Hordle Lakes was somewhere I discovered whilst on holiday in the New Forest last year and had 2 really good days so when we decided to go back to the same caravan site this year, I was always going to go back. I chose quite a windy day to go and considering we had glorious weather for our 11 night stay, I chose the coldest and windiest day to go. Having wanted to fish Bob's Lake as I couldn't last year due to the Mrs not finding "a nice enough peg to sit at" I was put off by the number of carpers on the lake including one ignorant (insert insult here!) who had a bivvy on one peg and a rod on the peg to his left, in front of him and his right taking up the pegs and probably 5 pegs in terms of where his lines were!!! I decided on Long Lake as I had a good day there last year.
I picked a peg with an island at 13m to both the front on the right (2 different islands) and decided on a meat and pellet approach. I began by potting in a large cup of pellets on each line and began with a small cube of meat. It wasn't long before the float buried...and a 6oz roach was on the end, followed by another, then another - a change was needed. I changed hooklinks and fished a banded 8mm hard pellet and was immediately into a carp. So as not to waste the meat, I used this as feed as I alternated swims on pellet taking around 60lb between 8am and 1pm before packing up and heading back to the site. An eventless day really and also quite a cold one with only a T-Shirt on hence the early dart. The worst thing about it though was the quality of the fish. Everyone of them could have been straight out of a horror film. If it wasn't the twisted, deformed lipless mouths it was open wounds on the sides of the fish from birdlife or stunted tails. Not good quality and I think I'll give Orchard Lakes down the road a try next year.
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