Thoughts from swim No.4 by Pat Gillet & Paul Cooper, April 2008

I’m not going to cover the journey or the lake and it’s facilities in great detail as this is something that Paul Cooper went into in great depth in his 2007 article on Long Lake. Paul also described in detail his approach to tackling the venue (spodding etc) so this is something else I won’t be repeating as this can all be found on the venues ‘articles’ page on this website. What I have written about, as someone who hadn’t seen the venue before, is my thoughts and impressions of the lake.

The first thing that struck me on arrival at Long Lake was that the French owner Bruno was obviously putting a lot of effort into developing the venue, as you could see fresh gravel and marl had been dropped into all the swims to make them more suited for bivvy style accommodation. The lake had seen high water levels during the winter and spring, so the use of this gravel and marl was a great way to make the swims more comfortable. You could also see a number of young trees ‘dotting’ the perimeter of the venue which will look great as they mature.

Paul had booked swims 3 and 4 for our week, after being informed by Angling Lines that swims 5,6,8 and 9 had been booked by a party of English anglers. The idea behind booking 3 and 4 was that they were close together so we could have a sociable week and would be ideal to share with the cooking etc. Also Paul had fished the swim 3 area last year and banked 50 odd carp in the week.

After a quick tour of the lake we had a bit of a look at our swims and were pleased that the water level would not cause us any problems at all. Paul quickly decided on swim 3 which left me with swim 4. After closer inspection of swim 4 I favoured a move to swim 2, but on talking to Bruno this was ruled out has there was a party of Belgium anglers due later in the week and this was one of the swims they had booked. The reason I would have moved were two fold:

1: I would have anglers fishing either side of me, which is never ideal has it means fish travelling into the swim from both left or right can be intercepted before they can get to you. (This is something worth thinking about when you book a swim on any lake, as it is the other anglers as well as the carp that you are competing against).

2: The area of the lake where swim 4 is, is by far the narrowest area on the lake. This might lead to problems later in the week if the swims opposite (10 & 11) became occupied.

So swim 4 was to be my home for the week. I put the bivvy up and set the marker float rod up to ascertain the depths and the make up of the lake bed that I had in front of me.

View from swim no.4

After about an hour with the marker float, I had found an area which was approximately 10 to 15 feet on my side of the ‘end of swim marker’, which sloped (left to right) from 12 to 14 feet deep. I decided to concentrate on the 12 foot deep area and marked three rods up to fish this area. A couple of relaxing beers with Paul and I turned in early for the night to try and catch up on a nights missed sleep. I very rarely fish the first night, as I believe you are too tired to think straight. Paul had left his rods in and had taken a large bream at around midnight and a carp at first light.

After two days of warm prolonged sunshine Monday arrived with a significant drop in temperature and with strong winds and heavy rain. This weather was to stay with us for the next four days and the temperature never went above 12 degrees centigrade.

By Monday lunchtime I had only had one fish, a common of 26lb 8oz, whilst Paul had, had about a dozen fish. I needed to do something different has my swim just wasn’t working for me. I reeled all the rods in and went about some more serious marker rod work. (See the Quest Baits website for articles on marker float fishing).

The lakebed in swim no.4 resembled an ‘egg box’ with peaks and troughs all over the place. I did find an interesting feature only about 15 feet back from my original mark. Here the depth was about 10 ½ feet deep for an area of about 12 feet wide. Being as everywhere else in the swim was a fair bit deeper (up to 20 feet deep) I decided to concentrate on this area and marked up three rods plus the spod rod accordingly. I spodded out 20 spodfulls of hemp, pellet and broken boilies to the new area and waited. I also spread some Quest Baits Rahja Spice Shelf Life 15mm & 20mm boilies into the swim via a catapult.

Monday night produced 5 fish (all doubles), so the change had worked. The same pattern continued for the next couple of days with me only picking up the odd fish or two in daylight whilst Paul was bagging up in the daytime. There were fish crashing throughout the daylight hours in the bay between swims 11 & 12 and Paul being opposite this was taking full advantage with his accurate casting and spodding, drawing, stopping and holding the fish in his swim. My swim then came to life during darkness. Being as darkness was only about 8 hours this was a relatively short feeding period and so I was never going to compete with Paul’s catch rate but I was catching enough to keep me interested.

The only other area where fish showed consistently during the daylight hours for the first two days was in front of swim 7. There were a lot of fish in this area (‘on the wind’) but nobody fished it until Wednesday.

My first fish of the week	Paul’s biggest of the week at 28lb 2oz

By lunchtime on Wednesday I had taken 16 carp and was feeling pretty positive of a good catch by the end of the week. Then ‘Team Belgium’ arrived and occupied pegs 1,2,7,10 and 11.

My worst fears materialised about swim 4 when two Belgium anglers ‘doubled up’ on swim 10 and two ‘doubled up’ on swim 11.The two anglers on swim 10 promptly despatched bait boats full of pellet etc to the very limit of their swims which meant I had at least another six rods just 10 yards away from my consistently baited area. This was obviously going to have a major effect on my catch rate, and so it proved as I took only 4 more carp over the next two nights. I did try other spots and different depths but to no avail, as the same spot kept on producing.

 

Swim No.10	View looking down the lake to swim No.7

The Belgium guy fishing from swim 11 caught straight away even with very limited baiting (which proved once again where most of the carp were held up during the daytime). Although it was noticeable that by Friday with the extra noise and pressure on this end of the lake the fish had moved and become more widespread. For the first time during the week there were numbers of fish moving in front of me and to my left in front of swims 5 and 6. This resulted in me bagging another 3 carp on Friday afternoon before packing up for the week at 8pm. With this movement of fish Paul’s swim now became a lot quieter and I believe he only took one carp on the Friday. During this period the anglers opposite to me on peg 10 did not pick up any fish at all, which may suggest that spodding and creating a larger bed of bait is far more effective than simply sending out a bait boat at this venue.

Conclusions

Long Lake is a nice looking venue that is obviously seeing a lot of work and effort in it’s development from Bruno the owner and once it has ‘grown up’ in the next few seasons it will be a beautiful water.

The fish although not massive are numerous and all appear to be in excellent condition. They also fight really well in the deep water (13 foot) under the rod tips.

By careful and accurate plumbing and feeding it is possible to find feeding spots that are not given away by ‘rolling’ fish etc. By doing this I managed to catch 23 fish to 26lb 8oz over the week (would have been a fair few more if I had fished the first and last nights), whereas Paul who caught more or less from the start and consistently during daylight finished with about 49 fish to 28lb +.

Accurate bait placement and feeding is the key (see Paul Cooper’s 2007 article on Long Lake). Even though I had seen virtually no fish ‘roll’ in my swim until Friday, a small change in depth and area fished brought my swim to life.

My neighbour on peg 5	Paul relaxing on Friday after a busy week

Our fish averaged mid to high doubles and I would say that 90% of them were immaculately conditioned commons. I tried different rigs but found that nothing more than a simple 10” long fluorocarbon hook length with a soft hair was required.

Bait wise I spodded hemp, pellet and broken boilies and fed a mixture of 15mm and 20mm Quest Baits Rahja Spice Shelf Life boilies. The swim was kept topped up after every fish (even if it meant spodding in the dark), to try and keep the fish in the area for longer.

It was noticeable during our stay that the fish preferred 20mm bottom baits far more than anything else. In fact despite trying other set-ups such as pop-ups and snow man rigs, all bar one of my fish fell to a 20mm Rahja Spice bottom bait which was fished without a P.V.A stringer or bag. I know that Paul found pretty much the same and had most of his success on 20mm Rahja Spice or 20mm Liver B8 bottom baits.

My last fish of the week at 24lb+	Paul with a nice twilight caught 20lb+

 

It was also noticeable that although I didn’t catch many fish in the daylight hours, the fish that I did catch were my biggest of the trip. In fact apart from one mirror of just over 20lb all the fish I caught in the dark were doubles. I believe also that the few fish Paul caught in the dark were only doubles.

The facilities are more than acceptable for a fishing venue with good showers and toilets and two fridges and a decent cooker to be shared by any visiting anglers, all of which were in good clean condition prior to our arrival. So if you are looking for a lake with a lot of hard fighting commons that can give good sport then Long Lake may well be worth a go.

Cheers,
Pat