Carp Fishing at Broomham Ponds

9:15 am - Arrived at Fishery
I arrived at Broomham Ponds at the start of a sunny summer day, there was already three people fishing the lake. Unfortunately the swim I had planned to fish was already taken, so I moved along to the next one. There wasn’t a great amount of water to fish, the overhanging trees drooping into the water on the bank opposite me was only about 10 metres or so away and I had small trees and bushes either side of me which restricted any casts to the left and right.

A tree hanging over Broomham Pond

9:30 am – Threw some dog biscuits out
I did my usual trick of throwing out some dog biscuits to see if there were any carp happy to feed off the surface. I threw a couple of handfuls under the overhanging trees opposite and a handful out into the open.

9:35 am – Set-up rods
I set-up the first rod using a bolt rigged, one up one down rig which consisted of a double ended hair with a large strawberry flavoured boilie one end and a smaller strawberry flavoured popup boilie the other end. I set the second rod up with just a single hair rigged plumb flavoured boilie. There was no action on the dog biscuits as yet.

9:50 am – Cast
I flicked the first rod right under the overhanging trees on the opposite bank, followed by six or seven boilies and a handful of trout pellets. I cast the second rod out in the open slightly to left of me, followed by a couple of handfuls of trout pellets.

12:25 pm – Carp feeding on dog biscuits
The dog biscuits by now had drifted. They had drifted under the overhanging trees and they had drifted to the right of me where the end of the lake was. I kept hearing the occasional slurp and the occasional splash coming from under the trees.

2:54 pm – Screaming run!!
The bite alarm on the right sounded continuously as the monkey climber hit the top, the fish was taking line and he was heading through the overhanging trees, I really hoped there wasn’t any snags under the trees. After very little effort the fish came out into the open and started heading for the swim to the left of me, it didn’t take him long until it reached it, much to the annoyance of the fisherman in that swim, sorry mate, I thankfully managed to gain some line on the fish before it managed to cross over the other fisherman’s line. This was proving to be very difficult, there was just no room to manoeuvre and a lot of opportunities for the fish to catch me out and make his escape. I got the fish back in the open in front of me but he had his sights on getting back under the overhanging trees, I didn’t want this to happen, so I increased the strain on the reel to make it very tough for him to take any line but not too much strain that the line would break if it bolted. After a few more cat and mouse runs the fish was finally knackered and so was my arm.

3:00 pm – Landed the fish
The fish was on the surface now, I could see it was a common carp, I lifted my rod and the carp glided into the net. I lifted the net out of the water and placed it on my unhooking mate, it was a very dark bronze coloured common, this was a very big fish for the water. The record was a 16lb common, this looked like a contender for the new record. I hooked the netted fish up to the scales, it weighed in at 15lb 2oz. It didn’t break the record but it still was a bit of a buzz that I had just caught one of the biggest fish in the lake.

Man holding a 15lb 2oz common carp

3:40 pm – Someone’s alarm was sounding
I could hear someone’s bite alarm ringing from across the lake.

4:30 pm – Not much activity
The lake had died down again, there wasn’t many signs of fish feeding apart from some little silver fish trying to eat a dog biscuit.

5:45 pm – Packed up
It was time to call it a day.

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