Catch Fish with
Mike Ladle

Information Page

For anyone unfamiliar with the site always check the FRESHWATER, SALTWATER and TACK-TICS pages. The Saltwater page now extends back as a record of over four years of (mostly) sea fishing and may be a useful guide as to when to fish. The Freshwater stuff is also up to date now. I keep adding to both. These pages are effectively my diary and the latest will usually be about fishing in the previous day or two. The Tactics pages which are chiefly 'how I do it' plus a bit of science are also updated regularly and (I think) worth a read (the earlier ones are mostly tackle and 'how to do it' stuff so if you are new to fly fishing or spinning these are the ones for you).

05 June 2009.

Even more reluctant carp.

The weather stayed pretty hot over the past few days and I had two more attempts to catch a carp. The first one was successful - although slow would be the best word for the fish on that day. Eventually I managed to attract the attentions of a nice linear fish by simply dangling the bait right in the marginal brambles and ferns. Otherwise the carp usually simply ignored the lumps of crust or, worse still, gave them a delicate suck and then left them alone. It was obvious that the fish knew that there were food items about but they really were not very interested. I assumed that the carp had their minds on sex rather than bread (who can blame them) but it was still hard to bear.

My second session was even worse and I caught nothing. Again the sun blazed down and to judge from the mighty splashes and thrashes in the reeds some of the carp were already spawning. I did my usual bread floating act but rarely did the fish show more than a passing interest. I'm sure that I could have caught the odd one by sheer persistence and some of them were well in the upper teens or twenties but it was almost more interesting just watching them. At times there were as many as twenty carp visible near the surface in front of me. Often they swam along in twos and threes, sometimes lazily and sometimes at a fair clip. They would pass by lumps of floating crust time and time again. On rare occasions an odd fish, usually one of the smaller ones, would approach and suck at a piece of bread, rarely did they actually seem to swallow or even mouth one. they just weren't very interested.

Floating bread.

Netted.

Close up.

Loads o'carp.

Decent fish.