Owen Gardner: The Little Carper

We were contacted by Burnham Angling regarding a little lad, Owen Gardner, aged 13, who was a soft spot for DT Baits and has taken to fishing and loves to spend as much time on the bank as possible. unfortunately Owen has an extremely rare growth disorder called Acromicric Dysplasia which affects the growth and development of the bones. Signs and symptoms include short stature, short hands and feet, and distinctive facial features. Overtime, people with Acromicric dysplasia may develop limited joint movement and hip dislocations.

We took it upon ourselves to send Owen a little bait package for his next trip which was to Clovelly Lakes where he would spend 5 days fishing and we have been sent a report on what happened.

This really is what fishing is about seeing the joy on youngsters faces when they hold their fish for trophy shots.

We arrived at Clovelly lakes for our Easter break and I was excited as two previous visits to this venue had been extremely productive with large amounts of carp caught in the low doubles. Clovelly Lakes has six lakes two of which have lodges right next to the water so you can fish all day! Previous trips saw us stay on the easier Maple lake but this year we tried the more challenging Beech Lake.

The rain was awful all week and with winds reaching up to 30 knots so it was NOT pleasant!

We turned up at about 3pm on Saturday not knowing much about the lake. We just put the simple stuff out e.g. method feeder with maggots, corn and pellets. Clearly this approach wasn’t working because no carp were caught that evening.

Waking up the next morning quite annoyed that the carp had beaten me the day before I knew a change would have to take place, so I switched from method feeders to a more traditional rig and boilies. Still nothing all morning except for some small silvers on a float set up with maggots and corn. Then, at around 2-3pm I decided to go with my tried and tested N-Blend boilie from DT bait developments. This bait has literally never failed for me on any venue! I hadn’t tried this bait earlier in the day as I only had 18mm boilies with me and thought the 12mm and 15mm boilies of other brands that I did have would be better suited to the lake. 18mm N-Blend on and within 20 minutes I was into my first carp of the trip. After switching all 3 rods to a lead with N-blend all 3 rods started catching.

Tactics: 2 ounce lead with a size 10 hair rig

Bait: PVA mesh bag loaded with halved boilies covered in squid attraction liquid. Hook bait was N-blend!

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Owen managed to land 3 fish of  9lb 11, 15lb 9 & 17lb 7

Today the wind picked up and the rain started rolling in. As the previous day went well I started with the same tactics of a 2 oz lead with a size 10 hair rig and PVA mesh bag loaded with halved boilies covered in squid attraction liquid. Hook bait was N-blend and a variety of other boilies.  Things started a little slow so I decided to move away from fishing to the island and instead cast to the margins on the opposite bank. Boom!  Fish on! I don’t need to tell you which of the variety of baits did the trick again, it never fails!  I therefore switched all rods to my lucky N-Blend and the rods kept bending! Great fun.

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Owen managed to land 4 fish of  14lb 11, 10lb 3, 8lb 13 & 8lb 13

Today the weather had become worse and the winds were picking up to 30 kph. The tactics remained the same and the carp were very active. The wind was playing havoc with the bait alarms and I appear to have found a spot where the fish were biting so I made life easier and brought 2 rods in concentrating my efforts to just the one rod. This I feel was a good decision and today was my most productive with 5 carp caught.

Horrible conditions but glad to be on the bank!

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Owen managed to land 5 fish of 8lb, 12lb 10, 7lb, 12lb 4 & 7lb 4

Today the weather was even worse and with the wind being so bad I only had a chance to fish for an hour before we had to head off home.  Thankfully I avoided a blank when this beautiful common slipped up weighing a nice 11 lb!!

So that concluded a very wet, windy but amazingly enjoyable stay at Clovelly lakes that I feel would not have been so successful without my go to bait N-Blend!

You can follow Owen’s fishing adventures over on his very own Facebook page – Owen Gardner – The Little Carper