Hitman Junction 12 Carp Lake

We head to Reading where we have the honour of fishing a lake that is reserved solely for exclusive bookings, and really is a slice of carp fishing heaven!

- Ian Russell

As regular readers are aware, each month editor Dan Murrell and I travel to a venue that I have never seen before, and for someone who has been fishing as long as I have it can prove difficult finding new waters. So when Dan rang me and said he had a venue just a stone’s throw from my home I was a little dubious.

However, as I followed his rather vague directions and found myself in an industrial estate early one morning, I recalled watching the excavation of a lake many years ago and wondered if it was the one I could often see from the M4.

Fisheries manager Del Shackleford, who I remembered from many moons ago when I fished a few of the Reading & District Angling Association’s waters, met me at a railway crossing and as soon as Dan arrived we were given the all-clear to proceed over to these pastures new.

The venue is a stunning little water known as Junction 12 Carp Lake. At around 10 acres, this clear-watered, weedy lake is a carp angler’s dream and is solely used for exclusive bookings.

Del began to fill me in with the history and the stock of the place, and with a healthy stock of carp running up to 40lb I was champing at the bit to have a walk around.

It wasn’t cold but the wind was blowing a stiff northwesterly, and after a walk round and seeing no immediate shows we thought it would be a good starting point to settle in the point halfway along the riverbank, so we could see a lot of water and, of course, fish down into a bowl where the wind was hacking into.

I immediately got the rods out of the van, which was very conveniently parked behind the swim, and cast out towards a large dip in the trees. On my first casts I always head towards any obvious skyline marker because these are often used by other anglers and you can bet your bottom dollar they would have seen some form of bait at one time or another, and on commercial day tickets this is even more paramount.