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Customer corner is all about our customer’s stories. In this week’s episode, we hear from Chris Robinson about how he met the owner of a small syndicate back in 1994 and subsequently got invited to join. Chris used underwater filming techniques to devastating effect even back then.
If you would like your story featured then send us a message through our contact page.
The New Syndicate
This is how I met a fella call Mark, who would have a profound impact on my future angling, al the way back in 1994
I was just slipping the net under my 5th 20lb fish of the session, a known fish of the lake called “the Train”, when I was greeted by a shout from a stranger in my swim who had swung by to offer any assistance in netting and photographing my catch.
He quickly gave me a hand with the photos of the Train (see below), and we got chatting. After reminiscing with Mark about the good old days of fishing other lakes in the southwest and was also found out that we had common anglers as friends.
Mark owned a small but tight fishing syndicate nestled in the north of Devon/Cornwall border and he said that I should come up and look around if I had the chance!
So, with the last of the A team crossed of the list on my current 15 acre lake I gave Mark a call and arranged to meet him at the syndicate. It was hard to find but boy was it worth it. It is a little gem of a 3-acre water, well established with varying depts of water and with about 60 large, switched on carp.
I enjoyed the fact that in one tree in each swim there’s a cup hanging which any visiting anglers could use to have a brew, sometimes it’s the little things that count!
After walking round a few times I didn’t need to be asked twice, and took up the challenge and joined the syndicate.
Joining a new syndicate is always very exciting. There’s the whole unknown about it, depths, snags, likely spots, learning how the fish feed and so on. Over the next few weeks I thought long and hard on how I could tempt the wily old fish into my landing net.
I purchased at an underwater camera for sale from Tandy electronics (yes I know they went out of business many years ago and even before others started making underwater videos, just shows how long ago this was). I then found a small 12v monitor which would work with a solar panel which I originally used for charging my old bait boat and hey presto it worked.
On my first session on the lake I turned up and had a walk around and decided to apply my efforts in the newest part of the lake which was, as far as I could, see not fished as much as some other swims, and it felt to me this would be the perfect sport – angler’s intuition let’s call it.
I knew that with such a small water the fish would frequent every part of the lake and it would also be quiet, so I set up my bivvy, put on my chest waders and investigated around a small bay in front of me.
The bay had a 3/4ft marginal shelf which had a nice hard spot which I thought would be good to set up my underwater camera to see what was going on so I set it up and laid out a small bed of bait.
After a lot of faffing about I got my first view of the new world.
The water clarity was very clear and with the onset of night it was great to watch the freshwater shrimps and other small creatures start to pay and interest to my bait before the night took the day and it became too dark to see anything.
I roll all my own bait, it was tried and tested, and I was super confident on its attraction. I was also the only person on the planet who had this recipe which appealed to me. I think nowadays they call it an edge, and it was this tried and tested bait of mine which I was using to see how fish who had never seen it before would react.
This viewing went on for a couple of days, and in-between watching the water and the screen I filled my face with food and slept.
It wasn’t long until I had my first view of one of the residents, a large common swam around from the right of the marginal shelf and away down into the deeper water, I had no way of recording this footage as back in the day we were still using cassette recorders!
I could only write any observations in my notebook which I had for each swim/lake.
During my video session, Mark visited my swim and I put the kettle on and made a cuppa, Mark asked where my fishing rods were!
I told him that I was carrying out surveillance first, there was plenty of time to get the rods out later once I have experienced the carp’s world. He said that I was nuts but then came back for another viewing that same afternoon! I agreed with Mark that I could leave the bank stick that held the underwater camera in the margin until I could return later that week, I threw in 3k of bait around the shelf and on the spot before leaving.
The next session I took my rods, but left them in the car at first and went to set up the camera and the bivvy to escape once again into the world of the carp, I baited up with chops and full boilies and sat down to watch.
It was not long before I had the first patrolling carp enter the swim from the same right-hand side and it seem to wash chopped and whole boilies from the shelf with its tail! this happened again shortly after which I thought was weird.
The penny dropped after some 40 minutes later as I saw the same fish return with its mate and follow the baits down the shelf to the lower shelf and start feeding!
Bingo!
Mark popped round for a brew that afternoon and I spoke of what I had seen, he was amazed but not surprised. I had learned that the marginal shallow shelf was a no-go area and the lower shelf was the banker rod!
He asked if I was to let the rods see the bank and I said that I will be putting some more bait in this evening and watching, and that I might get my rods out after lunch the following day.
I had more carp visiting the area and often picking up the odd bit of bait, but I was slowly building up their confidence feeding on the spot. Before I knew it the dark was upon us and the camera was fuzzy so I made some scran and had an early night.
The following day I woke, switched on the monitor to find most of the bait gone.
That was a cue for me to retrieve the rods from the car and start to set up my rigs ect.
I opted for a washing line approach as the camera spot was approximately 20yds from the peg with a marginal shelf which went right in front of the bivvy which meant that any line presentation would be awkward.
I had a few 4oz inline centred leads with me which were similar to the colour of the lakebed so one went on as a rotten bottom, with a 7” semi-stiff hook link and a 40mm hair.
I had made the washing line clip from a captive back lead which I had made on the lathe (pattern applied for!) fixed to a 24”bankstick down to a suitable stone which held the line down onto the lower marginal shelf. I then opted to go with a semi buoyant critical balanced homemade hook bait, heavily glugged, these carp were cute and a lot of sucking and blowing had taken place on camera before eventually eating bait so every effort was taken to minimise the human factor from my presentation.
After a few trips back and forth to and from the bivvy to check the camera I had my hookbait on view.
Then it was just a matter of waiting!
While making some grub I had not even had a chance to look at the monitor before my alarms were away and I was into a good fish, the battle was short and sweet before I had the net under her and after a whole 4 hours after putting the rods out I had my first carp out of the new syndicate, well pleased, I returned to the camera and could not see anything as the water had clouded up.
I gave Mark a ring and he popped down to help with photos and congratulated me on a job well done, he said that not many anglers would have taken the time to study the carp’s behaviour and just stuck to the basics of turn up, see fish, chuck out rods.
The fish was a ghostie mirror carp named the pink lady at 24.8 lbs.
If you enjoyed reading this article please let Chris know by leaving a comment. These are highly appreciated and motivating
Customer articles express the views and opinions of our customers. TackleTarts lightly edits these articles but does not influence the content. Our customer’s views may not always represent ours.
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