The weather was much milder for my first session of the week

The weather was much milder for my first session of the week. The skies were leaden with no wind and the air felt mild. With the light not going until nearly 5pm I had plenty of time to stroll around the lake, unfortunately with milder weather came rain and the water level had once more shot up meaning that half the lake was inaccessible, the banks being flooded again. I saw nothing to inspire so I spent half hour casting around from my usual swim by the car park looking for firm areas amongst the silt. I was able to cast easier as the water level was a little lower but it was still difficult. The firm area was still there straight out nearly in front of the swim opposite but the rest of the area, although firm, was very silty. I tried a few casts over to the left by the islands but my third cast went into the trees and I lost the rig, so I abandoned that and put PVA bags out both to the firm area straight out. Once set, I sat out on a perfect evening looking for movement. Around 6pm I listened to the weather forecast and found to my dismay that the skies were meant to clear and frost and fog was forecast, I could not believe this given the heavy cloud above though. A while later Stewart turned up and after a short chat he went around to the far bank where he had been concentrating on. After he was set, he came around with a beer and we chatted about options for the rest of the season and beyond. I told him about a club water near Esher that has a stretch of the river Mole that had produced a couple of 30lb carp right next to Chris Tarrants’ back garden. His kids used to feed the carp with bread and after a while the carp were suckers for floaters but that was a few years ago, I told Stewart it was worth a look though.After Stewart went back to his swim, the tell tale sign of a moon showed and before long, large expanses of stars showed. I retired to the shelter and soon fell asleep. In the early hours I awoke to the sight of thick fog enveloping the lake and frost was on the car, the weathermen were right. Having never caught carp in winter fog I was not optimistic and with cat ice forming, sure enough I packed up in the morning after suffering another blank. Two days later mild weather was still around and with rain forecast, at least this time I knew I was safe from frost. It was still dry when I arrived so once again I had a cast around and made sure I had one bait right on the hard area of gravel; this would be the spot to produce carp when they started moving around. I was now exclusively using small white pop-ups due to the silt contamination. I felt it was still holding pollution from when the lake received foul sewage in November and December. I was not that confident of the lake recovering to produce to baits presented in the silt for even a couple of years. I remember when, back in October 1987, the river Colne spilled into Savay Lake. The Colne was holding a lot of foul sewage then and the water went into the channel between the Ruislip Island and the Colne Bank. Before this occurrence, this was a productive area but after the Colne came in, it did not produce a single take for many years. It was felt this was because of the pollution lying in the silt, my fears are this what we have now back on my lake. Back to the session in question. With baits positioned I was back at the car doing something when one of the buzzers gave a couple of bleeps, in three strides I was at the rods and could see it was the rod right on the gravel that had received some attention. The line was dead tight where I always fish with slack lines. There was no more movement but I struck anyway, the rod curved over nicely and a single thud came through the rod – but as soon as I started to get excited all went slack. I wound in and all seemed to be in order. I quickly re-cast as it was virtually dark and sat down on the ground behind the rods looking intently out to the area the rods were cast to. I guessed it was a carp but not a confident take. Often the year before I had received takes soon after casting and years before, at another water I fished where I was fortunate to be present over the space of a month as the carp came out of their stupor, takes came quickly after casting. It is as if the carp are curious to investigate a disturbance, the same I know happens in winter shortly after spodding takes place – or to be more accurate, spodding with a closed spod full of water. The idea is to create a disturbance not to introduce food. I was, as you can expect, a little disappointed to pull out of something as takes are, to say the least, a little short on the ground at the moment but then any action is very well received. Shortly after the rain started and I retired to the shelter of the oval shelter. The rain fell and fell and in fact did not stop, the water level rose a little bit more and packing up in the dark and wet was not a pleasant experience. However after all this time with rain constantly falling since September I am getting used to it; trouble is, I can still remember how wet last March and April was, record levels I seem to remember. I donít want another spring like that but at the moment there seems to be no end to it.

Have fun!