Dan Ibbott – Dinton Gold

28th March 2020

Yateley Angling Centre’s Dan Ibbott recounts his last captures from Dinton’s Black Swan, after 2 years of hard work. 

“With little time this year due to one thing or another, I chose to use my annual holiday to have a good stint on my syndicate. A plan was set out to apply a lot of bait to a spot and sit on it for a period of time. I arrived and found a chosen area and loaded one spot with 15kg of chopped Krill and Manilla and 10kg of hemp and another spot with a similar amount of bait.

Three Noodle rigs fished with size 4 curve point hooks 25lb Weed Green Camsoft were fished with big leads on lead clips and TA 45lb Olive Camo Leadcore – chopped down Manilla and Krill matching wafters were mounted on the hairs, with small bags of bloodworm pellet hooked before dispatch.

I cast two rods onto one spot and the third onto the other. Settling in for the long haul, and not expecting a bite quickly, I was shocked when less than 12 hours after unleashing a bombardment of bait I received a single beep on the Neville and the line pinged tight and out the clip I was away. After a hairy boat battle from weedbed to weedbed in the most torrential rain, a lovely mid 30lb common lay in the bottom of my net. The rod was quickly dispatched back onto the spot. And soon after the rod fished next to it was away. By this time it was dark so no boat was allowed – after some ‘toing and froing’, the most immaculate upper 20 broken linear was being held up for pictures.

Nothing else happened that trip. My suspicions were that all of the bait had been eaten after that first 15 hours. As is normally the case on Black Swan the fish come through in herds eat everything and disappear as quick as they arrived.

Two days later I was back and the fish had moved into a deeper area again – armed with an unholy amount of bait, a plan was hatched. The fish were showing in an area that was about 18ft deep so this was mentally plotted and I waited for the show to finish before locating an area in the deep water. Clear hard and loaded with clay this was perfect. The same as the previous week, 15 odd kilos of Krill/Manilla mix was applied along with a lot of hemp too – the same Noodle rigs were cast to the deep clay area. Again I didn’t have to wait long for a bite, this time after first light where the carp in true Dinton fashion put on a mega show right over the rig….. it had to happen and sure enough about 2 hours later a ripping take and heavy battle, as fish stayed deep the whole time – with some deep margins, bringing, it up the shelf was a hairy task, but after a few twitchy moments a lovely clean 38lb mirror was being held aloft for pictures.

This has turned out to be my last Dinton carp, and was a fitting way to end two years of hard effort.

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