11 July, 2023 | Carp | Angler Blogs | Articles

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Adam Whittington: Frimley Pit 3 Success

If you follow our Instagram page you’ll be well up to date with Adam Whittington’s success on Frimley Pit 3 this season. Below, he takes us through the captures of some truly special fish alongside the bait and tactics behind them…

Adam says…

Creeping Round the Edge

Proper old gravel pits are full of the good stuff – snaggy corners, shady places hard to reach and often full of carp and secrets. My pursuit of Pit Three giants varies between spombing out banquets of goodies, to remote gravel seams and silty gullies, and sneaking about the margins looking for clues. It feels like some carp I buy, with a generous gift of bait and other carp I steal, nicking them from the darkest corners.

Last month found me coming to the end of a very tough session fishing against a tree line. Aside from the attentions of a hard fighting seven pound male tench, all was quiet and, whilst my spent tea bag pyramid continued to grow ever more impressive, I was losing hope for a successful session. I’d done my two nights and needed to be on the road in a few hours.

I wandered down my margin, deep under the canopy of the trees and spent a few minutes watching for the slightest clue. A small stand of lilies grew in this area and I noticed some of the smaller leaves seemed to be doing lazy circles as something had caused a vortex underneath.

I had no idea whether this was a carp, pike or tench that moved the water, but it was something I wasn’t going to ignore. A small solid bag was shipped quietly down my margins as close as I dared to the underwater jungle behind the lilies and, if I’m honest, I went another foot after that. The bag was packed with crumbed CompleX-T, heavily soaked in Shrimp Extract as always and a single naked tiger nut was the hookbait.

Trap set, brew on and all is peaceful. Minutes later it happened – no preamble, no gentle warning with few polite beeps before it goes, just wacked round and tore off against a very tight clutch. Tea and dignity discarded, I began another game of swearing pilates as the rod creaked in my hands.

The fish was already through a set of recently emerged pads, which pulled under completely then one by one popped to the surface, decapitated by the straining line. The mad common rolled noisily, then continued to charge about committing lily genocide whilst I just hung on, cursing, grunting and farting in equal measures until over the cord it went. There is a disproportionate number of commons to mirrors in Pit Three, so mirrors always feel special, but the commons are almost always things of beauty and generally big old fish. This was both, and the photos were taken with the exact spot it was caught just visible over my left shoulder.

A few weeks later, the weather had warmed considerably and the lake reopened after a break to allow for the annual spawning festival. I once again turned my thoughts to finding them in the margins and found myself in a beautiful bay, rich with lily pads, snags and a huge amount of potential spots to lay traps. Three spots were chosen and now the key was to cast to them as quietly and economically as possible.

I waded the first rod out twenty yards in order to get the angle for a cast into a cave like opening in the dense tree line. A solid bag needed punching in at a low trajectory, then feathered at the last second to lay it down gently. The bag itself carved a path through the last few leaves and settled. The foam nugget popped up with a ripple, and I said to nobody in particular, ‘that’s a bite’. Rods two and three thankfully followed the same pattern – wade out to cut the distance down and create the best angles, just one cast each and peace returns.

I wanted to be as subtle as possible baiting up as it was all tight marginal work, so I carefully fashioned a path through the waist high brambles and crouched low next to the waters edge. I could then gently throw my bait above the leafy canopy, so the bait pattered down lightly through the leaves like rain. These margin spots invariably seem to fish better in the daylight hours, whereas the open water/baited patch approach seems to attract more bites after dark. Frenzied Hemp, Crushed Tigers, Robin Red and Betaine pellets and disced CompleX-T boilies making up my feast of choice.

After only twenty minutes or so spent reclined in my chest waders, delicately baking the old plums, that first rod pulled round at a savage angle due to the locked up reel. One step backwards and I held on tight with a low rod tip, as the fish boiled a few times close to the lilies. Again, swearing seems to help and my barrage of filth helped turn the fish away from the danger and out towards the open water. The famous old pit three leather rolled into my net a few minutes later and was slipped back after a few quick snaps. I won’t include the photo as Andy Camo included a fabulous photo of it in his latest article on this site.

The recast wasn’t half as seamless as my previous attempt and I was cursing my ineptitude as the fifth attempt finally dropped into the black hole of plenty amongst the branches. It was at this point that I considered a move, grumpily telling myself that my ham fisted approach had spooked everything from the bay. A sizeable nose poked out near my right hand spot some minutes later, so I pulled on my big boy pants and got over it, knowing there was still a chance.

Some chance it was as well – once again a tip curved round, locked solid in the rests. This fish made determined efforts to reach sanctuary and then thankfully changed tack, preferring to plod around in the deep water at the mouth of the bay. Some minutes later, an awful lot of common carp rolled into the net.

I left the fish to rest in the net for a few minutes and borrowed a couple of anglers who were floater fishing the lake next door to help with fish care and photos. This turned out to be a magnificent common known as Split Scale at a spawned out weight of 41lb 14oz.

The remainder of the evening was a bit of a blur, partially due to the post catch euphoria, round of phone calls and the like, but also due to Kronenbourg. Like many evenings, it fell very still with bats and mozzies engaged in life or death dogfights above the flat calm surface, dimpled only slightly by tiny roach fry and ever vigilant pond skaters.

Dawn broke after a silent night and the carp had read the script, waiting until my second cup of tea was done before my hitherto untouched left hand rod bent round and I lifted into it watching the back-lead slide down the zip-wire of my line towards the large area of disturbed water just off the tree line. A clumsy donning of the chesties followed and soon I wallowed out and met the carp in the middle of the bay. Another mirror, it’s a bloody miracle! This one was a long, lean fish with a linear row of tiny scales along its flank. Twenty eight something from memory and a great one for the album.

I was due to pack up at lunchtime, having to get on with the drudgery of real life, and was sat reflecting that a three fish catch is a proper result on here these days, particularly with two mirrors amongst them, when my right hand rod pulled tight and I was once again hooked up to an angry carp. I had to hold this one back repeatedly from a set of pads in the middle of the bay, causing it to roll on the surface as I clamped down – once again, I saw unmistakable mirror scaling in the late morning sun. And so it proved to be, a truly special mid twenty I’d never seen pictures of before and a fitting end to a memorable time stealing them out of the edge in the Blackwater Valley.