As we arrived at the lake and saw 1 corner was Frozen solid we had mixed doubts, from that point we didn’t know what to expect. However we unloaded all of our gear and walked around the lake. Looking at each swim and scouring the lake looking for signs of fish, there was nothing showing at all! Oh god what have we got into here were the thoughts.

We decided to fish the far end of the lake, there was no one else fishing and the area we chose just looked like a good spot. We had open water in front of us where we could cast to the middle but we also had our own bay each.

We set up all of our rods and got them cast out, we were both fishing with two rods on chod rigs with a chopped down Nash Fluoro Scopex Pop-Ups and we surrounded the Pop-Up with small amounts of boilies and a small amount of spod mix.

About an hour into the session the Bailiff (Chris) came around. He was a friendly guy and gave us a lot of good advice, what bait is best on here where to fish etc. He mentioned that smack bang out in front of us at about 40 - 50 yards there was a gravel bar, we both smiled and said that’s our spot, Chris the bailiff also told us that the carp in his lake love boilies.

As the session went on we both decided to load that gravel bar with boilies and have our Fluoro Pop-Up smack bang in the middle of those boilies. As we had done this Chris re-cast one of his rods and within two minutes of the cast his rod went screaming off, he began to play the carp in front over to us and the fish came to the surface. I netted it and we had it on the scales at 19lb 3oz.

However the action didn’t stop there, as I was photographing Chris with the superb carp his other rod went off. This one weighed 17lb 4oz's, we were very pleased, all I was thinking was I hope mine go too!

By this time 3 other people were fishing the lake out in the middle where it is 12ft deep, it got to around half 12 and I was just baiting up a marginal spot when I heard my right hand rod go off!! I picked it up and I was finally unto my first carp of 2010 BUZZING! Chris netted the fish for me as I was shaking at the knees loving every minute of it, we weighed the carp at 17lbs bang on.

For the rest of the session we had a few line bites but nothing else really, we left the lake around 5pm and we left two happy carpers. We will be going to The Old Mill Lakes most weekends for a while now as we are both aiming to catch a 30lb carp that is in the lake.

Oliver and Chris Dumville