Willow Lakes

Wednesday dawned cold and foggy in Nottingham and at just after five am its was dark too. Into the car, carefull not to wake the dog on the way out, and drive two and a half hours down the M1 to Willow Lakes near Hatfield. I was planning to be there by dawn but due to traffic I actually saw the sun rising on the motorway. It was 7.30 by the time I arrived and reached the swim and found my good friend Pete Rutledge waiting for me. Willow Lake is a gravel pit and has a very good head of carp along with most other species but it is the carp that seem to attract most of the attention. carp from a few pounds to well over 30lbs are to be found along with some very large uncaught fish.
Although the sun was shining strongly there was a thick frost on the ground. PVA bags are a well tried method so my first rod was set up on a bolt rig in a PVA bag filled with broken boilies and koi pellets and chucked just short of a gravel bar. The second rod I decided to try something a bit different and used a stringer with loose boilies pulted around it. Pete arrived with a cup of tea as I was tackling up the second rod just in time to see the first rod scream away. A mirror of about 10lbs put up a good fight before sliding into the net. 'Hmm' I thought 'this could be an interesting day!'.
Finally both rods in the water and it was time to time to catch my breath. Not for long though as about 10 minutes later Pete was in and landed a common of about the same size. 'Hmm, a very interesting day! Wonder if we have enough bait?'. About thirty minutes later I was in again and another small mirror graced the net, now I knew we didnt have enough bait for this pace.
And then it stopped, not even nine am, three fish on the bank and it all went quiet! Pete managed another two small fish in the afternoon and we both landed a couple of bream but that was that.Dusk was going to be the time to catch we decided, but come the failing light our indicators barely twitched.
I fished the venue in early february in the cold and it fished better. Pete informed me that he and his nephew Jimmy fished it the week before in a blizard and it fished better. So what went wrong? Also I only managed one twitch all day on my stringer rod, how come PVA bags of smaller feed was more successfull than 4 or 5 boilies on a stringer with another dozen in a loose area? Anyone have any ideas?
On a different theme, I was using my new bite indicators,FOX mk2 swingers, and must say they are excelent but more of them later.
I will be back to Willow lakes and very soon because I do know the fish very well on most sesions...... just not last wednesday!