Carp and only Carp - Essex

It was mid September, and the only freshwater fish I had caught all year was a few tiny rudd back in March, so I wanted to add a few species to this dismal tally. The idea was to go to my good old favourite Essex fishery and fish the mixed lake since I knew that they had matches on the match lake on Sundays. Wrong, the mixed lake was also booked out for a match so I had to fish a carp only lake around the back. This was a little bit disappointing but I still had to get carp onto my year list so I started to fish. I decided that I might try the mixed lake when the match finished

As usual I used standard two rod combo. A semi-fixed rig fished with corn to the island and a waggler fishing corn or meat to the near bank. It wasn’t too long until I had my first fish, with a little Common Carp of about a pound. A few more did follow. These were probably the smallest carp I had ever caught.




Common Carp - Cyprinus carpio



Common Carp - Cyprinus carpio



Common Carp - Cyprinus carpio



Common Carp - Cyprinus carpio

I said the previous few carp were the smallest I had ever caught, but I beat my personal worst with this fine specimen (of a goldfish). It must have been only a few ounces but you can still see the little barbules on them so definitely a common carp. It was almost time to move to the mixed lake, but finished with the best fish of the day so far with a little common at about 2lb. All of them had been taken on the waggler.



Common Carp - Cyprinus carpio



Common Carp - Cyprinus carpio




Common Carp - Cyprinus carpio

After a quick move to the mixed lake I setup in the exact same way. I had a few takes on the waggler but couldn’t convert any into solid hookups. Just before closing time, the bait runner started clicking and I wound into a nice little carp of about 3lb.



Common Carp - Cyprinus carpio



Common Carp - Cyprinus carpio

Having two rods seemed to paid off today with each method working on a different lake. The fish were all common carp but I had also doubled my year list for coarse species. I would have liked to have added a few more today but there's still time to get some more this season.