Me and my mate Dean Bishop and his brother Lee set out at nine o'clock on this sunny Tuesday morning to go catch ourselves some carp at Thorpe Lea. Dean and I had fished at Thorpe Lea a few times before and had some success both day and night, but Deans brother Lee had never caught a carp before. So we were determinded to get Lee a nice big fish to tickle his taste buds !

We looked around the lake and saw that the wind was blowing towards the other side of the lake, and we also saw fish jumping and rolling on that side. So we set off to find ourselves a swim. Dean and I had discussed tactics the night before and decided to use an inline weight and sink tubing with a hair rigged "ocean fresh" Pineapple boilie which had been recomended before. We thought it was wise to use a single boilie, firstly because it is what they are used to seeing and secondly because they tend to scream off and try to dump the hook. We figured there is more chance of keeping the fish with a shorter hair and single boilie. So we cast the rods at quite short range, baited with a few pellets and boilies and settled down.

It was just coming up to half eleven and we were just about to bring the rods in to to rebait and check the rigs when my rod went screaming off and I was into my first fish. After a long hard fight I finally got its head up and into the net went a ten and a half pound mirror. LOVELY ! Throughout the late morning and early afternoon it seemed to be getting increasingly hot, and everything went quiet. It was at four o'clock that everything started to pick up. I think we needed it after four hours of sitting in the heat! Lee seemed to be getting bored so we really put our minds to it and thought about how we were going to get Lee his first carp. We decided to stick to the normal tactics and hope things picked up. Moving was not an option now as every swim had been taken lol. So we sat waiting and at quarter past five, both mine and Deans rods decided to scream off. Dean left me to land my fish as he let Lee hook and play his first carp. I landed my carp quite quickly and it weighed in at ten pounds, another double figure fish, then slipped him back. When I got to Dean and Lee [who had a huge smile plastered across his face] I saw a nice mirror sitting in the bottom of the net, when I asked Lee how he felt he couldnt speak lol. He landed a great first carp weighing in at ten pounds.

After all those moments of madness and confusion, we decided to chill out and relax for the remaining hour. But I was interrupted to hook into a seven and a half pound mirror that fought like hell! So all in all, I landed three decent fish, Lee caught a great first fish and a smashing PB and Dean went home feeling proud of helping Lee with his fish!

A couple of tips for Thorpe Lea are:

1. There are parts of the lake that are very weedy. To avoid any problems like snags, losing or failing to hook the fish, a popped up boilie can be a killer at times. If you dont want to use a popped up bait I suggest using rig foam. Rap a piece of pva foam around the hook, and at the end of the silicon tubing [if you use it]. This protects the hook and rig from picking up any bits of weed or debris when it hits the bottom.

2. Like I mentioned before, pineapple boilies seem to be the "in thing" at Thorpe Lea at the moment, but any brightly coloured or strong smelling boilie will be just fine. I use a combination of spicy and fruity, then change around to what they like the most that day !

Thanks for reading my article about Thorpe Lea fisheries and I hope you have lots of luck if you ever decide to fish there!

Edited By Paul Orford @ Fish South East, August 2005 - Another excellent article form Luke - cheers mate. Sounds like you and your mates had a great day at Thopre Lea

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