I found the water had risen a full four inches in the night. After packing the car I decided to walk round to the far bank to see how far the water had come up. As I suspected, the roadway to the far bank was under water again. Round on the other bank, I found the wind was blowing into a small bay that the carp had been laying up in over previous weeks. With the mild wind it looked superb, it was fishable even in the high water, I considered the prospects, no one else would be so daft to fish it, dare I!?

Have fun!