Frimley's picturesque Pike Pit is where I started my fishing and where I developed a passion for carp way back when I was 19. If you could create your own carp lake the Pike Pit would be everything you could want. It is an eight-acre line dragged gravel pit that offers everything from gravel bars to Lilly pads with several islands, snags and hidden alcoves. It also has large shallow areas and a deeper side to the lake.
My boyfriend at the time introduced me to carp fishing and we started to fish the Pike Pit as we had heard it contained some nice carp. Back then I only did day sessions and fished the shallows where you could see plenty of carp cruising along the bars with their backs out of the water. The lake was reasonably well stocked at the time and I was catching quite a few doubles. This fired me up to keep going, never quite knowing what the next bite might be as no one was quite sure what the lake contained. I fished it on and off for a few years but life and circumstances took over and I packed my rods away to bring up my son.
Return was inevitable and I revisited the Pike Pit some 15 years later to find a more mature, wilder lake. At the time it was owned by Cemex and I bought a spring ticket and managed to have a few fish the biggest being a 27.10 common from The Chair swim on the west bank which fired me up to want to catch some bigger fish.
The following year Cemex sold the lakes and the price of the ticket was a bit steep for me so I bought a cheaper local club ticket. Within a few weeks of fishing busy lakes I realised my mistake and it wasn't long before I was being drawn down The Hatches path to see my much loved Pike Pit. During one of these walks I started chatting to one of the men doing some work on the new fence around the venue. It soon transpired during our conversation that he was the new owner and after much begging I managed to obtain a ticket as the lake wasn't receiving much pressure.
My next planned return was to be during the school holidays and I had six weeks ahead of me. It wasn't long before I found myself down there most days. Being as it was high summer, most of the fish had come out during the spring to the Boyda brothers and with 60% of the lake covered in weed I initially found it quite hard to trick the fish. Also just doing day sessions I was quite often turning up at a lake, known to be a good night water, in time to see the end of the early morning feeds. Wanting to make the most of my holidays, and with the will to catch another fish from the lake, I eventually plucked up the courage to do a nights fishing, dragging along my other half for protection, but again that produced a blank session. It wasn't a wasted night as I learned a lesson that the fish left the shallows during the night and headed towards the deeper side of the lake where I'd noticed the tail end of the morning feeds during my previous day sessions. This all started to become frustrating and I soon realised it wasn't as prolific a water as it had been in the past. It seemed to me that there weren't as many fish as before and the remaining residents were more clued up to the angler. Luckily for me I'd recently got chatting to a new neighbour of mine who had a good knowledge of the lake as he had fished there for many years and he confirmed my suspicions. Unbeknown to me at the time as I didn't read much carp literature he was Nigel Sharp and during one of our doorstep conversations he offered to lend me a set of waders and take me wading as he said I could learn more about the lake in a few hours than months of putting a lead out. He wasn't wrong… It absolutely blew my mind. During that afternoon I learnt the long gravel bars and gullies between them ran from east to west across the lake. With good water clarity Nigel also showed me the channels in the weed that the fish were using and grabbed handfuls of weed to smell which stank of carp. I learnt more than enough that afternoon to change my approach to the lake for the latter part of the holidays.
Over the course of the next few weeks I found myself either wading out my baits to craters caused by feeding fish or casting choddies to channels in the weed. Both methods proved to be successful but being a shallow lake I found tiger nuts to be the way forward to avoid problems from the bird life. The most memorable fish of the holidays was a common I caught mid August on a day session when I found several fish milling around in the weed in front of the Double Up swim on the south bank. The fish fell to a choddy fished high up in the weed and although it wasn't the biggest of fish, just shy of 20lb, it was a great take and the bow wave from it streaked across the tops of the weed beds like something out of PassionForAngling. As for the tiger nut captures I managed a 17.8 common from a swim known as Hermits Point on the west bank on an overnight session. That wasn't all I caught that night as when I initially waded my bait out for that night I hooked myself firmly in the finger and found myself running over to Nigel on Pit 4 to cut the hook out rather than pack up and go to the hospital. I also managed a small mirror of 9.8 from of the shallows in front of The Beach swim on the north bank of the lake.
After the holidays my fishing time became limited due to work commitments but from what I'd learnt during the summer months and the need to do more time I found myself having to pluck up the courage to do a night on the lake completely on my own. That night also happened to be Halloween which with hindsight is probably not the best night to choose, but needs must and I went for it. As soon as the sun dropped and night fell all the sounds of the lake became amplified and naturally I started to waiver. I made a quick call to Nigel to take my mind off the noises. During that call, whilst Nigel was winding me up, my right hand rod, which was cast to an alcove in the island, signalled a take. As I was fishing to a snag I didn't hesitate and picked it up, walking a few paces backwards to keep the fish away from danger. Once away from the snag I had time to enjoy the battle and slipped the net under a nice looking common. Unbeknown to me at the time my phone was still connected to Nigel and he heard the whole battle from my pocket. This proved lucky for me as he turned up to take a few pictures and have a cuppa. That fish turned out to be my biggest that year at 22lb and very welcome.
After that capture and my new found confidence to night fish alone and knowing the Double Up to be a good winter swim I decided to regularly bait it and make it my target swim for the next few sessions. With the lake starting to shut down for the winter I endured a few blanks before my final fish of the year which turned out to be a sought after original mirror known as Big Ears. This fish came on a bleak, late December afternoon. At 19.9 it might not of been the biggest of fish but on a freezing cold day it fired me up for the year ahead.
During that winter Nigel and I had many conversations about the lake and it was during one of these chats that he told me about an old mirror called Jekyll & Hyde. This was the biggest fish in the lake. A Leney of over 50 years old and at the right time of year it could make 30lbs. This was to be my target and if I could catch him at 30+ even better as my PB still stood at 27.10. We talked about a baiting campaign and Nige suggested I should start this by February. I started to look at different areas of the lake drawing on the knowledge I had obtained the previous year and dreaming of catching my first 30. He also gave me a list of the A-team in the lake. These were to be my target fish.
