OVERNIGHTERS WITH OZ HOLNESS
12th July 2018
In the midst of moving house and with his wife having just undergone knee surgery, Oz Holness needed to be close to home but still wanted to get the rods out. A local syndicate lake provided him with the perfect solution, it was close to home and held some incredible looking carp, and in just two overnighters provided Oz with some excellent summer fishing.
During a quick catch-up this is what Oz told us: “Whilst walking the lake over the weekend period I saw a good fish show towards a quiet corner that I had fished in the past, I rushed home, prepped some bait and gathered my kit. When I returned to the lake at dusk I was fortunate in the sense that I already had notes of various spots and the general topography of the water in front of me.
I decided to target a sandy spot at the back of a bar that was surrounded with eelgrass and onion-weed, here I positioned Krill food-bait wafters on my faithful amnesia D-rigs tied with Thinking Anglers Straight Eye hooks and Hook Ring-Swivels. The bait the rigs were then positioned over consisted of 12mm Krill Freezer boilies and Ellipse Pellets that I soaked in Pure Tuna and Cloudy Krill Liquid, followed by a dusting of GLM Extract.
The liners started around 3am and at first light the area was fizzing up nicely with the odd carp poking his head out behind the spot. The first rod was away just as I was having my breakfast at around 7 am. A wild battle ensued with the fish bow waving around, savagely kiting in the shallow water where he managed to take me under the branches of two large willow trees. Fortunately, the hook-held firm and he was mine!
With the fish secured in the net I quickly unhooked him and got a fresh rig on just as my friend Rob Beckett turned up for an early morning tea, but before I could get the kettle on, the second rod was firing off. With rob on hand to help with the netting, we eventually managed to land the second fish of the morning, an ancient and rare fully scaled mirror.
I put out a couple of kilos of Krill, along with a few good handfuls of Bloodworm Pellets mixed with The Krill Clusters scattered around the area.
Unbelievably, before I had even climbed out of the shallow margins to sort things out, the third rod was ramping off and the take was so savage it nearly flattened my bank sticks! Another wild, shallow water battle commenced until an incredibly long mirror with a ridiculously long dorsal and a massive paddle surfaced before our eyes, It was of course old Big Pecs, a really old character of a mirror at almost 4 ft long. Eventually after an insane bid for freedom, he went in the net and Rob stood in the bath tub warm water looking after my net with well over 90lb of carp waiting to be sorted out! It was mayhem, such an incredible spell of intense feeding activity for what is usually a tricky old pond! With a few snaps done and the fish safely returned, I baited with another bucket of the Krill mix before heading home.
I returned 36 hours later in the cool of the evening and flicked the rods out onto the pre-baited spots. A top up of 3kg was soon spombed out over the rigs before I settled in for the night full of confidence for the following dawn. By 6 am fish were visibly bow waving in towards the spot and big sets of bubbles rose to the surface in the flat calm conditions. As the first breeze of the day picked up the first take came, a lovely long, chestnut mirror with deep-set scales and a look of age about him. My good friend Liam Fagg was soon on hand to do the shots, and over a few cups of tea we saw a number of carp show over the baited zone. Shortly before Liam had to leave for work, a rod fired off for the second time that morning and a lovely broken linear finished off a really perfect couple of nights angling amidst a July heatwave.
