Return to Parco

Parco Del Brenta

Lesson Learned :

This trip was pretty much a year in the making, I had learned so much from the year before.

As you often do when you fish a new water, you tend to learn the most on that first trip.

2019 at Parco was a great trip, and as you do, you go to your winning tactics, for me this tends to be fishing a select choice hookbait, yellow or pink wafters tend to be my go to choice, on a long IQ D rig fished helicopter style, and generally over an area, say half a tennis court spread of boilies, applied with a throwing stick, keeping the fish actively moving around the swim picking baits up

I did catch a couple of fish using this tactic but felt I should have been doing more, I was very fortunate to be fishing this trip with Frank Warrick and Pete Holehouse “Coach” Pete was catching plenty of fish and after having a discussion with him, I found out he was well armed with plenty of tied solid bags, lots of the house pellet and maize/sweetcorn, working constantly and keeping his baiting tight and casting bags regularly.

I moved over to this method and my hit rate started to improve thanks to the lessons learned from Pete.

2020, The Plan :

Educated from 2019 I was setting my stall out early, in all honesty it was an all your eggs in one basket approach, such was the confidence learned from the previous year.

I spoke with Ben and Chris at Karper early that year to sort some testing, they had a very successful range of pellets (pandemonium pellets) that dispersed colour and flavours tightly around your hookbait once a PVA bag broke down, I asked the guys to make me a sweetcorn pandemonium pellet to test through the year, as always Ken Dack “the chemist” worked with Ben and Chris and produced a pellet that worked perfectly.

After 4 months of trial/testing the pellets mixed with Sweetcornz Gel and Sweetcornz wafters, the results proved it was cracked and ready to go.

I also asked the team at Karper to roll me some match the hatch baits, small dumbbell Sweetcornz baits to match the Wafter hookbait range, mixed with rounds to keep the fish guessing.

So at this point I’m ready ! boilies chopped, with mixed rounds and dumbbells, in with the house pellet and lake provided maize, plenty of Karper energiser syrup added and well mixed together for my bulk bait.

The plan was to bait regularly and tight, keep the bags going in regular and keep the fish coming.

It was all about the draw from this point on 🤞

A Change in the Plan :

As we all often do, we have an idea on the swims we want and the approach we will be taking, so I had a list of my top 5 swims ahead of the draw and had been checking up on the progress from the Facebook page  and other sources.

I got to the lake early on the Sunday morning for a long walk around and to see what we could see, the anglers prior to our arrival left on the Saturday morning, so the lake was rested for 24hrs and we got to witness plenty of showing fish along the Road from swim 1 down to 14/18

We knew that Max Cottis had celebrated his 60th and had booked the lake for nearly 2 weeks and had a great couple of weeks with his group, they had caught plenty and it was a Baitboats allowed session, so this leads to accurate baiting and volume which is a great combination on Parco.

A couple of the sort after swims hadn’t produced which was a real surprise from his session.

Armed with this info it was a case of change the peg choices, as the saying goes look for showing fish.

I was sat thinking, the lads prior had a great session, 600+ fish and had plenty of bait going in.

I thought I would have a rough idea of locations of where they could have been fishing, but how much bait is still in there?, will they still be on the feed?, could I compete ???, all these questions were running through my head.

I convinced myself that I needed to be fishing on the Road in the shallow water, rather than a large baited area, keep bait going in consistent, small but regular amounts and intercept fish as they pass over the road into one side of the lake and back again.

The road is around 14 foot deep with depths to 24ft either side of it, so the plan was to sit on top of it and intercept fish as they crossed over it.

So now I needed a good draw, we was a group of 20 and fishing in pairs, so a draw of 10, all the swims I wanted was ticking off as the draw progressed, I finally came out 10th and Peg 18 was still available.

This was my 3rd choice in my book. I could reach the road, and pick the fish up as they past into swims 17/16 and back again, this was a result 👍

The Session :

With a small area to target, I fished all 3 rods tight together at 21 wraps, solid bags with the bait trickling in from mid day.

A pattern soon started to form, Adam Biddulph and Chris Frame was catching fish in 17/16 from mid day to early evening.

I would bait my swim mid day, and bring the rods in, the lads in 17/16 fished well and caught plenty in their spell.

From dusk it became my time, x3 rods tight to the spot with Sweetcornz pandemonium pellets, matching gel and DB Wafter in a solid bag over the baited area.

Almost as soon as dark came, the bites came and continued into the morning, topping up with x4 spombs after every bite And this pattern repeated all week

The Result :I ended up with 35 fish in total:

X2 60’s a new PB Grass Carp

X6 50’s with a new PB Leather Carp

X8 40’s

X6 30’s

X7 20’s

And a couple of doubles

A fantastic week, the plan came together and the results were fantastic, an amazing weeks fishing.