22 July 2012, Broadwater (Godalming AS)

Broadwater is a 10 acre lake set in a public park and is home to numerous big carp to in excess of 30lb. Summer matches on this venue always yield big winning weights, but as you are fishing for specimen carp (the average must be 12-15lb) many of the Godalming AS regulars spurn these matches as standard match gear really isn't up to the job.

Link to Broadwater section on Godalming AS website

Much of this lake is very shallow (no more than 3 feet deep) and notoriously silty - in fact as I understand it the central island was constructed from silt dredged from the lake a few years back!

Broadwater schematic



In keeping with many specimen lakes certain pegs at Broadwater have names - I was fortunate enough to draw a peg called The Point today and this is a peg that has won many matches over the years. As you've probably guessed this peg on the inside of a bend in the bank and is on the far side of the lake from the car park near to the out of bounds area.

Thanks to the way the pegs are positioned being on a point means that you normally command a larger area of water than if you are on a straight section of bank and this was true for me today as I had a large expanse of open water to the left of the central island to work in.

Strong gear and big leads

It seems to me that the carp in Broadwater move around a great deal and bites normally come after your bait has been in the water between 60 seconds and 3 minutes, with noise definitely playing a part. As a result I settled on a two pronged attack today - a straight lead line constantly fed with 8mm pellets at 25m and a PVA bag of 6mm pellets cast around the swim with a 10mm boilie. (Given the deep silt the method feeder isn't really viable as it can literally disappear into the bottom, so straight leads with 12" hooklengths are much more effective.)

At the start I could see a number of fish moving over the 25m pellet line so I stuck with this for the first 30 minutes or so - however this proved to be a big mistake as I never had a bite during this time, and as soon as I switched to the longer line dropping my PVA bag around the swim at 50-75m I was straight into fish!

In the end I had 8 or 9 carp for 117-9-0 which was only good enough for fourth place behind 150lb, 130lb and 125lb weights. All of the fish bar one fell to the PVA bag approach - however the one fish that I caught on the 25m line went 20-4-0!!!