Confessions of a Rainbow virgin - day 3.

Well I’m three nights into my eight night session and neither myself or Tim have managed to open our accounts. I had a weird occurrence yesterday morning when my rod tipped slammed down the alarm went mental and I struck what I thought was a take. Immediately the braid fell limp and my heart sank when I realised I’d been cut off. Later that morning I went out to the spot in the boat and dragged the it to see if the terminal gear was still down there. I was still unsure whether it had been a pick-up or whether one of the resident coypu had taken a liking to my line entering the water and had bitten it off! Either way I was a gutted – I’d said at the start of the trip that I wanted a bite…well I’d had one and now I wanted a fish! 

The prodding stick has been invaluable to find the hard spots.

The remainder of the day passed quickly and I managed to capture the early-morning sunrise and also the burning end-of-day when the sun quickly disappeared behind the trees directly in front of Tim’s swim. In short not much happened so it was a case of re-doing the rods and sitting on our hands waiting for the fish to arrive, which they hadn’t as yet! Tactically I’ve decided to not go mad with the bait as the guys who we followed into the swim hadn’t experienced a prolific week – perhaps three or so fished hooked.

Kebab anyone? Tigers and an Enterprise Immortal in the middle.

Tiger nuts seemed to be on the wanted list for hookbaits so I edged my bets and ‘tigered up’ on two rods and fished boilie on the other two with a mixture of oily hemp, pellets, crushed tigers and mixed-sized boilies in the mix I introduced over the top. Prior to the trip I’d been advised to go easy with the bait and to only introduce a pint of bait over each rod – that’d I’d done, plus a small scattering (for good luck) in the general area around where I was dropping the rigs. 

My remaining bait all labelled up and rationed for use each day.

 There have been several fish caught around the lake with the biggest reported so far being 67lb, a true monster, but not massive by Rainbow standards. So there you have it, the search for a carp continues from what really is the most incredible carp lake I’ve ever visited! Until tomorrow, Jerry. 

The view from Tim's swim as the sun sets on another late-November day.