Danny Hearn

Love it how you had 1 on the marker rod

Here’s my pics compared to what the syndicate put on their website. I don’t think they want or need to promote there fishery the place is the bolloc## regardless but yeah I have got pics of at least 3 of the best fish at record weights and I think good pics as it’s taken a while to learn to get good at self takes but now I rather do them than let anyone take pics for me here’s a few comparisons

Don’t have to be the big boys mate anyone is welcome to come and have a go as long as they care about fish and wildlife like I do. all you guys been friendly to me on here so I’m just showing some love back. It seems to be so hard to get on syndicates these days so I was thinking if I offered some guests on my lake maybe someone might offer me the same back! But even if you ain’t on a syndicate and can’t offer me the same back you are still welcome. Also I really appreciate my place on this lake and this will be my last year on here starting may 1st because I already caught all my target fish but i don’t wanna leave just yet as there’s still a few fish I haven’t bagged. The manager Richard is a great guy and I get on really well with him so if someone did come down for a guest with me and there decent and caring that would be there way of jumping straight to the top of the list for next season which is a bonus for them and for Richard knowing there’s a decent angler joining . They start a new waiting list each year and 3 years in a row there has been over 75 applicants on the first day for a 25 man syndicate and normally there’s maximum 5 places available each year so really I’m doing my mate Richard a favour and one of you guys a favour putting an angler forward who is decent rather than him letting some random guy come on the lake. There have been some shocking events since I been on there! 1 night at about 2 am I heard a run from some guys swim which carried on for so long must have been 2 mins and then about 10 mins later I could hear the fish splashing around for such a long time under the rod tip I thought this guys in trouble here he must be tangled up or something so I decided to run around, woke up my mate to watch my rods for me entered his swim and said are you ok mate? He said yeah I’m just having trouble netting this fish I said ok shall I do it for you he said ok if you don’t mind so I looked closer and suddenly realised that this guy had a 12 foot rod and had reeled down and had about 3 inches of leadcore off the tip of the rod before the rig and was trying to reach forward with a 6 foot landing net to net the fish! Like that don’t make any sense does it lads ? Like the maths of it 12 foot rod 6 foot landing net pole maybe 2 foot on the net itself hold your arm back holding the rod in some weird position it’s all gonna end bad ain’t it. I told him let some line off mate hold your rod up high he said but I don’t want the fish to get away I had to get serious and say seriously mate let some line off yeah he gave me about a foot I said come on mate more more so he did lifted his rod up with about 6 foot of line from the tip to the rig and then I netted the fish, then he said thanks mate I normally lose any fish I catch I said yeah in future hold your rod up high and net the fish with your rod upright. Really I should have reported him but Danny Hearn ain’t no grass so I just made sure he learnt from it. Also my pal I fish with (when he bothers to get up and go at it lol) is a member with 10 guest tickets available too so if any of you wanna come with a pal you can do that! I promise you Danny Hearn ain’t a rapist even though that’s my nick name on the lake but that’s only because I only use plastic gloves when baiting and putting baits on my hair rig hang around watching the lake in the bushes and sometimes look expressionless in my pics 🫣you all know I’m keen so it shouldn’t surprise you about the gloves because I don’t touch bait with my bare hands ever. I have rambled on again aint i 🤣. Who cares I love it. all the best everyone Danny Hearn

Anyone want a guest on hook lake just ask I get 10 a year but they start at September I think maybe august I can’t remember but I don’t go until September anyway so if anyone fancy’s it message me Danny

I suppose my capture of pawprint my target for 4 years deserves to be on this thread so here he is from a different angle. Next pic will be of my next target a pb common if I’m ever lucky enough to catch one that is 🤞

Hi Newmarket thanks for your reply. I too consider myself as someone who rambles on 🤣. And I’m probably going to do that right now. I do try to keep things short but I’m no good at it at all. Personally I don’t pay too much attention to my rig style I am happy to use the same rig style I been tying up since I first started back at carp fishing coming up 5 years ago and all that is is one I copied from terry Hearn on YouTube. His blowback rig. Not much to it. I do like how there’s no metal bits near the hook like with ronnie rigs and spinner rigs etc but I can’t say there not good as I have never used anything else apart from what I use. Only difference in how I set up this rig compared to how terry sets his up is that I trap the hair with a bit of shrink tube inline with the barb( I think terry says this in that video) as I prefer to use wafters as in recent years I been fishing this silty lake and I don’t like the thought of a bottom bait working its way into the silt especially as fish rip up the bottom and before long I suspect the hook bait is covered, even with my wafter set up I suspect this happens. Also I like to make my hookbait critically balanced and prefer it to sink as slow as possible. I do however pay a lot of attention to how sharp my hooks are and will only use kamacura wide gape x in size 4 and they are scrutinised constantly and I will never just say oh that’s alright! Maybe on a runs water I’m not so fussy. My hookbaits are always 14 mm barrels,(most people will say that’s a large hook for such a small bait) flavour and colour matching my prebait feed with a matching flavour and colour piece of pop up on top just to help critically balance it I have about 1 cm gap maximum between my hook and bait closer to half a cm to be honest but again I don’t pay to much attention to it, and that’s about it for my rig choice. I will add a picture below. As for the lead arrangement I have fallen in love with the helisafe system that Korda bought out so I buy them and attach them to my leadcore when I have a leadcore splicing session which is rare because they last so long I have actually been using the same 3 for over 2 years now😊. again all tieing up jobs just copied from YouTube. With the helisafe system and how it works I like to use short hook links, I have never really measured them until right now for this ranting episode and there about 8inches long which is longer than I suspected. I will only use a 3 and half ounce lead minimum now days and my preferred choice is a flat pear. Sometimes if you need to cast distance obv a more distance specific shaped lead is what you have to use so it’s all swings and roundabouts if you don’t get it just ask me. In case you didn’t know, but I suspect you do, this is a helicopter setup I’m using, I don’t really use it because of the benefits of using a helicopter set up I only like it because of the efficient drop off of the lead and quite often have both my beeds right down low on the leadcore just above the helisafe so really I’m using it like a lead clip set up but with that added benefit of dropping that lead really efficiently and never loosing leads because of a tail rubber loosening up on me on the cast. I have questioned myself on whether it’s really that necessary to drop the lead all the time I don’t really think it is but when your fishing for a few bites a session I would hate to be thinking after a hook pull (which can still happen obviously when dropping the lead) that what if I had dropped the lead would I have lost it ? So because of this I still use it. I tie my mainline onto the leader with a palomar knot. I hope I have covered everything from leadcore down. I hope I have explained my rig choice as I didn’t include that it in my first extra long rant, as I said I don’t feel it’s that important to my style of fishing. I’m sure whatever rig you use will trip them up if you do all the other things I do find important and I’m going to try just list them now instead of write it all out again as I’m sure I wrote it out in my first talk about plans for this year but if I didn’t or there’s anything anyone would like me to elaborate on or explain why I do this or that feel free to ask but just expect a long reply😎. Things I think are important to my success on this lake and others. 1. Prebaiting. I like to prebait regularly. Doesn’t have to be much I normally chuck them half a kilo of free food 2-3 times per week on a chosen spot. During the first few weeks of prebaiting if you want to try this yourself I would spray a bit more than half a kilo maybe a kilo over a few different spots around the lake. Aiming to get fish to try 1 bait out here or there and slowly think it’s safe and start searching it out. 2. Prebait preparation. I will never chuck freshly unthawed boilies into the lake. I will always wash them out for at least 24 hours previously or until I think they have soaked up as much water as they possibly can. This is an attempt to try my best to mimic my wafter hookbait in boyancy and also stop the food sucking up any of that dirty silt smell taste and make it as lovely as possible. (I didn’t include this next little twist in my first rant I don’t think) After this I drain all the water there sitting in out put about a quarter of them in a bag and add a dash of matching dip flavour to liven a quarter of them back up a bit, BUT, it’s important to not overdo this. This is my own little thing I started doing I’m happy to admit where I copy something as I have already said and all I can relate this next little edge to is when we eat a pack of crisps, everyone likes to find that crisp with that extra bit of flavour right! We search them out don’t we? We will still eat the other less flavoursome crisps and because we’re humans we might save them flavour full ones until the end but In my mind I cant imagine animals/fish doing the same, I know my dog eats his meat before his biscuit if I don’t mix it up enough so that’s how I thought of this little twist 😉. Basically number 3 will show you how we then take advantage of this. 3. Extremely flavoured hook baits. If my little plan on getting them wanting the little extra flavoured baits works then this next thing is what gets me extra quick pick ups. See even more importantly in spring and winter they aren’t eating loads but at the same time I want there to be bait about in my chosen area a lot of the time especially when I’m not there, therefore in my circumstance(can’t see the bottom ) you never know how much bait is on your spot when you drop in and it worry’s me that there could be too much there potentially slowing down your chance of a pick up. In my opinion you can really overdo it with flavouring if you glug up your free offerings too much but when it comes to hookbaits in this particular circumstance ( where they are used to the flavour of your bait) I don’t think you can overdo it because they never get to eat your hook-bait (over-flavoured anything ain’t nice) I just imagine that extra flavoured hookbait leaking off reminding them of what they been having recently and maybe that’s a special 1 I hope they think and they home in in it 😉. 4. back leads. I will always use back leads if I feel it could benefit me. If I’m out on a big pit with gravel bars out in front of me and I’m fishing long distance and my lines are going up and down I won’t bother because it’s pointless but when you can use them and it’s worth it just do it don’t be lazy. If I’m using a pod I pretty much always do it to avoid when a fish is fighting under my rod tip picking up my other lines that are cocked and ready for action! You could pull a line back a tiny bit and it was sitting nice and suddenly it’s dragged against a rock and mashed your hook point or been dragged into a bit of debris and now you have ( if your like me) lost confidence in your trap and will have to recast , potentially spook fish in your area and lower your chances of fast success. Times like this is when good quality bite alarms come into play. For me personally I love knowing that my line is travelling upwards from a back lead pinned to the deck toward my leadcore! I have mad confidence when I fish like this. 5. Stealth. Again if you read my first rant about plans for this year I’m sure I talk about stealth and how for me on this particular lake it’s extremely important if you want stuff to happen quick. I’m talking legs aching where you’re using your knees to cushion every step avoiding vibrations into the water I’m talking walking around so slow that every task takes longer. It’s like a mindset that you have to get used to and it’s quite a task but you gotta ask yourself do you want a capture and ok it might not work a few times but when you put the work in and it does work you will be hooked on it and after that it won’t feel like such a task. I didn’t include this bit in my last essay where I told you all I captured my target fish but let me tell you know during setting up on that night I had depressive thoughts, I had some little angel in 1 ear saying it’s worth it your getting drenched but don’t worry keep positive and I also had a little demon in the other ear telling me your wasting your time what are you doing it’s savage weather your kids and missis at home and your gonna be going home drenched and gonna have to dry out your stuff with nothing to show for it. And on another day that demon might have been right but on this day ( and others in the past) he was wrong and I was rewarded. 6. Dropping in at right time. This really should be up at number 1 if we was doing it in order of importance! I take a lot of notice of the weather conditions and then apply them to the lake I’m fishing and then make a choice on if I should go set up or should I just prebait and hopefully at the same time watch and learn. In my limited experience I have learned that the absolute best conditions are as follows, low angler pressure, low atmosphere pressure, cloud cover, warmer the water the better to an extent( I have been shocked to see carp shoaled up in shade in extreme heat! I have only ever seen this shoaling up behaviour in winter previously! I see this last year when we hit 40degrees Celsius! I was only out chucking free bait to carp in a lake that I I can’t actually fish for I just use this place to see there reaction to my different little experiments with bait and I learned what happens when conditions get that harsh be it warm or cold they seem to act the same way and was shoaling up)anyway so back to prime conditions we had water temps, angler pressure, air Pressure cloud cover, moving on , dissolved oxygen in the water (winds influence) time of year- daylight hours etc, natural food activities, syndicates individual feeding schedules, other anglers baiting habits, in my personal opinion moon phases mean a lot, all these things together can make a difference to if you can have the session of a lifetime or not. 7. The quality of your bait. If you read my first essay on my plans for this year I’m sure I talk about the importance of using quality bait. I talk about my experience with my friend who didn’t see how important using quality bait could be and also at that time how I didn’t really know how important it can be. In my opinion now it really does matter! Especially if your on a campaign and the fish have other options it’s even more important but if I remember right I did talk about how even on a relatively quick session I feel it doesn’t take long for carp to realise how good is the food they are eating. im pretty sure that’s all I got to say on why I think I was successful. if anyone is interested I only talk from my own experiences now. I said I watched terry Hearn videos etc that was the truth that was then but now I watch nothing. I kept my mouth shut for a long time and just listened and learned taking everything in along the way. A few members on this chat room really helped me out in particular salinkodrogg. I urge everyone to do the same until the time comes that you need to start taking the lead yourself. I am a little bit worried that I sound like an [censored] hole thinking I know it all right now after this little essay but after reading you guys responses to my comment saying it seems nobody is interested I got a little buzz on about it. 1 of you said I had given you the drive to regroup and go hard again and that made my fuc#ing day and that’s better than any capture for me to be honest! when I wrote out that last essay and showed my capture of pawprint that I clearly said I wanted and spoke about my plan I was kind of ready to stop talking on this chat room and planned to never come on here again and just keep myself to myself but when I came on and read some lovely things written by you guys I now plan to go attack a new water and I will keep you all updated on how it goes and we will see if I deserve to feel good about what I’m doing. I want a new pb common this year that’s my next target and you lot all gave me drive to do that so thank you all for that. Danny Hearn signing out wish you all the best 👊

Wow he got some special luck on his side that’s mad

Nobody seems interested but thought I would announce that my plan actually worked and I caught him finally. I’m shocked and still finding it hard to say to myself well done you did it you targeted a new area done a bit of prep work in search of a certain fish and it paid off. Especially because this fish came out a couple weeks ago, it has been known to come out a couple times a year to be fair but I’m pretty sure that was only 1 out of the 4 years I been on there. I want to believe that I forced a quick capture! That was what I was trying to do. I watched Adam penning talk about it on a video and I had already invested a bit of time and effort and bait into this area that I just said to myself carry on you have nowhere else to go so just keep on and now it’s done. He took my bait in less than a minute so I believe he had been hanging around munching my prebait. I was still pulling my baiting pole back in when it went off and I thought somehow I had picked up the line pulling it back in as I had a massive drop back but a few seconds later my bobbin smashed the rod and I knew there was 1 on. If you read my first long old essay you will get the true extent of what’s been going on for me. I would rather have some likes for that to be honest and now I’m so glad I actually shared it. But if you just like a nice picture that’s cool because I know it’s ridiculously long. considering the weather tonight and it was dark I’m well happy with the photos I took a lot of them but sadly he had some damage on 1 side but still I’m over the moon and screamed the place down when he went in the net. Was only me on the lake so it was ok. Paw Print 33lb 14 oz Lord of Hook lake 🤣 Love this pic Only sad thing about it all is that my time on there is up now really and I just paid for a new year starting on may 1st. What a lake I really loved my time on there and I doubt I will find another place as magical as there any time soon. Danny

Wow I love all of them. There’s a few different body shapes going on there. Genetics I suppose ? Strains ? Love the slopey head on the last 1. Wish I knew more about this kind of thing

Sadly the Ngt needle too thick for the Korda leadcore I am using

Feb capture too. Ain’t afraid to admit I shed a tear 🤣💪

This was a memorable capture. All the other anglers on the lake thinking they gotta cast 120 yards to the middle and then there’s me sneaking round the edges of a 17 acre lake seeing fish plotted up away from the pressure. On this day I see the biggest carp I ever seen before in my life. I’m sure it was him! The biggest carp in the uk Marshall over 75lb. I’m sure I almost had him. See a few fish dropping down on my tiger nuts, He’s got a massive body and a small head and I’m sure he was there hanging around. Anyway I managed to hook one of his mates and everyone else was blanking, this one was small at 42lb 10 oz

Sounds like your the leadcore splicing don making 1 last a few years 🤣. Last time I had a leadcore leader splicing session I snapped 2 out of 3 brand new esp needles in 10 mins, after that I was a bit more gentle took my time and got back into the swing of it and managed to make the last one last a whole spool of leadcore. I banged up a load of Korda hybrid Qc lead clips on 1 meter leaders but now I decided I like using the Korda heli safes more so it’s time for another session because I don’t really want them to be shorter than a meter, but this time I have bought an ngt stainless steel splicing needle looks a lot lot tougher I will share my opinion on it when i get to work

Holme fen fishery winter ticket there’s spaces available most years

There’s 40 fish over 50lb 10 fish over 60lb and 2 over 70lb

So I started this thread while on my winter ticket to try learn about when to be on the wind and when to be off of it. Just got back from my last session on the lake with a smile on my face as I managed 3 fish. It’s clear to say at this time of year on this lake with weather conditions as they were the fish were definitely on the wind and it was proper windy. I didn’t enjoy sitting in my bivvy on the end of the wind scared that it was gonna take off at any point! I honestly had about an hours sleep each night and had to down 2 red bulls just to stay sane on the drive home as I was spaced out hallucinating cars coming at me when they were actually miles away from me 🥴I pictured being dragged into the lake stuck inside my inner capsule even though the wind was hammering the other way so it was unlikely but it seemed to be blowing all directions and at the time I am not afraid to say I was scared ########. considering the average size of the fish in the lake I was unfortunate to catch a few of the smaller ones but I’m not complaining next year I might hook into one of the monsters that reside in there. Here’s a couple pics 27lb 19lb And the highlight of the session and the fish that warranted me buying the ticket. We’re in spring now so can’t really say they are winter carp but I had been baiting this area with whatever bait I had left over from my sessions and now I’m kicking myself for not dropping on it sooner. 32 lb Before this session I was honestly considering taking up a different hobby! I thought I had lost the love for it. Had a brilliant time and am looking forward to the rest of the years adventures. Thanks for the help from anyone who was on this thread. Cheers Danny Hearn

Them Ardleigh fish. Spectacular. I’m no expert but I get the impression that they are old old ?

Good idea take his brush that’s going on the list

Lea valley security 💪😜

Can’t wait to take this big softy out on a night trip. I have had him with me on an evening session before and after letting him roam wild for a bit he did eventually come lay down near me and relax. He actually chose to lay down on a fallen over barbed wire fence not the unused unhooking mat I had laid out for him 🤣 but I couldn’t complain he was sleeping and I was relaxing with rods out and all was well.

What’s pricey ? Could you tell me roughly what a kilo would cost to make ? thanks for your reply

No I haven’t tried any other bait apart from what I buy ever since I started back at carp fishing 3/4 years ago. potters bar only 5 mins from me. Lea valley will be where I will be focusing on later this year, who knows maybe earlier if I manage to bag my target fish from hook lake but if not I will be there from around the start of may to start of September so that’s funny you have said that. unless you remember my comment on the dogs thread where I will be taking my big boy to guard me and let me sleep at night lol I think I said I would be fishing in the Lea valley. I have heard scary stories from people about fishing Lea valley. To be completely honest with you I have been writing out reply’s for about 3 hours and keep deleting them. I am trying to learn how to keep my reply’s short and sweet but I ain’t doing too well at it 🤪. I work nights so I’m always up late full of energy and I just end up annoying most people trying to sleep. If it’s of any interest to you I will message you and explain to you why Spencer’s bait is scary to me. Admittedly I don’t know him. But with John baker I was thinking I could ask him about the nutritional value of his bait and maybe pay more to up it if I could and if he says it would still work well. for me bait quality is everything. A skilled experienced angler with knowledge of watercraft etc may not need a quality bait but sadly that’s not me and so far in my carp fishing adventures I believe much of my success is from sticking with a high quality bait prepping it well and applying it regularly and dropping in when conditions are right. I’m so bad at keeping my reply’s short and sweet. I’m trying though thanks

off topic but do you have any experience with John baker baits? im loyal to my bait guy but as the years have gone on it’s getting harder and harder to even put in an order with him due to his health conditions. I find myself buying 40 kg at a time these days just to be safe which ain’t really a problem as I have a dedicated freezer for bait and bbq meat for my fishing trips 😊. but I have been watching alot of John bakers YouTube vids and am definitely interested in giving making my own a go so if the time does suddenly come where I can no longer get the only bait I have used since I started back at fishing 3-4 years ago I have something else to fall back on that I will be confident in if you have experience with it let me know I would like to ask a few questions. anyone else reading have experience feel free to get involved.

Passing on a blind lead 🤣I like that one. Yeah that’s another 1 this particular angler thinks he can turn up half hour early then another angler turns up 15 mins early and they both have it out on the bank about how it is or it isn’t fair 🤣🤣🤣 Yeah you’re right these anglers breaking rules and grassing each other do seem to think they don’t need to work hard. As they talk at you (not with you) they seem to talk about how easy it’s going to be for them 🤣🤣🤣

if anyone is interested I have a little plan for this year coming. firstly a little ( edit ) little no not little huge lol ) story about my journey so far. I have spent last 3 years on a small intimate wind protected silted up estate lake called hook lake in Hertfordshire. I plan for this year to be my last year on there regardless of if I catch the fish I joined for or not. when I joined it was my first real go at what’s considered by many as a hard lake to fish! and I was about to learn the hard way. Bad thing for me was I started fishing when the lockdown rules finally allowed us to start doing nights. I dropped in first session and only by luck had 2 fish straight away and that set me up thinking hey I’m not too bad at this but little did I know I was about to be hit hard with a reality check. I think I done 2 nights a week every week after that up until November so say 6 months and I only managed another 5 fish.So less than 1 a month so like more than 8 nights per fish. what did I learn ? 1. Carp from small lakes are clever! Like really clever! Or maybe it’s anglers being dumb ? But most times I could pull up at the lake see a couple of anglers on and go look as far away from them as possible and I would find fish straight away. I could almost every time guess where the carp would be from where the anglers were set up which was always as far away from them as possible. Sometimes when there was more anglers on the lake the fish were nowhere to be found ( I think I know where they were hiding now and this year with that and what I have learned myself so far I plan to take full advantage of this😉) but still even though I could find them I still couldn’t manage to hook 1 or stalk 1 or even set up without spooking them off somewhere else( I was yet to learn what it takes to master the art of absolute stealth) went as far as the waggler and also free lining. 2. Weather! With this lake the main problem in my opinion is the dissolved oxygen in the water. Hot summer days with barely any wind hitting the water along with silt releasing gas loads of silvers no weed growing high air pressure all led to carp on the surface struggling for oxygen. To the amateur like I was you would say let’s hit them with a floater 🤣. No chance these fish were just trying to stay alive no way were they interested in feeding at all.this lake has suffered devastating fish kills in the past. Last year and maybe years before I don’t know but last year for sure they done a siltex job on it and it has been alot better for the fish I have witnessed them dropping down and having a quick feed even in extreme temperatures but still get your head torch on at 3 am and you can still find them at times gulping air not interested in nothing apart from breathing. 3. ( remember this is what did I learn) another important thing I learned so far was to monitor weather and only drop in and fish when the weather was in my favour. This meant I needed low air pressure which normally comes with wind normally rain which all helps oxygen levels and in this lake can spark a feeding spell from the fish and when they feed they will feed hard but that’s not it done yet. I learnt about storm rain and how it can deplete oxygen but still I had to fail before I learnt about this. 4.getting them to accept a bait. Last year I didn’t fish from the start of may to the start of September. But I was down the lake twice a week when I could manage to sneak on without anyone seeing and getting my bait in there. At first many times I would turn up mid week and even then there would be people on and I would have to turn around drive off and I had wasted my time. 5 . washed out baits. As I said this lake is a silt hole. So if you drop in freshly unfrozen boilies They are going to sink to the bottom and suck up all that dirty silt flavour into the bait! Not saying the carp won’t eat the bait still they will and they do but in my mind I want them to love the bait especially when you know the syndicate managers are feeding a pellet into the lake which soon becomes safe to the fish, I have been there before sneaky watching with no motor in the car park watching where they feed them 🤣 but I learnt that they feed them all over the lake not just in 1 spot. I even waited for the time to come and sneaked up to rubbish bags and found out what pellet they were feeding the fish and I thought I had cracked the code but all I realised when I bought the same pellet that unless the carp were eating them within 1 hour they became food for the silvers. Mush, so that was forgotten about. I was sick of turning up after driving to the lake and out of respect for the anglers fishing turning around and going home with washed out baits which made me worry about if they was becoming deactivated or what not. I wanted my bait to already have sucked up enough juice so that they couldn’t suck up anymore in my mind making them even more attractive for these wary fish. So I started setting an alarm for 2 am and going to the lake even while other anglers were there sleeping and being prepared to sneak onto the lake and plop in 1 boilie at a time if that’s what I had to do. The other anglers were all blanking anyway I wasn’t doing any harm I’m not like that I wouldn’t do it if I was doing harm I just knew that these fish wouldn’t be feasting on these anglers baits hard unless they was feeding them all the time like I was. 6. Dropping in at the right time. This is the most important thing I have learned. Weather conditions spots where carp are willing to feed(although with washed out baits they will in my opinion pick them up from anywhere in the lake as I have caught from swims where even the owners say nobody caught a fish out of there for as long as they can remember) getting the carp loving the bait all are part of the key to success on this lake. After learning honestly by myself and with the help of google I already said I didn’t fish from the start of may to the start of September I dropped in when weather conditions were favourable and in one session had the same amount of fish I had in my whole first year on this lake, 7 carp. I was over the moon. I had more fish than some anglers had in years. I caught a carp that had been missing for a long long time it wasn’t huge just 16lb but it is a beauty if you check the hook lake website I’m on there and the owners wrote a little bit about the captures. after my capture of it they named it the leviathon which I’m quite proud of. After that I thought these fish love the bait I’m gonna empty the place and decided to ignore weather and go hard. I blanked 3 sessions after that. Until full moon low pressure big winds late in November and dropped in after switching and feeding a more digestible bait ( that’s my bait guy not me he assured me it will be better and it was) I dropped in and had 4 fish in a session. I imagine if i had had the help from people on this chat room I would have seen such success earlier and that’s what I’m moving onto now. so finally my plan( got carried away sorry) most people I assume won’t read this far anyway unless I’m a good storyteller I don’t know I hope so I think my pal salinkodog might do 😉. I know I probably got the name wrong but I’m sure you don’t mind it’s the thought that counts. Mk so I was talking to you recently and you said to me some fish hang around a certain area. I have had most of the stock from this lake now a lot of repeats the commons I’m not sure how many it’s hard to tell apart from by weight but 1 mirror I have had 5 times. Another 4 times and quite a few 2 times you get the picture. So I was told by salinkodog and I will admit 1 of the bailiffs on the lake who I will also admit has quizzed me up to what I am doing wanting to get the same success which I am proud of to be honest as he’s been on the lake for 20 years or more, I was told I need to fish in 1 area if I want to catch the carp that has evaded capture from me for the past 3 years. So this year coming that’s what I’m going to do. But, I’m doing more than that I recently took a massive anchor like rake down to where this fish has been caught before and spent a good 2 hours chucking it out into the lake and literally dragging back logs off the bottom savage roots and all sorts and clearing a couple spots which are incastable by rod and can only be reached by baiting pole pushing under over hanging trees or setting up on the other bank and fishing a rod length out which I can’t be doing anymore I can’t be staying in stealth mode for like 48 hours at a time it ain’t healthy for the mind but I have done it and if necessary I can use this skill again in my career but it’s not enjoyable. so I have literally raked the hell out of 2 spots and upon doing this I noticed some massive undercut banks. God knows how far the banks are undercut but I learned that for 3 years I have been walking past this feature thinking I know it all and really I have been ignorant and not thorough enough in my searching. I also found a considerably deep hole right by an undercut bank and if I’m right I’m convinced the carp are using this area. I was literally swinging this anchor like rake at least 2 foot under my feet where I was standing. I have not seen anyone fishing either of the spots I have prepared for this year so I have just started dropping my chosen bait on them. I know the bait when I prepare it the way I do the carp love it. I mix water with condensed milk add a dash of vanilla extract taste it myself and it’s delicious, not at all overpowering and ok fish might be different but me I wanna keep tasting it more and more so this is what I wash out my boilies with they end up tutti frutti vanilla cream. This lake has story’s of carp going missing and I have managed to find one of them who knows I might find more this year because this hole is deep and in my opinion must have been excavated by carp.Bring back the rake through it it was taking ages to hit the bottom and it was like clay for the first time I had clumps of clay like stuff sticking to the rake and I’m no expert but in a lake predominantly silty and choddy I find a random deep hole and the rakes coming back clumped up with clay like material I have heard this is a good thing ? why is this hole deeper than anywhere else I know of on the lake ? And why is it the only place I have found clay like substance? Why are the banks there really undercut? I’m no expert but it screams out carp getting special nutrients from clay and digging it out making it deeper than anywhere else. Maybe there is more clay around the lake but as I said this area is left alone and never pressured as far as I have seen and maybe they choose to go there for what they need. Also where this spot is there’s a huge oak tree which over the years has had massive branches snap off and crash down into the lake deterring anglers from fishing there. I would certainly never set up in that swim because of this and also as I only fish when weather conditions are perfect that’s usually high winds and I’m bad enough on there with the smaller trees let alone this huge oak tree which you only have to look at for a second to see it’s previous snap offs and it screams danger. who knows maybe this little plan might lead to nothing I tell you 1 thing if it does I will be man enough to come on here and tell anyone who is interested but I’m convinced I have found an area on a small lake that has been ignored by everyone else. My campaign starts from the 27th March when my winter ticket ends but I have started baiting and preparation already I will reply to my post here when it’s due wish me luck at least Danny Hearn