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One day towards the end of April last year(2004), knowing that the Society had extended the Season for Chittenden until the end of April and the weather forecast for the next day was reasonably good, I decided to dust down my tackle and try a days fishing.

 For those of you who do not know me I will explain that in the summer of 1992 I was taken ill and have been confined to a wheelchair since the beginning of 1993. Prior to this I had spent a number of close seasons fishing the commercial Carp waters in Cornwall which in those days were the only waters, one of the lessons that I learnt fishing down there was just how good a bait luncheon meat is in the spring and early summer, so for this day at Chittenden I decided to make luncheon meat my first choice bait.

That evening I prepared a couple of tins of meat, the first I sliced into 4 or 5mm thickness' and then pushed these through a maggot riddle the resulting pieces being stored in the refrigerator in a plastic bag. The second I cut into 15mm slices then used a 10mm punch to produce pellets of meat, half of these were placed in a plastic bag and flavoured with some Corn Steep Liquor given a good shake to coat them evenly and placed in the freezer(when they thaw they will have drawn in all the flavour), the other half were put in the refrigerator in another bag.

I liquidised the offcuts of meat with some water until it was very smooth then used this to dampen half a bag of fishmeal groundbait which also went into the refrigerator. This was all the bait I intended to take apart from a few slices of bread in case the Carp only wanted surface baits.

The next morning was bright and sunny and I wished that it didn't take me so long to get ready to go out, but it was around nine o'clock that we left home my long suffering wife having to load me, my wheelchair and tackle into the car. When we eventually arrived at Chittenden it was close to 10 o'clock and my poor wife then had to unload me and tackle. There were quite a few cars in the car park when we arrived, and I was surprised to find that all the other anglers except one were further down the lake. This was even more surprising as the wind had been blowing into the corner adjacent to the disabled swims for a couple of days and although it was now only a gentle breeze, there was quite a build up of scum and other debris to provide cover and food for the fish.

When I eventually got to the disabled swim I chose to sit at the left most end and pole fish tight along the bank towards the corner so I chose a rig from my box with a short Preston Tyson float on 0.16mm line straight through to a size 14 barbless Kamasan Animal hook with a 25mm hair. The top two of my pole was elasticated with Middy 14-16 elastic. At around 11 metres along the bank there was a clump of grass which hung over the water slightly and plumbing around 150mm from the bank I found 400mm depth so I adjusted the rig to fish about 100mm over depth with two number 8 shot 100mm off the bottom.

I introduced about fifteen pieces of the riddled meat with a small handful of the groundbait via a pole cup, the groundbait was loose so that it spread out a bit as it sank in the shallow water. After spending 10 minutes or so organising everything around me so that I could fish sensibly from the wheelchair, I could wait no longer and put a couple of pellets of meat on the hair and shipped the rig to the spot along the bank.

Twenty minutes later the initial enthusiasm was beginning to wane when the float suddenly moved in the vortex caused by the tail of a Carp, two or three seconds later it dipped then headed towards the corner of the lake, I lifted the pole slightly to set the hook and found I was attached to a very angry fish which now decided to head for the island in front of me. As the elastic obviously wasn't going to stop the fishes run I swung the pole to almost point the tip at the fish and sank the tip of the pole under the surface, after a few seconds the fish rolled on the surface  three quarters of the way to the island then slowly came back to swim round in circles under the pole tip, waiting for an opportune moment I pushed the tip of the pole back behind me and my wife scooped the fish with the landing net. A double figure Mirror Carp with almost bronze coloured flanks and bright orange fins lay in the net. I removed the hook from the fish and returned it carefully.

I fed the same spot again with the pole pot introducing the same amount of feed. After 15 minutes or so another Carp succumbed to my bait this time a Common of about twelve pounds. After  re-feeding the same spot the pole was nearly wrenched from my hands and a very brief battle ensued before the hook pulled out of the fish, which I believe was foul hooked. This caused things to slow up dramatically for the next hour when I only landed one more Carp a grey mirror of about ten or eleven pounds. The breeze then started to blow more strongly forcing the water into the corner which set up quite a strong flow back down the lake tight to my bank. Although I altered my rig to fish further over depth and moved the shot around it just wouldn't behave correctly.

I had noticed signs of a fish moving maybe five metres closer to me along the bank so dropped my rig in there to see if it would be easier to control, it was but I found I had to hold the pole tip in a thistle to keep the float where I wanted it. I  fed the new swim similarly to the first and left it to settle while I was setting up my margin pole to enable me to control any fish more quickly as there were some twigs in the water close to where I was now going to fish. Before I had even put any meat on the hair rig I noticed a large tail just break the surface so with hands shaking I quickly baited up and dropped the rig into position.

The float had barely settled before it slid away and all hell broke loose as the fish seemingly tried to climb the bank, with the added strength of my margin pole I was able to get the fish away from the bank. After fifteen minutes or so of dogged resistance my wife lifted the net to land a superb Common Carp which when weighed went sixteen and a half pounds. At around 3.30pm I lost another fish that I had foul hooked and I decided to pack up as my arms were becoming noticeably tired. In total I had landed fourteen Carp weighing between just over ten pounds to sixteen and a half pounds, and used just over one tin of meat.Not a bad days fishing and a few lessons learnt or reinforced.

• Although it is well published that Carp follow a warm wind, it seems a lot of anglers still don't consider this when choosing where to fish.
• The larger fish seem to inhabit the shallow margins even though there body seems deeper than the water.
• Luncheon meat certainly works well early in the year. I had more success with the flavoured meat, although I believe that as the Corn Steep Liquor makes the meat look like a pellet and the dark colour would be more visible in the murky water the actual flavour is probably immaterial.
• I found that the best way to play the larger fish was to submerge the tip of the pole as soon as you hook the fish and, smoothly ship the pole back until you can detach the top three or four sections. It was then no problem to play the fish on the top few sections, in fact it made it easier to control the fish and cut the time needed to play the fish considerably. I did not have to add any sections whilst playing the fish, finding it possible to stop all there runs by submerging the pole tip. Not only do the fish stop and swim back to the tip of the pole, also as you cannot see how far your elastic has stretched you do not feel the need to add sections unnecessarily.
• With hindsight I feel that feeding only after catching another fish worked well, but if I had fed half the quantity each time I probably would not have had the problem of foul hooking a few fish.

I hope this article is of some interest  as Spring is nearly here again and the Carp will switch on as the hours of daylight increase.

Roger Ledwidge

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