The Carp Society

There were plenty of fish seen over the weekend. A lot were seen in the masses of weed at the bottom of Summer Bay. However, all of the swims in Summer Bay had takes and fish over the weekend, including Malcolm Grice and his guest who were fishing up in the mouth of the Bay in pegs 57 and 56. They had a number of fish between them including a couple of PBs of 19lb 12oz followed by a 22lb 04oz to Mark Pearce.

Tim Coppin and Martin Vaughan were as far away as possible from the bottom of Summer Bay with Mike Jones as their instructor in the Split Swim, right down in the bottom of Winter Bay in an area known as ‘No Carp Corner’. They were both going to prove this area wrong as Martin caught a new PB first with a fish of 23lb 02oz. He followed this up later in the weekend with another of 13lb 06oz. His fishing companion Tim wasn’t to be out done on the PB front and also landed a couple over the weekend including a 22lb 05oz and just to finish things off landed a new PB of 35lb 02oz. Nice angling. The one thing that I havn’t mentioned yet is that all of the fish caught have been heavily scaled or even fully scaled beauties that Horseshoe is famous for.

Over the weekend the Horseshoe carp really didn’t want to play ball and were very reluctant to put in an appearance on the bank. The full list of captures are as follows:

Mark Pearce, peg 56,mirrors of 19.12PB and 22.04PB
Glenn Close, the springs, mirrors of 20.04 15.04 and 14.02
Iain Chapman, peg 66, mirrors of 11.04 and 9.10
Neil Coombes, peg 7, mirror of 19.12
Stuart Buchanan, big double, mirrors of 17.12 and 14.4
Martin Vaughan, the split, mirrors of 23.02 and 13.06
Karl Goldsmith, peg 2, mirrors of 22.08
Dave Radley, peg 5, mirror of 12.08
Tim Coppin, the split, mirrors of 22.05 and 35.02PB
Jason Mottershead, the lagoon, mirrors of 15.09 and 14.13
Tom Mercer, winter point, miror of 18.10
Glen Pattison, winter point, mirrors of 21.10 and 19.04

There were also a number of Tench caught as well but the one name I haven’t included yet is of our only lady angler of the weekend. Sarah Hayward fished with her boyfriend Neil Coombes and were taught by angling coach Andrew Endeen. Sarah really wanted to go off stalking and do some float fishing but was sadly over-ruled by her boyfriend and instructor, and stayed in the swim learning about rigs and casting. However on the Sunday morning, Sarah sneaked off with yours truly and I took her to a little gap that I had cut out in the stock ponds the day before. Now nobody took up my invitation of fishing the stock ponds over the weekend so Sarah decided to come along with me and bag up. Fishing with float fished sweet corn over pellet next to a weed bed Sarah proceeded to hook into a number of fish landing four absolute stunning heavily-scaled Horseshoe crackers.

Thanks are due to Mistral Baits, Nash Tackle, Nash Bait and Korda as well as Wychwood and TFG who all gave generously for this event. All in all, another hugely successful event, one of the best we've run; great atmosphere, great food, lots of camerarderie. Thanks as always to all the instructors and helpers, without whom this event would not take place. We appreciate you all.