Cawcutt’s fishery manager has great winter success!

David Buck made the most of the fishing at Embryo Angling Habitats’ Cawcutts Lake before the cold weather moved in, and many lakes froze over!

The venue fishery manager kicked off his winter campaign on the Cambridgeshire venue – one of the first to be added to the Embryo portfolio and fenced, with a lot of money since spent on new stock – back in early December when he landed a 12lb fully-scaled mirror during a quick overnight session before work. This was the start of a run of fish, culminating in the largest mirror in the lake at just under 30lb, one of the Simmo strain fish which has been piling on the weight!

David explained: “After that I did a few more overnighters with no success, but I decided that I would make an effort over the Christmas holiday and get out for three days and two nights.

“On the first day of that session, the weather looked awesome with bright sunshine, and I decided to opt for the deeper part of the lake which is between two of Cawcutts’ main features, the first island and the pump. The originals in the lake have always loved it around this area, and the new stock fish seem to as well.

“We put in 20 new VS Fisheries stock fish at the start of December, which were absolutely awesome creatures, and I thought they might stir up the existing stock and get them feeding.

“By lunchtime I had everything set up and my baits were out and I was just cooking some food using my new Ridge Monkey, when I had a few bleeps and the right-hand rod was bending round. It turned out to be a 24lb 2oz mirror – which was originally stocked at 17lb and is some growth rate in a year or so – and was an awesome start to the session and it looked good for some more action.

“I was waiting for my mate Smithy to turn up for a bit of a social, and in the meantime I managed to land a 19lb 12 oz common, and by 4pm I’d had another of 20lb as well.

“Given the action that I’d had, I decided to put out half-a-kilo of the Mainline prototype toffee boilies, which may have been a bad move as that was the end of the action – but then again it was minus three when I awoke the next morning, so it was more likely to have been as a result of that!

“I left the swim alone for a week in terms of fishing it, but did trickle in around half-a-kilo of bait every third day, and planned to just do short sessions as and when I could fit them in between working.

“I did spend some time looking for signs of showing fish, but I knew they were mainly showing at night so my plan was to just fish single hookbaits during my trips and to try and get amongst them. I tried this for an hour on my next session, but with nothing to go on I decided to drop back into the swim where I’d had the action.

“I cast the same rigs back out, with no freebies, and then off it went again and it turned out to be the Half Linear at 29lb 10oz – a fish that I’d caught a year ago at 23lb 8oz. It really is an awesome creature and has a lot more growth in it, and I’m sure that one day it will be a forty! I also had a 12lb mirror that evening, and did another short session the next morning where I bagged one of the new stock fish at 24lb 4oz – winter carping is definitely all about small windows of opportunity, and making the most of them.

“I’m just so proud to have been asked by Embryo to manage this beautiful lake, and can’t wait to see what unfolds in the future,” he added.

He used two different set-ups to land all of his fish, with some falling to a hinged stiff rig tied using a size 6 Korda Choddy hook to 20lb Mouth Trap. His was rig baited with a Mainline white pop-up that had been soaked in Vindagoo Supreme and fished on a Korda Leadcore Helicopter Leader, with 12lb Touchdown main line.