Welcome to Clumber Park..
Now, Folks, this isn't going to be an article of Secrets of the lake, its going to be my own view and how i had great success on what i find to be, one of the hardest day ticket water in the area.
Its not a huge secret anymore that Clumber Park has a good head of sizable carp to its name, but that doesn't stop the lads on site trying.
I can remember when i first took on the idea of tackling Clumber Park. I walked around endless times with a friend weeks before the start of the season and the place was teeming with carp from 10lb - 30lb just basking in the son.
It was to be the start of a full year of day and evening sessions for me. I couldn't wait to get started. At the start i had a friend doing the campaign with me. We sort of set out to feed an area and fish over it, sort of let the fish come to us way of doing things. So we just kept looking for signs of fish during the closed season and made our decisions from that point on.
Now rightly or wrongly, i made the decision to marker up in the closed season, call it.....Immature lack of patience. How ever, this did give me some very good information about the lake, i'm not going to go into the Specifics about marking out a lake etc as I've gone over this before, but the keys points at Clumber to think about when marking up are.
- Try not to use Distance leads, a flat lead is almost the perfect shape. If you do use a pear or distance lead and cast onto silt. It'll add about 2-3 ft onto your depth.
- Use a buoyant float. I've always liked the Nash Weedy Marker float range.
- Spend a day or as much time as possible on any individual swim. Its better to have Knowledge of those key areas rather than go blind.
- Mark it all out and do doodles as accurately as possible.
If you get it right and spend time, you'll get something that resembles a tidier version than this;
And the other end....
Its also good to measure the distance. If you have not done this before then its pretty simple. Simply get a good distance rod. Century NG for instance, longer the better, so i'd go for the 13ft 50mm Ring versions. Get some 8-10lb line on the reel with a shock leader of 20lb braid. and put this to a 3-4oz lead and that's it sorted. Simply cast in and retrieve counting the turns and your sorted. Measure what a turn is and multiply and your have a near perfect distance recorded.
Again, i record all my finding on paper.
- A - 46m
- B - 62m
- C - 112m
- D - 124m
- E - 173m
- F - 131m
There are reasons for this this, if you can accurately judge the distance then its going to give you a realistic idea for when you require the use of a Spod.
Check in tomorrow for Part 2 where i will be covering swim and bait selection.
