TIPS FOR FISHING AT TRENT VIEW
Words by Loz East available for tuition at Trent View
The most common mistake some anglers make when they fish the lake is they subconsciously think because they can fish up to 120 yards in certain pegs they have to cast to the moon, when in reality, they’re casting over 95% of the fish. The further out you go the deeper the lake generally gets especially in the central bowl area of the lake and during this time of year when the pressure is up and down and conditions are changing why make things more difficult for yourself? In my experience you’re better fishing at a distance that is comfortable for you to reach where you can fish effectively and efficiently constantly then pushing yourself to your limit. Its ok been able to hit 120 yards but if conditions change and you can’t get back out there, what are you going to do? Ill be truthful I very rarely cast more than 15 wraps on Trent View and that goes for every single peg on the lake.
Another common mistake is not giving the fish enough bait, there’s approximately 2500 carp in the lake all the way to over 40lb! The way I often explain it is look at Linear Fisheries B1 and B2, they have roughly the same amount of carp in the lake as Trent View and we all know the quantity of bait that goes into that venue, you can spend hours spodding only for them to wipe you out in a matter of hours. The fishery has a ridiculous amount of twenty pound plus fish in the venue now, a big shoal of big fish can wipe you out in an instance and when you get a bite how do you know it wasn’t feeding with fifty or even a hundred other fish? In my opinion and experience on the lake unless you land on fish during early Spring or get adjustable zigs absolutely perfectly you aren’t going to build a huge haul of fish on ten pounds worth of bait. Bait doesn’t have to cost the earth, in fact, I had two sacks of Trent View pellets from Ian and because I was with five tutorial clients for my trip, I had 25 kilo of bait with me for the week. We approximately used one kilo of bait per fish.
During the beginning of the session we had high pressure and clear skies and in my experience the lake never really fishes great during the day time hours in these conditions and over the first few days I noticed a pattern of very few carp getting caught. The action in peg 47 heated up during the hours of darkness, in fact, the majority of fish were showing in front of pegs 46,45,44 and 43 during the day time but as soon as dusk came you could see the fish making their way back down to our end of the lake. Over the course of the session we adopted a plan, give them a big hit of bait during the day and leave the rods out the water, why put unnecessary angling pressure in the swim if nothing is happening, you may as well give them an area of the lake to move into within bumping into lines. We had all our solid bags ready to go and just before it got dark we got them in position which consequently meant everything was settled just before the fish turned up in front of us. Because bite time now became obvious, we made an agreement to work hard through the night, making sure we fished with two rods each and a rod clipped up ready to go for when we landed a fish as oppose to putting extra lines in the water. We were baiting up after every single fish to make sure we always had bait in the swim so that the fish didn’t move off to the next patch of bait because there was nothing left. Yes, this style of angling is tiring but why sit all day without action to not make the most of bite time.
Towards the end of the week we started getting the odd first light bite which eventually turned into a flurry of action here and there during the day but the pressure dramatically reduced to 990 and we had some serious rain come in which in turn turned the fish on and changed their feeding habits. Trent View has lots of catchable carp and if you’re prepared to work the swim and make changes you can catch them consistently. Its about doing the basics better than the angler in the next peg,
making sure you have everything prepared, making sure you have plenty of rigs tied, making sure you have bait ready to go. Ill also mention something that may help you during your session, at the beginning of the week we were catching on orange and white hookbaits and towards the end of the week we were catching on pink and yellow. That can be the difference between catching lots of carp and the odd one here and there. You aren’t always going to catch, to be honest, I did a 24 hour session the week before and blanked, that’s carp fishing. Do the basics right and think about it and you can turn your session into a red letter one.
