The Horse is a fish I had been after for a few seasons now and it was really starting to get to me so I decided to fish November just for that one fish!

After a bit of information digging from mates that had caught it before, it became clear that there was one area of the lake that it seemed to like. This area had a nice set of snags to the right of the swim that also had good form at this time of year so this was going to be the plan for the coming month.

The spot I was going to fish was just down the right hand margin and I decided to only fish with the one rod and concentrate all my bait on the one spot. I had recently changed over from my summer bait to my chosen winter bait which ... (read more...)

As we’re now firmly headed into autumn, and the winter is fast approaching I’ve once again started using my old faithful balanced pop up rig that has served me so well in previous years. This rig is a real gem from this time of year onwards, as the water temperatures drop off and I have found that it will often out-fish any other rig during this time. Like most great methods it’s very simple; and this highly effective rig allows you to fish a pop up extremely close to the lake bed, whilst still ensuring that the hook bait stands proud enough to visible and give off that vital ‘eat me’ signal.

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This season I’ve been putting all my time and effort in to a syndicate lake in the Avon valley near Ringwood, a lake known as the Roach Pit and run by CEMEX Angling. This lake is a 20 acre gravel pit with an amazing stock of big stunning carp, containing between 60 and 70 fish with 2 of those being around the 50lb mark!

The Roach Pit is a very weedy and pressured lake that is fished by some very good anglers, consequently carp are by no means easy to catch, as over the years they have seen just about every rig and baiting situation there is, so I had to think long and hard about how I was going to tackle this tricky venue....

The first thing that came to mind was rigs - and after ... (read more...)