23 September, 2024 | Carp | Angler Blogs | Articles

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Andy Bradnock: Common Occurrences at Frimley Pits

Another magnificent diary instalment from Andy Bradnock who details the events of his last few months of fishing at Frimley Pits

Andy says…

After my session on the club lake in Kent it was time to complete my work party commitment on Frimley.

As per normal this involves me wrapped up in dive kit, descending into the murky depths of pit 3 and pulling up the invasive yellow lilies that grow abundantly in the lake.

Normally in my endeavours I am assisted by the other ‘wrong uns’ but this year, Adam had managed to book himself a week away in the French Alps, chucking himself down Alpine rivers in a wet suit and helmet.

We have gurning photos of him as he launched himself off a cliff face that confirm, without a shadow of doubt that he has more in common with a potato than a human. Andy was also otherwise engaged and as this was the only window of opportunity; the lake due to re-open the following week, I had to soldier on without them.

Mark the lake owner stepped in to be my boat man which meant that this year I was unlikely to get a dose of ‘pink eye’ because someone’s genitals had been smeared on the inside of my mask as soon as my back was turned!

We grafted for a few hours until I had used up all my gas and managed to shift tonnes of lilies without seeming to make that discernible a difference to the lakes surface. We are planning to have a rotation each year and try to clear a different area every time.

The visibility was horrendous this year. When you are under the water unless the lake is tap clear a few feet is all that you can see, in Frimley the visibility is a few inches at best, the lily stems are not visible until I swim into them.

This will seem strange to the bank bound angler as looking from the surface you can often see a few feet into the water. This is because you are looking from the surface in full light.

When under the water, the sediment and algae in the water have already filtered out a lot of the light. It’s like trying to look into the lake at twilight.

I am not sure how this knowledge can be used in an angling situation; I would suspect in anything other than crystal clear water, bait colour will make very little difference. Maybe it’s more important? A bright bait may be just about be visible. However, I think a major factor in these conditions is smell and taste rather than sight, especially at night.

Carp may have many super powers that confound us on a regular basis but night vision definitely isn’t one of them.

A few years ago, we had secured fishing rights on the lakes at Thorpe Park in Surrey. They consisted of 300 acres of prime virgin water split into three lakes joined together by wide channels, all with very different characters.

Fleet Lake was in the middle of the chain, 15-45 ft. deep and still being worked so was the colour of milky coffee. Come October, I decided to start on a baiting campaign and deposited huge volumes of bait on a 15ft mark, this was made easier due the fact we were allowed to use boats so it was just a matter of pouring buckets of bait over the side.

While performing this task, there were no birds on the lake apart from a couple of gulls and a few Mallards.

After a few weeks of baiting, I dropped in for a night for the first time. At around midnight I was woken by a liner and sat up looking across the lake’s surface towards the lights of the gravel works. The surface of the lake in front of me was covered in Tufties, what seemed like thousands of the blue-eyed demons all diving constantly over my baited spot.

In the middle of this maelstrom, I managed to catch a 10lb common after a screaming take on the middle rod. and this was the only carp I caught for all that effort.

There is no way those birds ever saw me baiting up or could see a bait in the water. The smell of the bait was therefore reaching the surface and the birds are able to detect this. As the carp are obviously immersed in the water, their sense of smell and taste sort of overlaps, their whole bodies are covered in smell and taste sensors.

I am sure they can smell and taste food from quite some distance away and this is far more important than the colour of a bait. I would also suggest that, if a carp is so smart after the 100 times they have been caught on a bright pop up why would they ever go near another one again? They will have eaten many thousands of simple bottom baits that have been thrown into lakes over many years without any negative experiences but, every time they pick up a pop-up they get hooked or at least they do if they cannot get rid of the rig…

After my diving exploits I missed the opening week back at the lake as I was changing a simple crankshaft position sensor on my wife’s car. This turned out to be a nightmare job which involved me having to take the gearbox and clutch out to reach the bloody thing. Annoyingly it doesn’t even seem to have cured the problem.

My first trip back was the following week and saw me plotted up in Henry’s at the top end of the lake. I had seen a couple spread out over the top end during my walk around. Once I had dropped the barrow, I had a sit and a watch from the front of the swim as it afforded a great view down the whole lake.

I saw a few shows in two general areas on the left hand side of the swim. I got two baits out as carefully as possible on these two spots and then waded the third down the tree line to probably the most consistent spot in the swim.

After an hour or so with the rods out, I had a strange lift shake type take on the tree line rod. It looked like a pike swimming through your mainline type take which, I have suffered many times while fishing here.

I connected with the fish and it zipped and turned all over the place really erratically but at least it appeared that I had actually had a take and hooked something. As I shortened the distance between me and fish, the feelings coming back through the rod became stranger by the second – eventually a 30cm long stick emerged from the water wrapped up in the 20lb nylon about 30ft from the leader.

The situation became a little tenser when it refused to drop off, even when I reeled it to the tip ring and once there it sportingly prevented me gaining any further line.

At this point the carp became visible and wasn’t very big, in fact I thought it may have been the same 13lber I have caught a couple of times already. It was on too long a line to net and when the fish decided to swim closer, all tension came out of the rod and the line went slack. At this point the fish decided I had been attached to it for long enough and promptly fell off.

To add insult to injury, the stick chose this moment to fall off into the lake leaving me to stand swear and get the right grumps.

The following morning I awoke to bobbins sat exactly where I had left them the night before. To emphasise the degree of inactivity I had suffered, an industrious spider had created a perfect web knitting together two of my lines.

It was with a despondent sigh at this sight I dragged myself up, made tea and sat watching for clues to the fish’s whereabouts, suspecting a move may be needed.

I was halfway through my second cup at 06.30am when the middle rod without any preamble just screamed into life, lifting the rod out of the buzzer as the marginal captive back lead dropped off.

I have been playing around with these trying to make them better this year. I have found a 6oz clock lead attached to the tether line means as soon as the mainline tightens, the clip releases pretty smoothly.

This does mean though that I am carrying around more lead than a church roof!

With rod in hand, I could feel that the fish had gone behind one of the small patches of lilies that litter the swim.

A hasty ingress into the chesties and I jumped (literally) into the margin and waded right to change the angle of pull. This ploy was successful and the fish rolled around the stems and swam into the open water in front of me.

After this, the fish was never more than 30m away but would it give in – not a bloody chance.

Every time it came within range it would surge and power away again. After thirty minutes I still hadn’t glimpsed the beast but it felt big and really angry when finally, it surfaced and wallowed enough for me to drag it over the net cord.

My shoulder was on fire and I needed a little sit down once it was all over, my usual celebration via the medium of interpretative dance had to be curtailed. As in the majority of cases at Frimley, I was now the proud owner of another common, having said that, they do look different to each other, this one being a glorious chestnut colour and a very blocky shape stretching the scales down to 32lb 1o0z.

Adam came down and joined me later that day and while chatting we got the news that the eel record had been broken by an absolute giant from a South Coast lake. The long term eel specialist that caught it is one of the most respected eel anglers in the country.

Adam and I have flirted with trying to catch big eels but it is astoundingly difficult and its protagonists swear an oath of never having sex and smelling like a 3 day dead badger, we therefore had to pass and continue to pursue the fickle beast that is a carp. A massive congratulations has to go to Steve Ricketts the captor for a remarkable feat of angling.

Adam dropped into Dead Hedge the first swim to my right but this is a fair distance down the bank separated from me by extensive lily beds.

Sadly at this point, the lake became really busy with a further 4 anglers turning up and filling all the swims available at the top end of the lake.

This death knell to the fishing was further enhanced when one angler deposited 3kg of boilies a few metres from Adam’s middle rod.

As expected, we all blanked for the remainder of my stay.

Angler pressure does seem to be the most significant factor on captures at Frimley Pits, you don’t want to be the only angler on the lake as they all disappear up the other end but when the lake is busy very little if anything gets caught. I was soon packed down and homeward bound knowing I would be unable to fish for another couple of weeks.

As soon as I managed to secure a fishing pass at home, I was heading to Frimley as fast as the crap traffic would allow.

It’s something like 30 miles from my door to the crossing and I am yet to manage the trip in either direction in less than 80 minutes.

I had decided to start this session in Fox Corner with the rods tucked into clever little spots involving some wading and poking.

The night was predictably quiet and the few fish I had seen in the area while setting up had drifted away. Across the base of the peninsular though, the story was very different as fish after fish jumped, sloshed and cavorted in the lawns. I started to move across to the lawns straight away but left the rods out until mid-morning in Fox Corner just in case something drifted into the area.

In the Lawns, the left and middle rods were cast over to the far bank then retrieved and quietly waded to their respective spots, then garnished with a good dollop of Dynamite’s finest ingredients dropped on top.

While I was doing this I found a female stag beetle floating in the water. She looked quite dead but I scooped her up and dropped her into the bucket of bait I was carrying.

Both rods were placed perfectly and I waded back to terra firma but I had forgotten about poor Mrs Beetle. It was a few hours later before I remembered the dramatic rescue.

On opening the bucket there she was fully revived and desperate to get out of the bucket that was half filled with ground-bait mix. I think it is probably a stretch to suggest that the mix of Frenzied Shrimp Extract and Fish Gutz is capable of re-incarnating the dead but that beetle was very much alive when I released her into the leaf litter.

Stag beetles are Britain’s largest beetle and rare, only really occurring in the south of the country. They spend most of their lives – up to 7 years as a larva eating rotten wood. They then pupate in soil hatching in May. They need a dry sandy soil to burrow into hence their limited range. The adults can fly and spend the rest of the summer mating and laying eggs. Sadly the adults don’t survive the winter.

After a few hours and the chance of a quick bite from the tree line had disappeared, I set about getting a bait into the area where the majority of the fish showed that morning. It turned out to be a clear silty strip surrounded by Sago weed.

This open water spot was baited with my usual mix of CompleX-T pellets, Swim Stim Margin Mix and Explosive Caster groundbait, Crab Extract, Krill Liquid, Fish Gutz and Frenzied Particles. This was balled up and put out with my usual lack of subtlety.

I had been perusing some dodgy web sites that discussed various catapult elastics. I managed to find one reference to a German company that makes tubular exercise elastic that they sell in long lengths. It turns out that this stuff is an amazing catapult elastic and I can now put ground-bait balls 50m really quickly and effortlessly.

The rest of the day and evening were quiet without a sign of a fish anywhere. As the light started to fade ripples were emanating from the tree line which I assumed to be ducks but with no sign of any feathered marauders I took a quick look behind the snags that it turned out, were full of fish.

It was 01.00am when I was dragged kicking and screaming from my bag when the Delkim on the tree line rod yelled at me in its usual insistent manner.

The fish came straight off the tree line and into the deeper, clear water in front of me – this gave me time to fight into my chesties and walk to the edge of the drop off.

Here stood up to my unmentionables in cold pond water, I spent the next 45 minutes locked in battle with a fish that refused to give in. It didn’t do anything exciting or unpredictable just a constant heavy weight that refused to be drawn up through the water.

I obviously need to spend more time in the gym as I have become a big girls blouse unable to bend my rod during a scrap.

I now know what it is like to be Adam – apart from looking disgusting and having no bowel control that is. Eventually after a plethora of fannying around I managed to bundle the 27lb 9oz common into the net. Photos were sorted and the bait put back onto the spot leaving me wide awake to enjoy the dawn chorus and that warm glow of success coursing through my veins.

The following week saw a real change to the lake.

The usually tea coloured waters of Frimley Pits had gone super clear with the bottom visible in 4ft of water.

If there was a climbable tree around the perimeter of the lake, for the first time since I started fishing there, it would have been useful being aloft. The first circuit of the lake involved me carefully checking all the accessible snags and holding areas without a single clue to the carp’s whereabouts.

It wasn’t until I reached Henry’s on my second circuit that the clarity of the water became really significant. A couple of rod lengths out, over a bright clear gravel area I could see newly turned over glows between little clumps of weed.

These hadn’t been visible on my first walk around, either because of how the sun was illuminating the area or because they had been formed in the last hour.

I sat and watched from the crook of a tree when the culprits arrived, a group of five fish that were clearly using this bit of bottom for an impromptu lunchtime snack.

A despondent sigh emanated from deep within me as yet again I knew I was in for another lung busting run back to the car, then a miserable push back with tonnes of bait and tackle before anyone else stumbled on these fish.

It is quite exciting and tense as well as miserable and exhausting in equal measures. I am just grateful that RMC decided to stop digging when the lake reached 10 acres, if that push was any longer my cold dead body would have been collected from the bushes.

I managed to stave off the first heart attack long enough to wade out a couple of paces and swing a rig in with a handful of bait accompanying it, onto the clear gravel strip. All this performed while the coast was clear and I left it as just the one rod fishing while I sat back to make tea.

It wasn’t until 19.00pm while I was thinking, I didn’t have much light left to get the other rods out that my patience was finally rewarded, the rod jumped on the rest accompanied by a screaming buzzer and line disappearing rapidly into the lake.

After a 10 minute scrap another common was declared mine – this one coming in at 20lb 3oz and was a lovely chocolate brown colour.

After this I got the rods sorted for the night ahead but the next 24-hours were a bleep free desert.

The following morning a couple of fish showed over on the far side in an area I knew was clean gravel so that evening, the left rod was re-positioned in this area and baited as usual.

Nothing happened overnight and through the early morning, not a sign of a fish in my area manifested itself.

I was sat in Stocking Feet watching the world go by thinking my race was run, contemplating a slow pack down when, just before 11.00pm the rod that had been repositioned to the far side leapt in the rests and due to the tight clutch, tried to dive into the lake.

The chesties were rolled down and sat next to the rods ready for a speedy ingress, I ran out in my socks grabbing the bucking rod as the fish desperately tried to take line from the screwed down clutch.

The significance of the socks wasn’t appreciated until I had the rod in hand and decided to climb into the chesties…

The swim is lined with lovely woodchip and numerous bits of this were stuck to my socks, these joined my feet as they were forced into the boots.

On dry land this was a bit uncomfortable but not catastrophic. Once I climbed into the lake, as the water compressed the waders around my feet this discomfort became a miserable amount of pain!

The fish yet again decided it wanted a real ruck as time after time it went on 20, 30, 40 metre runs in the lily choked top end of Pit 3.

This went on for ages – I have no idea what was making all the fish I had hooked this year fight so hard but at this point I really wished they would stop.

My feet were in agony by this stage and it felt like my shoulder was being slowly dragged from the socket it had called home for the last fifty odd years.

Finally, after what felt like hours but was probably 30 minutes, the fish surfaced facing away from me and rolled onto its back. It looked huge.

Sadly at this point it was nowhere near done and set off across the lake yet again.

I was almost in tears by now as my feet were in so much pain, all I could think of was the scenario where I would be recounting this fight after the inevitable loss saying, it was huge, fought for ages, tears etc.

I was now talking to it, screaming at it, yelling to the gods of the sea begging for this damned thing to just bloody well give in.

Eventually after another couple of episodes where it nearly went into the net but powered away at the last second, it sat still on the surface long enough for me to jab the net under it at full stretch and shake the bloody thing into the mesh.

I yelled B****ard at it and then hobbled out of the lake peeling the chesties off to groans of relief.

Once I had de-chipped my feet I was once again a mild-mannered carp loving angler, desperate to have a proper look at my hard-won prize. There in the folds of the net sat an awful lot of common carp, which turned out to be 39lb 10oz of pristine scale perfect, lovely shaped carp, I was overjoyed and apologised unreservedly to it for saying horrible things about its parentage.

So I was loving my fishing and on a roll of commons that was to continue for some time to come however, as I have waffled on for ages I will leave the next saga for another day.