Sally Walsh's Dam is
about 6 miles from Wakefield Yorkshire,
the venue is a 14 acre dam which in the
days of the working pits, was used for a regular supply of water
for the local collieries. I really don't
know how many fish it holds but 1 or 2 of the locals say there are
around 50 head of carp and its packed with shoals of bream. It was in June 2002 that a 48lb came out courtesy
of Eric the bailiff. It was this fish that tempted me
into coming to Sally Walsh's
Dam.
As you can see from the picture
this is me with my first run after 18 hours, I saw the carp it was a
good 20lb common and then the bloody hook pulled again. This was the
sixth fish I had lost in as many days. After losing this fish I
decided to change my hook link from braid to mono, the reason I did this was that braided line doesn't have any
stretch in it where mono line has that little bit of give. Not that
it did me any good because unfortunately this fish was the only
chance of a carp we had on this occasion. Eric the bailiff tells me
I should give it another go in October. I will think about that one!
These are some of the pellets I
used to help tempt the carp to my hook bait. I find these pellets
work very well crushed in PVA bags with a fish meal hook bait. Try
it and let me know if you catch! When I went to the Shimano linear
lakes on the 6 August and lost those fish due to hook pulls, I felt
robbed, fortunately a friend of mine asked me if I fancied going
down there again to fish St Johns lake at the back end of August. I
obliged! When we got there at 11.30 pm we were amazed to see that
there was not one swim free on St Johns nor the manor. We ended up
fishing Hardwick lake for a 24 hour session. I know what your
thinking! long way for 24 hours well I agree with you, especially when we both blanked, in fact nobody on the
lake in the 24 hr we was there caught either. That's carp fishing!
If we caught all the time it would be boring don't you think?
