Baden Bites; September 2009 Middle Pool

This month I thought I’d look at my favourite pool on Baden Hall; the Middle Lake. Covering roughly ten acres and holding more than 60 comfortable pegs it’s a well established, picturesque place to while away a few hours hoping to bank a few fish. Depths between 2 and 14 feet mean that it will produce all year round so it’s an outstanding venue when others fail to give up any fish. What’s in it? Bream, large and small, up to around 8lbs, with LOTS of skimmers too. Roach, I’ve seen them out to about 1 ½ lbs, but they are rumoured to go much bigger. Carp; big fish up to 25lbs, guaranteed to get nasty when you hook them! Loads of smaller carp as well, so year round sport is assured. There are Perch in here too, but I’ve seen only smaller specimens caught up to 8ozs; are there bigger ones? I’m told that the pool also contains Chub, although I’ve yet to see any.

1. Clint Walker shows off a typical ‘Baden Battler’!

I’ve spent many hours on this lake, in the shallows near the road, on the deepest water in the bays and on most of the pegs in between. I’ve fished into the wind, off the back of the wind, in the rain, the sun and the snow and I still haven’t unlocked its secrets! I am however, fairly confident that on any given day I can pick up a few fish by being prepared to work at it and change things if necessary. This is something that you should be prepared to do to get the most enjoyment from Middle Lake.

Many anglers target the carp. A few different methods are very successful and I’d like to consider some of them here. Firstly, and one of the most popular, is to surface fish using bread or dog biscuits. I have to admit that this can be one of the more selective ways to aim at the bigger fish, and it’s also fairly easy to master. The basic idea is to present a floating bait amongst ‘free offerings’ so that it gets taken by the unwary fish. Bread, imitation and real dog biscuits or even cork balls can all be used as a hook bait. By taking some time to get the carp feeding confidently before even casting to them can bring huge rewards. If you put in enough bait, the fish become competitive, knocking each other out of the way to get to the food; if you then put a hook bait out, the chances are it will get snaffled within seconds!

I prefer to use a cork ball placed in the midst of dog biscuits. If the cork is split with a knife part way through, then the hook can be superglued into the slot. This means that the bait is immune to the attentions of smaller fish, but will stay on the hook when a larger carp takes it. Imitation biscuits which are weighted to make certain the hook is on top of the bait and therefore cannot be seen by a fish as it rises are also a highly effective tactic.
Good old bread, with the hook passed through the crust and then lowered onto the fish takes some beating; all Dads remember starting out with a bit of bread in the days before plastic baits and biscuits. It worked in ‘olden days’, and is still as valuable now.
It is a good idea to make sure that your line also floats to prevent it hanging down in the water to spook fish as they approach. The best way to do this is run your fingers through Mucilin or Vaseline, then rub them up the line to coat it. This prevents the line breaking the surface tension of the water and keeps it floating. Once you get it right, surface fishing is probably one of the most exciting forms of carping!

2. Floating bait rig

Boilies; thought by some to be the only carp bait worth having....fished hard on the bottom with a rig so technical you have to be a scientist to understand what is going on. Do they work on Baden? I have no doubt that they do, but I much prefer to keep things simple. A hair rigged chunk of meat or a pellet can often out fish any boiled bait. I fished off pegs 51 using meat and took three fish to 11lbs (not huge I know) within 30 minutes. By fishing over a small, tight bed of bait, the meat was picked up almost immediately whilst other anglers struggled on boilies. One of the most important things on Middle lake is to try and fish INTO the wind, especially if it’s pushing into the shallows. This area warms up quickly during sunny periods and the carp flood into it. Keep an eye on what other anglers are catching on; Middle pool changes on a daily basis, some days the fish only take meat, on others only corn. Fishing peg 29, I was not even getting line bites until I noticed someone catching bream on pellets. Splitting an 18mm halibut pellet and hair rigging it with a PVA mesh bag of broken pellets resulted in six fish over the next hour or two. Again, others caught the odd fish or none at all. The point I’m trying to make is that if you are prepared to move onto showing fish, change baits and rigs as often as needed then you will catch fish.

Boilies can be an extremely good way to avoid the attention of smaller fish. Using a stiff hooklink, makes taking the bait a bit more of a mouthful for anything but larger carp. A ‘helicopter’ rig also prevents tangles and keeps everything pinned down on the lake bed. Carp will struggle to eject this rig, so it’s definitely worth a try.

3. Simple ‘helicopter’ rig

A semi fixed rig consisting of a short hook length and PVA mesh bag filled with broken baits is another great approach. Accounting for large numbers of fish every week, it is probably one of the most common rigs used on Middle pool. By using one of a variety of available types of hook link materials, there are loads of different ways to trip up unsuspecting carp.

4. Semi fixed combi link, pellet bait and PVA bag

The weather has a great effect on how this pool fishes. On warm, bright days, it’s almost pointless trying a bottom bait and when a cold wind is on the water, a surface bait is useless. The conditions can change by the minute at Baden, rain or shine, wind or snow, it gets the lot. It all adds to the fun though!

Its a smashing place to bring youngsters to catch their first big fish. I spoke to 11 year old Matthew Jackman who had come with his Mum (she brought her laptop!). Matt is a local lad who fishes at Baden Hall as much as he can. He showed me his approach, and gave me the benefit of his extensive knowledge to tell me about his fishing; (I’m not too humble to listen to younger anglers, they have more time to get onto the bank during holidays, so are often better placed for the latest news and they may know more than me anyway!) during the recent night fishing weekend, he and his Dad had shared multiple fish using his favourite ‘Fusion’ boilies, sweetcorn or dog biscuits.

Nice to see that the younger anglers are catching fish and thinking about the best ways improve their catch rates.

Finally, a quick word about groundbait....Bream go mad for it. If you want to catch them, then ball it in. Carp will eventually bully them off it, but small PVA bags of broken baits outscore beds of bait every time in my limited experience.

To finish, this is only the way I fish the Middle pool. Other anglers will give other advice, but I’ve always done well using the methods I’ve described. Fishing is about trying to find the right approach on the right day in the right place; do that and you’ll have a fantastic day!

See you on the bank, tight lines!

Clint Walker
September 2009

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Baden Bites; September 2009 Middle Pool

Phil Wain