It’s much rarer these days that I actually get a full length session in on a water a little further afield than my local lakes so when the opportunity arose to head to Welham, near Malton, with my long time angling mate Jordan Dales there was absolutely no chance I was passing it up.
Arriving at the lake we bumped into the owner, Gary, in the car park who informed us that just a single fish had been caught the previous night and that it had been very quiet in general lately. The only other angler booked on for the weekend had decided to pack up early too so that left us with 5 acres of lake all to ourselves. A pleasant surprise and something we certainly wanted to make the most of. Before a single item of tackle was unloaded we decided to have a good walk around in an attempt to find some fish, something vital in sub-zero temperatures. I’d never seen the lake before but had been told it was tap water clear, with climbing trees dotted all around and a very shallow average depth…they weren’t joking.
Having primarily fished clear, weedy gravel pits throughout my angling life I thought I knew what ‘tap water’ meant. I didn’t. Welham is spring fed and very, very shallow so when you’re 12ft high donning a decent pair of polaroid’s there’re really no fish that can escape being spotted. We headed to the peg we initially planned on fishing due to its slightly deeper water, only to find it frozen! It appeared to be the most stagnant part of the lake though and we could see from here that the rest of the lake was ice free, so that plan was soon scrapped. Walking down the left hand bank, climbing multiple trees and poking our heads through gaps in the undergrowth we failed to find a single fish which surprised us a little, but after doubling back (you can’t actually do a full lap) and heading down the right hand side, we came across a sight that stopped both of us in our tracks.
Neither Jordan or myself have much of an idea as to how many fish Welham holds but I don’t think I’d be far wrong in saying that we’d just found them all. Or near enough anyway. The water in front was dotted black and grey, with a huge group of fish broken up only by the occasionally exposed silt gap. Bingo, job done. Right?
Wrong. The fish may have been easy enough to find, but like hell did they want anything we made available to them. Rods were quickly and cautiously flicked out before anything else was unloaded from the barrows and on any other day our Zigs would have absolutely destroyed that shoal, but, with temperatures barely flickering above zero and their will to feed as non-existent as the sunshine we sat there pulling our hair out for hours. The fish eventually moved further up the lake into the shallows but we were both confident they would come back across us as the night drew in.
Rigs for the night were kept lovely and simple, with popped up maggots and wafters coupled with small mesh bags being my main approach whilst Jordan fished over just a couple of spombs worth of bait. As confident as we were in these methods, none of them really paid off. Morning rolled around and I woke up to my angling companion flicking halved bourbon biscuits at me, I can only imagine out of frustration for the sort of weird aborted take he had during the night. Or maybe he’s just a 3 year old? Peeking out of my sleeping bag I saw sunshine and mud instead of fog and ice. Strange considering we were due for a night in the minuses and heavy snow throughout the day! That’s not to say it was warm though. Not in the slightest!
We decided that having another stroll around wouldn’t be a bad idea and so with our rods reeled in we set off in search of fish again. It didn’t take long before Jordan, perched high up his favourite tree, managed to find the majority of fish around the back of the island and moving in and out of the narrow channel separating ‘Stalking Peg’ from the rest of the lake. Credit to his perseverance he carried on watching the water after I’d long gone and slowly but surely watched more and more fish appear through the channel and out of the snags. There were no two ways about it, we we’re moving.
Skipping breakfast altogether, the bare essentials were loaded onto a barrow and whipped around the lake in no time. I took the left of the swim and as it was Jordan who’d found the fish, it was only fair that he took the right with easier access to the channel and snags. Unfortunately we endured the same ordeal as the day before and we watched somewhere from 70 to 90 fish mill around and not give a care in the world about our perfectly positioned baits. Even for an enclosed swim there was still a very healthy bit of water to cover and the fish seemed to be using almost all of it so we both stuck to 3 rods each. We fished the lightest leads we could get away with and all but 1 rig as a Zig as we were confident the fish were off bottom absorbing as much of the spotty sunlight as possible. After a couple of hours though it began to dawn on me that perhaps they weren’t as high in the water as we’d originally thought so, at the first opportunity, the single rod I’d not yet swapped from my popped up maggot presentation was moved closer to the main body of fish to test my theory. Sure enough, a few minutes later, the bobbin pulled up tight and the alarm let out a couple of bleeps. Initially believing it to be a liner I stood up slowly and took a look out towards the rig only to see a big boil and a very angry common heading left on a tight line with the rest of the fish heading right. Picking up into the fish the rod took on a very nice curve as the fish made every effort to plow under the tree to my left. Knowing that giving an inch of line could spell disaster it was a case of get the tip low and lock that clutch up! Eventually I had it turned and from there on it was easy going, with the fish making a couple of final runs out into open water before being coerced back and over the cord of the landing net. Blank…saved!
I’ll make my excuses now and start by saying that this was actually my first Carp on the mat for a couple of months so when it came to the obligatory weight guessing game I may have been a little rusty. I wouldn’t have cared if it was a high single or a low 30 quite frankly as I was just happy to be going home having caught my first Welham fish but at a guess I thought the scales might just tip 19lb, Jordan on the other hand thought closer to 17lb 4oz.
It’s annoying when he’s right. It’s even more annoying when he’s absolutely bang on.
A few quality catch photos were taken and away she swam to fight another day. The snow started to fall and after a lost fish for Jordan almost immediately after, we decided to call it a day and head home for a takeaway. It took some effort and it messed with my head, but for sure it’s left me wanting some more.