Willow Park is a true mixed fishery, the big lake contains thousands of bream, tench, crucians, roach, perch and carp. If you had asked me a couple of years ago how should I fish Willow Park, the response would have been pole or feeder. Matches were won with big nets of tench and crucians caught on the pole, or bream and skimmers caught on an open ended feeder. Occasionally a carp would be hooked and lost, and very occasionally, one would be landed. Suddenly, in the last couple of years, carp have started to be regularly caught on matches. Kenny says that they haven't stocked any in the last umpteen years, but you can now win a match with carp. You don't need many, these are PROPER carp, our club matches there this season produced two over 20 lbs, and loads between 10 lbs and 20 lbs. You could actually fish for them, and have a realistic chance of winning the match. Who knows if this state of affairs will continue, I'm just saying ignore the carp at your peril. As on most still waters, pleasure fishing, when you have a choice of swims, and when you can choose a swim away from other anglers gives you a lot more chance of having a real red letter day. The following comments are aimed more at the club angler, fishing a match, where he doesn't get any choice of swim, but simply has to make the most of what he's given.
Tactics
for Tench, Crucians, Bream etc
Pole fishing at anything
between 8 and 13 metres. Willow is a disused gravel pit, with a very uneven
bottom. You must plumb the depth until you find an area that stays flat for
a metre or two, there's no point in trying to fish halfway down a cliff face.
This flat area could be anything from 4 to 12 feet deep, depending on which
part of the lake you are fishing. There is often a lot of drift on the lake,
so don't fish with too light a float, anything between 0.75 grams and 4 grams
will be needed. The tench grow big here, so I'd go with size 8 or 10 elastic,
4 lb main line and a 3 lb hook length. Put in three or four hard balls of groundbait,
laced with caster and chopped worm,
then fish double caster or double red maggot on the bottom, feeding either loose
caster or small hard balls of groundbait. Kenny recommends using groundbait,
arguing that the loose feed will bring the fish up off the bottom giving lots
of false bites.
As far as fishing for the bream is concerned, I'd simply pick a line that I can comfortably cast to, clip the line on the reel's line clip, and keep casting, waiting a couple of minutes then retrieve and re-cast until bites start. The bream here like worms, so I'd make sure that there are some chopped worms in the groundbait, and I would fish half a worm or two red maggots on the hook.
Fishing either of the above methods, there is a very good chance that as the day wears on, the carp will move on to your feed. You now have two options, the first being to carry on regardless, and hoping that the carp will move into the next blokes peg whilst you carry on catching tench and bream. The other is to GO FOR IT, follow the hints below, and you might just land the fish of a lifetime.
Tactics
for Carp
These carp, as in many
other stillwaters, feed as the afternoon slips away into early evening. If you
fish your matches in the traditional 10 till 3 time frame, there might not be
one hooked on the whole lake. Luckily, we fish many of our summer matches in
the afternoon, early evening, perfect for those hot lazy days of high summer.
I've got two hot methods for catching Willow Park carp. The first is identical to my 'close-in' method described for Syndicate Lake at Gold Valley, except that I'd probably fish luncheon meat on the hook rather than worm, the other that I would probably use one of the continental groundbaits such as Sensas Tanches, both of these changes taking advantage of the fact that there are less bans at Willow Park. I would still fish close in, feeding small balls of hard groundbait, and maybe a few casters. It's a wait and be patient method, and sometimes it completely fails, but when it works, the rewards are amazing, those carp are so BIG.
My other method involves fishing the pole as described above, and catching crucians, tench etc., and then when the carp arrive, switch to a big open ended groundbait feeder, with 6 lb line direct to a size 10, impale a large worm and cast exactly where you've been pole fishing. I know that it will make a big splosh, you can pretend that you mis-cast if anyone looks, but there is every likelihood that the rod will go straight round, and that there will be 15 lb of very angry carp on the other end. This method works very successfully on the 'Bungalow Bank' at Willow. The only tricky bit is knowing when the carp have moved in, because it's much nicer to land that first one on the feeder, rather than losing it on a pole !!.
