"A Little Bit of Magic" - A guide to fishing Little Horseshoe by Keith Sykes

Anglers Factfile
- 4.5 acres
- 450+ Fish to mid 30's
- CCTV on car-park
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Welcome to Little Horseshoe Lake. This mature four-acre gravel pit is very intimate in every sense of the word, and if you treat the residents both aquatic and terrestrial with deserved respect you will enjoy some wonderful moments and some incredible experiences.
There is a plethora of animal and bird life around the lake, and you will hear the constant calls of green wood peckers, mimicking what at first appears to be the sound of gulls. The banks are planted with native vegetation, and you will easily find yourself lost from the angler next door!

A Few Edges

There are a few little tips and wrinkles we would like to pass on that could make the difference to your angling experience, and we will say now this is not a lesson in teaching grandma how to suck eggs, but rather the feedback from the specialists who regularly fish the lake for the carp it contains.
The biggest mistake most anglers make is to assume that because the lake holds some four hundred carp that they love lots of bait on their heads, quite the opposite is true, they hate having spods raining down on them, and it is a kiss of death, and we cannot stress this one point enough!
Little and often: small PVA bags with dry stick mix or a marine type groundbait with the addition of a few chopped boilies is all you need to do the job. If you want to put some freebies in then literally half a dozen or so around the hooker.
Rigs: keep it simple on the silt and bars coated hooklinks and or the stiff Hinged Rig with boilies, balanced baits or pop-ups works a treat. In the gaps between the weed or below the tree-line the Chod Rig has done exceptionally well there this season, but do make sure you use a very buoyant hooker. Fish slack lines all the time, as slack as you can get away, tight lines seem to be another no-no, and the carp will “do your rig” quickly when approaching the water this way.
Another little edge is to fish over the weedbeds and get the rig as close as you can to the inside edge of the weed, this is where the small PVA rig comes into its own here. If the weather is warm don’t overlook the margins, they are regularly visited by the fish and with care are very catchable. Small pellets, half a handful of tigers or maggot and castor are all excellent for margin work.
In the summer months surface fishing for the carp can be very productive, but also quite frustrating, but certainly always worth a try! Maggots also work well in the PVA bag and do produce a lot of bites in the winter months fished on slightly lighter tackle and smaller hooks balanced out.

Features

The underwater topography of the lake is very variable, and you can find shallows that drop into very deep water, sensible plumbing assists. Much of the aquatic vegetation is visible with the use of Polaroid’s, and you will soon see the routes taken by the patrolling carp.

Keith Sykes