Everyone has a ghost story. The spectre hiding just out of sight, vanishing in the blink of an eye. They make you doubt your entire belief system. I'm of course talking about Ghost Carp.
'Ghosties' are notoriously fickle fish, especially on busy commercial fisheries. Due to their spirit-white colouration they are normally the first fish you spot and hence the first you cast at. This tends to make them an expert at rig spotting. So many times I have surface fished for Carp and watched as a big Ghost takes every floating bait except the one with a hook in it! Though I will concede this isn't just a Ghost trait, they are more prone to it than their darker scaled brethren. If you are not familiar with Ghost Carp you might be wondering why they have such a morbid name? It is largely down to their image in the water, the pearly white markings on the head give an impression of a skull and the pale colour of the body creates a 'ghostly' profile, so the name seems quite natural. Obviously the fish themselves are not natural at all. They are a hybrid of White Koi Strains with either Common or Mirror Carp, specifically bred by humans. A practice dating back thousands of years to Japan. This Ghost Story took place significantly closer to home than the far east though.
Bake Lakes - where I do the vast majority of my Coarse Fishing - has a reasonable head of Ghosts and ghost hybrids (fish that are descendants of pure Ghosts mixed with regular Carp, leading to slightly more golden colours), but I wasn't thinking about them at all when I set off with Ellie in tow, late on Thursday Morning. My intention was to see how many species I could catch on LRF tactics (mostly Dropshotted Isome) in a day. The weather was superb and I had high hopes of it being a successful trip. We arrived and received two small disappointments - firstly, there was a match on the only lake with Crucian Carp in and secondly Robbie had no Maggots available, a vital component to get the fish in a feeding frenzy. The sunshine kept us optimistic though so we moved on down to Treasure Island, a lake that I had had great success on before. The Lakes were busy and some good carp were showing to the many pleasure anglers. Unfortunately the fish seemed to drop off the feed as soon as we were set up. After about 45 minutes we decided it was time for a move.
Time to move on to the venue's most popular lake Luxor, a lake with Carp up to 25lb and plenty of low doubles. With work going on relaying the right side of the lake's path we moved up to the shallow end. Finally we found a peg that had real signs of fish - a large Mirror leaped out of the water in front of us, arrogantly daring us to catch him. A couple of generous handfuls of Bloodworm Pellets later and we had a feeding frenzy in front of us. It's fantastically encouraging when you see mushroom clouds of silt exploding in front you when Carp fishing, the fish are bold and hungry in Luxor and it was perfect to try dropshotting for them. Ellie was fishing much more traditional - float fishing with sweetcorn as bait. It didn't take long for the Isome to show it's worth as a fish ripped the line off my reel, with 7lb rated braid I couldn't bully it much and it showed... The fish quickly took me under two trees and shook the hook, leaving me in wrapped up in the myriad of branches! Frustrated but also awed by the power of that fish I set up again. Ellie was getting very frustrated by this point, the Carp were completely ignoring her sweetcorn. I dropped my freshly tied rig back in and within a minute it shot off again, much to Ellie's chagrin! This fish was smaller and I played it significantly better, landing it within 5 minutes. A solid 7 and a half pounds, my biggest fish on that rod so far. I had a couple more smaller fish and another lost one. Great fun though and all on either small pink Isome or medium red cut up into smaller sections. Ellie really wanted a go so of course I let her, though slightly reservedly considering the delicate nature of the rod. Fortunately she handled herself superbly when the inevitable take came, playing the fish with glee as the fish fought stubbornly. Finally on the bank and a respectable 5lb. Robbie then joined us, intrigued by this different method of catching his fish. I quickly showed him as the rod took off again, a dogged and determined fight kept the fish out of sight for a while, until a skull-patterned head appeared through the murky waters, both me and Robbie exclaimed ''Ghostie!''. I was ecstatic when it graced the bank, only a moderate sized fish at around 5lb but a gorgeous looking creature, a Golden Ghost hybrid. Things got distinctively more ghostly as I played my next fish, after nearly ten minutes fighting it I nearly had it beaten, as it neared the bank a large Ghost Carp came up next to it as if to see what was happening to its friend, this made us laugh and my smile widened further when we weighed the Fully Scaled Mirror Carp I had caught, at over 10lbs it was easily my biggest fish on my LRF rod and also my biggest of the year too. Nearly time to go, Ellie had one last cast. This cast resulted in another fantastic take and turned out to be that curious Ghost Carp that had shown up during landing the previous fish. Obviously wishing to get in on the action! It turned out to be Ellie's biggest fish ever at 8lb 4oz and her first Ghost. Overjoyed, we left satisfied after a good end to the fishing.
I've been away in India for 2 weeks and during that time Robbie managed to catch a Crucian Carp, whilst Shane joined the challenge with three species on his first ever coarse fishing trip - a Crucian Carp, Rudd & Roach. I also managed to get a Rock Goby on an opportunistic hour fishing before work.
Totals now are:
Ben - 15 Species - Perch, Roach, Rudd, Gudgeon, Common Carp, Roach/Bream Hybrid, Mirror Carp, Pike, Rainbow Trout, Common Blenny, Corkwring Wrasse, Tompot Blenny, Ballan Wrasse, Rock Goby & Ghost Carp
Robbie - 9 Species - Perch, Mirror Carp, Roach, Rudd, Eel, Ballan Wrasse, Topknot, Crucian carp, Common Carp
Ellie - 9 Species - Rudd, Roach, Gudgeon, Perch, Pike, Corkwring Wrasse & Pollock, Mirror Carp & Ghost Carp
Will - 8 Species - Rudd, Roach, Gudgeon, Pike, Tompot Blenny, Corkwring Wrasse, Common Carp & Mirror Carp
Olly - 7 Species - Rainbow Trout, Perch, Pike, Rudd, Roach, Mirror Carp, Common Carp
Shane - 3 Species - Rudd, Roach & Crucian Carp
Zoe - 2 Species - Pike & Goldsinny Wrasse
Phil - 1 Species - Pike (to be fair to him he's barely been fishing)
'Ghosties' are notoriously fickle fish, especially on busy commercial fisheries. Due to their spirit-white colouration they are normally the first fish you spot and hence the first you cast at. This tends to make them an expert at rig spotting. So many times I have surface fished for Carp and watched as a big Ghost takes every floating bait except the one with a hook in it! Though I will concede this isn't just a Ghost trait, they are more prone to it than their darker scaled brethren. If you are not familiar with Ghost Carp you might be wondering why they have such a morbid name? It is largely down to their image in the water, the pearly white markings on the head give an impression of a skull and the pale colour of the body creates a 'ghostly' profile, so the name seems quite natural. Obviously the fish themselves are not natural at all. They are a hybrid of White Koi Strains with either Common or Mirror Carp, specifically bred by humans. A practice dating back thousands of years to Japan. This Ghost Story took place significantly closer to home than the far east though.
Bake Lakes - where I do the vast majority of my Coarse Fishing - has a reasonable head of Ghosts and ghost hybrids (fish that are descendants of pure Ghosts mixed with regular Carp, leading to slightly more golden colours), but I wasn't thinking about them at all when I set off with Ellie in tow, late on Thursday Morning. My intention was to see how many species I could catch on LRF tactics (mostly Dropshotted Isome) in a day. The weather was superb and I had high hopes of it being a successful trip. We arrived and received two small disappointments - firstly, there was a match on the only lake with Crucian Carp in and secondly Robbie had no Maggots available, a vital component to get the fish in a feeding frenzy. The sunshine kept us optimistic though so we moved on down to Treasure Island, a lake that I had had great success on before. The Lakes were busy and some good carp were showing to the many pleasure anglers. Unfortunately the fish seemed to drop off the feed as soon as we were set up. After about 45 minutes we decided it was time for a move.
Time to move on to the venue's most popular lake Luxor, a lake with Carp up to 25lb and plenty of low doubles. With work going on relaying the right side of the lake's path we moved up to the shallow end. Finally we found a peg that had real signs of fish - a large Mirror leaped out of the water in front of us, arrogantly daring us to catch him. A couple of generous handfuls of Bloodworm Pellets later and we had a feeding frenzy in front of us. It's fantastically encouraging when you see mushroom clouds of silt exploding in front you when Carp fishing, the fish are bold and hungry in Luxor and it was perfect to try dropshotting for them. Ellie was fishing much more traditional - float fishing with sweetcorn as bait. It didn't take long for the Isome to show it's worth as a fish ripped the line off my reel, with 7lb rated braid I couldn't bully it much and it showed... The fish quickly took me under two trees and shook the hook, leaving me in wrapped up in the myriad of branches! Frustrated but also awed by the power of that fish I set up again. Ellie was getting very frustrated by this point, the Carp were completely ignoring her sweetcorn. I dropped my freshly tied rig back in and within a minute it shot off again, much to Ellie's chagrin! This fish was smaller and I played it significantly better, landing it within 5 minutes. A solid 7 and a half pounds, my biggest fish on that rod so far. I had a couple more smaller fish and another lost one. Great fun though and all on either small pink Isome or medium red cut up into smaller sections. Ellie really wanted a go so of course I let her, though slightly reservedly considering the delicate nature of the rod. Fortunately she handled herself superbly when the inevitable take came, playing the fish with glee as the fish fought stubbornly. Finally on the bank and a respectable 5lb. Robbie then joined us, intrigued by this different method of catching his fish. I quickly showed him as the rod took off again, a dogged and determined fight kept the fish out of sight for a while, until a skull-patterned head appeared through the murky waters, both me and Robbie exclaimed ''Ghostie!''. I was ecstatic when it graced the bank, only a moderate sized fish at around 5lb but a gorgeous looking creature, a Golden Ghost hybrid. Things got distinctively more ghostly as I played my next fish, after nearly ten minutes fighting it I nearly had it beaten, as it neared the bank a large Ghost Carp came up next to it as if to see what was happening to its friend, this made us laugh and my smile widened further when we weighed the Fully Scaled Mirror Carp I had caught, at over 10lbs it was easily my biggest fish on my LRF rod and also my biggest of the year too. Nearly time to go, Ellie had one last cast. This cast resulted in another fantastic take and turned out to be that curious Ghost Carp that had shown up during landing the previous fish. Obviously wishing to get in on the action! It turned out to be Ellie's biggest fish ever at 8lb 4oz and her first Ghost. Overjoyed, we left satisfied after a good end to the fishing.
I've been away in India for 2 weeks and during that time Robbie managed to catch a Crucian Carp, whilst Shane joined the challenge with three species on his first ever coarse fishing trip - a Crucian Carp, Rudd & Roach. I also managed to get a Rock Goby on an opportunistic hour fishing before work.
Totals now are:
Ben - 15 Species - Perch, Roach, Rudd, Gudgeon, Common Carp, Roach/Bream Hybrid, Mirror Carp, Pike, Rainbow Trout, Common Blenny, Corkwring Wrasse, Tompot Blenny, Ballan Wrasse, Rock Goby & Ghost Carp
Robbie - 9 Species - Perch, Mirror Carp, Roach, Rudd, Eel, Ballan Wrasse, Topknot, Crucian carp, Common Carp
Ellie - 9 Species - Rudd, Roach, Gudgeon, Perch, Pike, Corkwring Wrasse & Pollock, Mirror Carp & Ghost Carp
Will - 8 Species - Rudd, Roach, Gudgeon, Pike, Tompot Blenny, Corkwring Wrasse, Common Carp & Mirror Carp
Olly - 7 Species - Rainbow Trout, Perch, Pike, Rudd, Roach, Mirror Carp, Common Carp
Shane - 3 Species - Rudd, Roach & Crucian Carp
Zoe - 2 Species - Pike & Goldsinny Wrasse
Phil - 1 Species - Pike (to be fair to him he's barely been fishing)
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