The lake #19 Warm summer nights and baking summer days.

I fancy that Coombe pool fishery holds some monster eels. How can't it! It's a prime looking bit of big eel water. The only thing it has against it is the overflows exiting the lake. These two escape points could give any eels present in the pool an easy exit from the lake, thus so turning what I wish was a prison where trapped eels could balloon, into a... say hotel, where they can live the life of luxury plumping up on the veritable larder available, before slipping over the spillway once the itch to head off on a one way trip to the Sargasso takes hold.

For now though I am going to assume that this lake does in fact hold as yet unseen leviathan eels thicker than my arm. And why shouldn't I assume this as I know for a fact at least two eels reside in the lake as  I relocated them after finding them languishing in one of the drains. But these are not the only anguila-like leads that I have encountered over the last few years whilst fishing Coombe. Only two weeks ago reports of a four-pounder being caught from an area which looks very eelish graced my ears, and last year a trio of carp anglers reported nightly harassment when fishing with blood worm flavoured boilies at range.

All the information seems to point in the right direction and my gut feeling is that this lake has to contain more than just a few surprises. So all that remains is time - time spent on the bank waiting for a big old eel to sniff out my baits in the dark of night and rouse me from my (more than likely) dreams of eels.

The opportunity to do my first night had been a little pragmatic in arriving. You see whilst trying to work full time and fish part-time, I am at home removing and replacing what can only be described as a galleon worth of decking boards which make up the patio right outside the back door to our house. Its a beastly job, and as the good weather is here to stay and the impending date for the delivery of the new materials marches ever closer, I find myself lacking in time and excuses to sit lazily bank side waiting for night to approach. This in mind the ingenious idea to just actually sleep on the bank entered my head. 

It sounds perfect doesn't it? Get my gear ready the night before, go to work for the day, come home have a quick feed before back in the car with my gear head down the lake. Bait up/cast out then get my head down for the night, maybe land an eel here or there, then pack up head home and work in the garden all day ripping up bad wood...

Turned it was never going to be that easy or go that well. After huffing and puffing all my kit into the car I arrived at Coombe already sweating like I was wearing a fur coat in the Kalahari to find hordes of cars in the car park. By the time I had walked the bank, located an area full of small fry I fancied and packed my kit down the water side the sun was already worryingly low in the sky. By then I was in no mood to have to do what I was about too. But the gallon of wretched dead maggots wasn't about to spomb itself out any time soon. To top it all off the flavouring I was adding to the dead maggots is quite possibly the worst smelling additive invented my man and after I had sent multiple spombs onto two different spots the entire bank was humming with flies attracted by the stench.

Eventually after much business I found my toiling done and with one rod cast onto spot  far out in the lake which was liberally baited, and a second spot only a few feet off the bows of an oak tree which caressed the water, I went round to chat with and apologise to a very nice chap called Dave who I knew from another lake we both fish and who was bivvied up for a night of bream fishing just down the bank. 

Really I held no hope that anything would be forthcoming until the lake had been shrouded in dark for a good while. So when my inside line went off like a rocket just after dark I was little more than surprised. It never bleeped or stuttered once before melting off and forcing me to sprint through the narrow gap leading back to my swim. Even the excitement of a instant one toner could not override my expectant excitement of what might have consumed the quiet literally humongous ball of worm I had attached to my hook. Honestly how many fish are big enough or tenacious enough to consume four large worms cut into quarters before being threaded onto hair and hook?

The answer to that question so far is one... and a tench at that! some how this greedy male had been grubbing around over my lovely eel bait when it came across my golf ball sized bait. Where it proceeded to cram it in its mouth along with my size 2 hook and 40lb hook link.

Although it  was probably not what you could call a sporting fight on fifteen pound line and my three  pound rods, I should count myself lucky of the action considering the night ahead.

The warm night passed with little disturbance from anything under the water. The creatures above the water were a different matter entirely. As I tried to calm my mind and get to sleep the little owls began a a lake wide conversation. I then heard what sounded like a daddy long legs buzzing on the roof  of my bivvy only to discover when I turned the light on that it was in fact a mosquito that looked like a prop from Jurassic park buzzing around my head. After a few hours sleep I was roused by three beeps on my right hand rod which after I hovered over it for ten minutes came to nothing and was followed by Dave getting a run from a nice bream. By now it was three so I decided to recast both rods just in case and after doing so a pair of tawny owls began hooting in the woods over the lake which was followed by a male muntjac deer barking for a while. Some how I did manage to get back to sleep before the dawn chorus began.

By six the sun was already up and getting very hot. The lake was flat calm and from my bed I had a good view of a large swathe of it. Surprisingly nothing was rolling anywhere in sight and that's when it struck me. All night even with a load of bait spread over my swim I had not had a single liner on my long line which was fished taught and popped up of the bottom. The bream should rightfully have driven me mad passing through my swim but nothing had seemingly moved through it.

As I packed up for an early exit the carp anglers started stirring and news came down the bank that it had been a very quiet night all over with My tench and Dave's bream the only action all over the lake. I think the closest I may have come to an eel was that three bleeps in the night. I also think I may have gone a little over the top for just a single night by putting out all those dead maggots. Next time I think I will be a little more frugal and try fishing an area with a few more features rather than targeting an area full of prey fish

Through the weekend the temperature soared as I slaved away sawing old decking boards into manageable chunks. Always in the back of my mind I fancied I might have another session. But the savage sun made the prospect of even a short session at Coombe seem pointless. So instead I opted to link up with Andy and head down to my old mate Lanny's lagoon to do the only thing that seemed a viable prospect in the near thirty degree heat, surface fishing.

We weren't disappointed on arrival either, as close round the island was black with carp. By the time Andy turned up I had already bagged three powerful commons in three casts, fishing a free lined hunk of crust just off the massive patch of scum collected in the corner of the lake.

Sometimes it's just fun to leave the challenges at home and just head out to have a laugh with your mate whilst putting some serious bends in your rod. Which was exactly what we did bagging countless commons and mirrors, with a few strange hard fighting little wild carp mixed in for good measure.

Gently and gingerly does the trick.

When I went back to Snitterfield the other night I had the preconceived idea that as dusk crept in it might be the best possible time to ambush some big crucians. On a more idyllic evening that might well of been the case, but the night in question was less than idyllic by far. The day leading into the night was a real doozie. Swirling winds and interment squally showers had cooled not only the air but the water too.

My first real inkling that a major change had happened was when I dipped a bait box into the edge to damp down some ground bait. The moment my hand touched the water I realised the temperature had fallen by a good few degrees. When I last dipped my hand in the clear water four days prior it was noticeably hot, like an indoor swimming pool. Today, although not shockingly cold, it was much cooler and that alone was enough to rise my suspicions.

When I cast my uber light pole float rig out over the weed the random wind towed it all over the shop and when set over depth by my normal inch or two, the movement was enough to submerge my delicate float. A bit of perseverance resulted in two respectable silver roach, but that in itself was a worry as if the marauding roach were over my bait then the crucians weren't likely to get a look in. A quick change of float was made. A still fine but slightly more weighty Drennan antenna would enable me to hold fast against the tow, whilst still registering those tiny hints of bite crucians give should they be able to get on my feed.

Re-rigged I swung a small cast over the spot, reeled down hard to sink the line and put the rod on the rest. Moments later the float rose a little, the tell tale bottom shot weight removed as a fish mouthed my bait, and in the blink of an eye it disappeared and I go to strike. But the rod never got higher than my shoulder as the fish powered off. As I was setting up the new float I had seen a patch of tench bubbles further down the bank, so I assumed that a good tench had moved onto my bait and was now attached to the end of my line.

Even using a light match rod, three pound line and size 18 to 2.8lb silver fish pellet hook link I thought if I went easy I could maybe, just maybe, land the fish. Moments later my idea it was a tench went out the window when I saw a white belly flash deep in the lake. Now thinking it was a small carp I reassessed my predicament and concluded yes, as long I am very, very careful I should be able to beat a small carp.

Fifteen minutes later my rod was hooped in a very worrying way and my line was singing as it cut through the wind. This was by far a much larger carp than I thought and my little 20" net was looking a little under gunned for the job ahead. Luckily Thad the bailiff was fishing not far around the lake and quick call had him scampering in my direction with a much larger specimen net in hand. 

How I did it I will never truly understand, but after a monumental and very careful fight I finally managed to get it onto the surface after a couple of abortive attempts. Fish always look smaller in water and as it passed over the cord we both exclaimed it might be a bit bigger than we thought. When we took a hold of the net and lifted, it suddenly looked huge. On my diminutive unhooking mat it looked even bigger... quite possibly a twenty. The scales don't lie though and after carefully zeroing the wet sling the digital display flickered between 19.10 and 19.12, before sticking on the latter.

I was in shock for the rest of the session, as was my swim which had not only been smashed to bits by the carp, but I suspect had also been cleaned out by its cavernous mouth. More ground bait and pellets were potted in but as the night drew in I saw no signs of crucians, and the only fish to pull my float under were a few overzealous  tiny tench. Mind you I didn't really care as the thought of that seemingly impossible capture more than made up for the lack of crucians whose activity seemed to have dropped right off with the fall in temperature.

Getting all Ahab.

'I'm not saying I am exactly like a certain stove-pipe-hat-wearing-wooden-legged sea captain, but I have developed a few fishy obsessions over the years and it's only coincidence that some of those obsessions have been about large white fish'

For three hours I had moved slowly up and down the same thirty feet of heavily wooded bank and in those three hours I had barely made five casts. It was a little more than three hours ago that I gave up trying to fish through the crazy crew. You see, when I had arrived in the spinney and first viewed the water from the top of the path I had seen it was black with carp warming in the afternoon sun, and I was more than a little excited to get going. The first hour was a blur of insatiable feeding on the carps behalf and they never got bored sucking in the morsels of bread I was flicking onto the surface. It was just a pity that I was getting bored. It had only taken about twenty small fish for me to start thinking this is just too easy, as all carp caution was null and void today after a day baking their brains in the sun. 

It was about this time that as I stood beside a very sparse tree a huge pure white head slowly rose from under all the other fish and sucked in a single cube of crust, before sinking back below with a loud slurp. That was it for me, all other fish were forgotten; I had to have this white whale.

It would seem the frenzied sound of the other carp feeding was responsible for drawing the attentions of just about every fish in the lake, but caution kept some of the bigger ones holding back and underneath all of the others, only rising occasionally to engulf a the odd freebie here and there, and always out of range or in a awkward place. This one great white ghost though was betrayed by its colour, and  I could see it under all the other fish circling around. Its mass was unmissable  Not quite a twenty but it had to be close; this fish had graduated from the ranks and was now up there with the biggest of the pool.

The sun had been shining all day, and now it blazed down on me. I had to keep my hoodie on as the cream t-shirt I was wearing had made my presence obvious once already, and I needed to be close as possible to track this ghost as it was swimming so tight to the bank. So I stood sweltering, steaming up my Polaroids in my camo hoodie trying as best as possible to keep still and blend in with the back ground so as not to disturb my quarry.

Eyes and hands now operated totally independently  My hands cast a constant stream of small bread chunks   out onto the water by just flicking my wrist. My eyes though kept tabs on the faint white zeppelin which moved round with intent. It had no set routine to its movements, but after the first hour I had noticed it would feed on two totally different spots. At the tree where I stood there was an undercut it would glide into, then from this undercut its head would appear slowly. If a bit of bread was in the vicinity it would be sucked in for sure. But the problem was that the smaller fish in the melee would grab anything on the top no matter how far they had to travel to get it. This had resulted in me pulling out of many chances just to stop one of these interlopers spooking the ghost.

The other spot was further down the bank in front of a small reed bed. Three feet from the bank was a small clear patch about two feet round in the leaf litter, which I suspect was where someone had been disposing of leftover bait at the end of a sessions. I watched the white fish and a few other larger fish stop over and investigate this patch every so often. In watching this I realised that if I wasn't feeding the mob on the other side of the tree then all the noise they were making did not attract and keep the bigger fish going round in the area. Once the slurping stopped the fish underneath, including the ghost, drifted away with the mob.

Knowing this I began feeding larger amounts of bread onto the surface for a shorter period of time and then slipping down the bank to see if the bigger cautious fish were on the spot. In the next hour they only stopped on the spot twice and then only briefly. Eventually I dropped a free-lined bait onto the edge of the spot where I could see the bread against the dark bottom, then moved as quickly as I dared back round the tree and tossed a liberal amount of preprepared bread onto the surface. I could hear the slurps quickening as I went back and crouched close to the bank and picked up the rod. Then I watched as a small carp boldly swam up and picked up my bait. Hoping to try and dissuade it, I gently tugged the bait back which sent the culprit into a sudden panic, flying out of the swim along with several other fish including the ghost.

After that disaster I began the process of stirring up the mob all over again. I hadn't been at it that long before out of nowhere the ghost went back into the undercut at my feet. This was it! it was in there all I had to do was drop a bit of bread onto the water. All fingers and thumbs, a bit of bread finally got hooked up and gently I lowered it onto the surface only inches from the bank. Then a pair of lips appeared and the bread silently disappeared and I struck. My vintage speedia wailed the finest sound known to man as it bolted out into the lake. Worryingly though it came under control a bit too quickly, and all too soon a small common surfaced. I would never take out my frustrations on a fish but I was mad hell with this one. I managed to steer it away and landed it in a quiet corner unhooking it quickly in the net and dipping it free unable to even enjoy the sight of it.

I walked back slowly thinking I could not face the build up again if another small carp was going to force my hand and spook the ghost off. Kneeling on the floor behind the with my rod under my arm I baited my hook again and as I did I saw the ghost move slowly past me down the bank in the direction of the spot. In a momentary reaction I swung the bait towards the patch spot. How I knew the combined length of my rod plus the same amount of line would reach the spot was anyone's guess. I suppose it just seemed about right.

As I stood slowly behind the tree I could see my bait sinking slowly and the ghosts demeanour change. It had seen it for sure and it was going for it. Its weird that you can sometimes tell when a fish is about to eat your bait, and this one was. It moved steadily towards the now stationery bread with a second fish in tow. Then it slowed and the second fish was now level. Both heads dipped, both mouths sucked, and I hoped that the ghost had won. The bait was gone and I had to strike. I flicked the rod up and at that moment the water made that sound it only makes when something big displaces a large amount of water. The rod buckled over and the pin screamed and it made for deep water. My breaking of the spool with my left hand turned the fish and it kited right. That's when I saw the white shape under the surface seemingly attached to my line.  Back and forth the line went and every now and again a yellowish tail or white mouth broke the surface before it again surged away. Eventually it slowed and began circling close to the bank. The net was dipped already and then it surfaced and the sight knocked me back!

Turns out the ghost had lost out to its companion but the sight that met me was never going to disappoint.  Once on the surface it slipped straight into the net good as gold, and looking down into the net I was transfixed. It was close to ten inches wide across the shoulders and did not have a single scale on its entire body. She was the most beautiful leather carp I have ever seen first hand. She had that big carp look that indicates it could turn into a mighty fish, and from the looks of it had never been caught before. Even though she was still a little way off a mid double she was by far one of the most amazing looking carp I have caught in my entire life.

And it was more than enough to make me forget that white whale!