Spawning Time... Ade kiddell

This entry was posted on 5th June, 2017

I have never been a session carp angler, although I like a night on the bank and have on odd occasions spent the night in pursuit of a carp or 2, however I much prefer to stalk them, feed some spots, observe their behaviour and then set a trap to hopefully land a monster!

I have been feeding a few spots now for over 4 weeks now and I finally got my rewards in the shape of low twenty mirror, well worth the effort and even more exciting as I knew from my observations this was one of the small ones in the swim. The first fish didn't come easy though, I had the same evening been well and truly beat up, first a smashed hooklink and secondly a big fish wrapped me up in an unseen snag before shedding the hook. (Don't forget we are talking big wild  river carp here, no names, no ID just brutes of fish!)



The first fish was followed early the next morning with a high double common from the same spot, again on my favourite bait Sonubaits Code Red boilie, a shelf life bait that stays fresh without the hassle of freezing and without artificial preserves. I packed in and baited up again and took a cracking fish of 27-4 that evening.

The next two days I carried on feeding the same spots but resisted fishing due to the arrival of old mate and Angling Direct Warehouse Technician, Richard “Ginger Wells”. Ginger was with me for a few days, helping with work around the house and in the garden, then fishing through the night in pursuit of the carp.

As the song goes, “I was right in the middle of a good dream, when all at once I woke up” but instead of something knocking at my brain, it was Ginger on the phone with news of a cracker of a carp in the recovery sling. It was a little after 2am when ginger hooked the fish his first french river carp and over 30lb even Ginger almost smiled when I took the pictures.



Ginger fished the next 3 nights and night 2 and 3 both produced cracking fish, on the fourth and his final night I decided I would join him, I left him with the spot we had caught from and I took the reserve spot, lets say we both had a good nights kip, with no fish to trouble the scales.

Ginger left early the next morning and I baited up the spots, but on checking later most of the bait remained untouched, I soon found out why as I caught a glimpse of 3 decent carp all chasing around a huge carp, the fish were warming up for spawning. The next two days I left the fish alone and just watched as they continued to warm up for spawning.



Living with your front door 5 yards from the river is awesome and most mornings my first job is a 5 minute stroll through the garden along the river, what a site greeted me the next morning when i caught a quick glimpse of 3 carp, quickly followed by 4 more. With polaroids on I couldn't believe my eyes, a stretch of river around 100 yards long had about 10 groups of carp all in the midst of their spawning ritual.

They were totally unbothered by my presence, I managed to film them both above and below the surface, weed and silt was being wafted from the river bed, the whole stretch was a milky weed soup.

I will leave them for a few days and keep them fed as they recover and have another fish in the next few days, I will let you know how its goes.