Digging for Victory

The beauty of being an angler of varied tastes is that there is always something to go for. I must be honest- my first choice on a spring day might have been very different to legering for carp. But take a really grotty day and persistent rain, and you have a much better recipe for action on a carp lake than on a trout stream, for example, that has been transformed from pure gold to pure filth.

Creedy Lakes are a place I hop across to once or twice every season. I also like to experiment with baits, largely because the place sees so many boilies I always suspect the carp are sick of getting caught on them. Bread and maggots both feature high on my list, but I really fancied giving worms a try and spent the best part of an hour gathering several hundred from the compost heap. Hard on the back, but completely free bait. They can be a pain to feed at distance, so I went for a spomb to put plenty of chopped feed at around thirty yards out.

As for presentation, I went with one running rig, and one semi fixed. With plenty of clay-like, sticky mud with the bait I even tried a rather gruesome method set up. No additives or gimmicks whatsoever here- just plenty of natural bait and very dirty hands. But was it to work?

It didn't take too long before the running rig was getting twitchy, and then a full blooded run and a fish of ten to twelve pounds. I then added a smaller one and an eel into the bargain, before things went quiet and I added more feed. And the day tended to follow a similar pattern- the fish would come on, then only return after re-feeding with quite generous amounts of worm. The next one fought really hard on my standard Creedy tackle (1.5 TC rod, 10lb line) and was absolutely solid around the middle at 16.08lbs:


Two tench added further variety, before I eventually got fed up with the rain and went back for a hot bath. Mission accomplished I guess, and a decent return for a really crappy day of weather. It literally didn't stop raining for a second until about four in the afternoon and perhaps not surprisingly Creedy was less busy than usual. Not that I was grumbling- and I enjoyed the company of this little chap for most of the day, and he even got a few free worms into the deal: