Week 6 summary.

A week that started warm and sunny finished up wet and cold and with the carp still spawning the catches have gradually tailed off with last night failing to produce a single fish. Lots of thrashing around in the shallows could be heard over night as the carp continued with their spawning and we will wait and see whether the cooler weather will put a halt to their activities. As a week it was surprisingly good with the lads managing to bank 31 carp and a solitary sturgeon including a brace of 50lb+ commons and a further 14 carp over the 40lb mark. Darren had a good bag of 14 carp from the shallows and Pete had 4 carp from ‘Middle Ground’ for a total weight of over 200lb (52lb common, 51lb 8oz common, 48lb 12oz mirror and 48lb mirror). All the other lads (except poor old Paul) managed 40lb+ fish and although the fishing was never easy I feel that the result was very good considering that for much of the week we had carp spawning merrily away.

One aspect of this year is that up to now we are seeing a great many of our carp in the 45lb+ bracket and with eight of the fifties being new to that weight I feel that 2013 is going to be a rather special year for us. My ambition has always been to have a fishery that offers every angler a good chance of a 40lb+ carp with a realistic chance of a 50 and I believe that we have now reached that stage in the development of LMDM. It will be interesting to see how the known big fish have prospered and having seen such sustained growth in the rest of the stock I am anticipating several new 60lb+ carp to be showing up in catches this year. Our old friend ‘Saddleback’ has yet to show up and although I am fearing the worst for the girl we may be surprised and see her back to her best when she is eventually banked. A sustained spell of warm weather would now be very welcome but the forecast is for much cooler weather this week gradually warming up from Thursday onwards so with carp still spawning I am not expecting any fireworks this week. Knowing my track record at predictions it will more than likely turn out to be a blinding week !!

Totals for this year up to the end of week 6 are as follows.

50lb+ carp – 11 (up to 59lb 8oz)

40lb – 50lb carp – 50 (More than half over 45lb)

30lb – 40lb carp – 47

20lb – 30lb carp – 20

Doubles – 6

Singles – 3

Lippy (Mark) and his 46lb mirror missed out from the last spread of pics.