Facing up to reality 

Back on ‘the’ lake but this time Carppuzzle was thrown a curve ball not experienced before.

I arrived at 6am hoping the gate would be open, as has previously been the case but this time it was firmly closed. Faced with an hour wait I turned around and headed back to a road side cafe (Off On A Tangent) for a breakfast roll.

Here I got chatting to another angler and he said that one of the three lakes at the venue had KHV. I’ve heard this was a very serious disease and relatively new to the UK. After a quick look at Wikipedia I feared for the specimen lake. The fella was not sure which lake was affected but this would throw a big spanner in the works for todays and future visits.

This could be the ultimate blank!

Just before 7am I headed back to find the specimen lake was clear of disease but full of anglers. It was the Tench Lake that had seen a few cases of KHV that had been confirmed by the man at the Ministry and now all nets, slings etc had to be dipped.

Which does beg the question;

Why were we not asked to do this previously?

With the lake full by 7am I dithered as to whether to fish the small lake, Decoy, which was very weedy and not something I was confident tackling. I walked around it anyway and saw nothing bar one angler.

As I walked back to the car park a swim at the north end of the main lake was now vacant and I dropped my bucket bank side and watched the water still undecided.

This end was quieter with fewer lines in the water, it was also shallow with some pads which would catch the morning sun so as I was already here it made sense to stay.

One rod to the reeds on the opposite bank and one on the edge of the pads, and wait, and admire the latest acquisition; a pair of Fox Micron Mr+ alarms. I decided I needed to update the alarms and have a remote system as I often walking around the margin baiting up during a session.

I did not have to wait long before the new buzzers sounded. The right rod against the pads had come to life. As I lifted the rod there was no resistance just a large common rolled off my line as it pinged off his pec about ten yards out

The pads rod now became a zig slightly over mid depth and I fired particles over it from time to time in the hope that they were somewhere up in the water. 

In the meantime the left reed rod gave me a bite but as has been the case so many times before nothing. So the head scratching began, was it presentation, hooklink / hair length, weight or bait.

At that time the bailiff dropped into my swim and he told me that the previous occupants had fished two nights and in his words, “proper filled it in!”. So I was faced with another few hours fishing on or around kilos of unknown bait! And looking in the margin I could see a bright fluoro pink pop-up, so I guessed they were fishing these over boilies.

The bailiff believed the KHV was contained, and viewed the closure of the Tench Lake as a good opportunity to clean it of some weed and tidy the swims. 

Heading for another blank I threw out a few floaters as the sun hit a lunchtime high but it was only the roach that were interested. If anything it was a bit of a waste of time as I’d not seen anything on the surface. 

As the season drew to an end I thought about my fish in their tank – it could do with a tidy up, a good clean and some freshly treated water. Healthy fish equals happy anglers, no matter what the size. 

Tightlines.