Luke Vallory takes us back a few summers when a planned filming trip to the Quarry in Essex could not have gone any better.
It was midsummer and I had been fishing on the Quarry in Essex. It truly is a wonderful lake that holds everything that a carp angler could dream of. I had already caught a few nice fish on the odd session, but this trip had added pressure: the guys from Sticky were down to do some filming. This wasn’t something that I had done before, so behind my excitement and optimism, I was filled with nerves.
I did a quick overnighter before work a few days before the guys were due down and managed a couple of lovely looking fish, the biggest being a black looking mirror of just over 20lb.
Traffic
I returned a couple of days later and got back in the swim that had produced the fish for me. I was fishing a firm silty area in a body of water that the fish use a lot to travel from the islands to the shallows and weedy areas. In other words, there is always a lot of ‘traffic’ going through the swim, so I decided to give it to them.
I had never really filled it in, so to speak, but it felt right to do so. I filled a big 10kg bucket with a mixture of whole, halved and crushed Vor-Tex and Krill boilies, as well as a good mix of Bloodworm Pellets. To this I added a whole litre of Pure Krill Liquid and let it settle for 20 minutes before Spombing the lot out to the spot.
Wafter rig
I cast two rigs to the spot, one with a snowman and the other with a Krill wafter. The third rod was cast tight to an island at the bottom of the shelf. I attached a small stick to my little wafter rigs. I scattered a few freebies around the island rod, sat back and relaxed.
That evening I managed a nice, scaly mid-double mirror from the island rod, but I awoke the following morning having not even had so much as a liner during the night. I could make out the odd bubble over the spot in the morning, but nothing to tell me that I had made the right decision to put so much bait out…
Epic battle
Just as my doubts began to settle in, one of the rods fished on this area was away. A simply epic battle followed. It kited around to the next swim to my right where it weeded itself and I had to jump in the boat. Once above it, I got the fish moving – then I caught a glimpse of the carp’s tail and I knew what I had hooked. After a few more hairy moments, Joe did the honours with the net and I had landed the biggest fish in the lake! It was a mirror known as Shoulders and she weighed 37lb 2oz – what an incredible buzz! I was over the moon and, after a few pictures and a short piece to camera, she glided off back into her clear-water home.
Content
Amazingly enough, an hour or so later the island rod was away too. This was a fish known as Baby Raddish, another Quarry original. I was now content with my result; anything else would just be a bonus.
Fortunately for me, that wasn’t the end of it. Before I packed up the following day, the island rod was away again, this time a stunning 20lb mirror.
What a session!
