When match fishing, the peg you draw isn’t always full of big fish, so you have to target the fish in your swim to maximise your day’s fishing. While we all like to think we’ve had prolific days on the bank in the past, what’s the most fish you’ve ever caught in a session? 100, maybe even 200 would seem impressive, so imagine the exhausting day Andy Leathers had when he banked an incredible 1,500 tiny carp in under six hours of angling.
To put that into context, the Sensas Hotrods angler landed an average of five fish every minute for five and a half hours, highlighting just how incredibly efficient he was on the day. This remarkable bag of fish was caught during a festival on Crow Lake at the prolific Rookery Waters, where successful spawning of the resident fish has led to an explosion of these perfect miniature carp.
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“Fishing a festival at Rookery, I’d fished Crow Lake on the first day and had been pestered by these tiny carp. I never would have considered targeting them, but a conversation with fellow angler Terry Hall who’d gone for them for a while and put a nice weight together had got me thinking,” Andy told us.
“I knew I was on the lake again the next day and fancied the challenge of seeing how many I could catch. I said to a few people, ‘I’ll give it the first hour and then decide if I want to carry on.’ That evening, I dug out a couple of elasticated tops from some whips that were just 3ft long which I thought would be perfect,” he added.
On the day, Andy began by feeding a few maggots beside his keepnets before chucking a bomb out into the lake in search of bigger carp. After a few biteless minutes, he noticed a shoal of tiny carp descending onto his loose feed and so he set about catching them.
“I knew I’d have to catch a silly number of these tiny carp to build any sort of weight, and to be honest, I didn’t really know what to expect as I have no previous experience catching that many fish, with 500 being my highest total before,” Andy explained.
"As soon as I started, the catch rate was mega, but they were a bit smaller than I’d hoped. I soon found the best spot was really tight to the reeds on my left. After an hour, I’d caught 300 fish, which I was very happy with, but I wasn’t sure what they’d weigh.”
“The next three hours were brilliant too. I had some crazy spells of catching, but I always seemed to max out at around 300 fish an hour.”
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Despite the number of fish in the swim, Andy had to be careful with how he was feeding as too much bait made the bites erratic and the fish more difficult to catch. With two hours remaining, it seemed he had caught the majority of fish in front of him, as the action began to deteriorate. In the final 30 minutes, bites dried up completely, prompting him to try targeting something else.
“I fished around 1ft deep, with a bulk of four number 10s just above a 4-inch hooklength. I estimate I caught around 1,500 tiny carp, which weighed 82lb and although it didn’t win me anything, I was very satisfied with the performance.”
“I should also say, I take my hat off to those Wye bleak experts who catch over 1,000 bleak, they’re fishing with much longer whips than my little three-footers, which obviously makes the task a lot harder!”
“Would I go for them again? Well, I might do in a few months, once those tiny carp have put on a little more weight. It could be very interesting then,” he said.
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