grass-carp

October 2026 – China still.

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Sunday 4th sees 31C and a trip to Zhuhai to fish the tilapia lake. I drew peg 7 in their automated peg allocation which seemed a good peg with Gareth on the opposite bank next to the bridge.

Things started well as Gareth had a 7-8 pounder second put in. Now just to clarify the rules are max 4.5m whip, two hooks, no braid and paste as bait but you feed pellet. It costs 330 yuan (approx £35) to fish for 4 hours but you get back 25 yuan (approx £3) for each fish in your net at the end. There are also some tagged fish, one which is yet to be caught is worth 1000 yuan to the captor. Now I was set up with a 3m whip that some locals prefer as it gives more control over the tilapia, line is Tornado 0.20mm and the hooks are about a size 6! Four hours later I was thinking of taking up golf! Not one bite despite following the feeding pattern of the locals next to me who caught 21 and 15 fish respectively. The only difference I could see was that they were on 4.5m whips and fishing further out. After Gareth’s start he lost a tilapia to a pull, had both hooks bitten off on another and missed two bites.

That evening we went to the main Shiqi river but only managed 30 minutes on feeders before a thunderstorm with spectacular lightning descended. In that time I had 5 casts, 3 bites and a silver bream on pieces of worm. While Gareth had 3 silver bream.

Monday 5th We returned to the Shiqi in the morning while it was under 30C. This time I managed 2 silver bream, 2 tilapia and a red belly tilapia in the short session. Gareth had double plus a small asp as you can see above. The afternoon sees us head into the hills to meet up with some of their friends at a mountain stream. What an eye opener with picnic tables set up in the middle of the water with families eating, barbecuing all the while others around them were trying to catch mini species with slightly larger nets than you see kids with at the seaside. Gareth had put in a 3m light whip and we found a slightly deeper area a little way downstream (you could still walk across the stream!) and I managed to get4 small tilapia by an outlet pipe, before moving well up stream and sneaking out 3 larger tilapia and losing a possible white trout that was too big to swing up the wall.

Tuesday 6th sees me visit a tackle shop and replenish my paste stocks! Temperature now down to 26C and we headed off in the afternoon to Zhuhai in an attempt for me to get a big tilapia. The owners to be fair must have taken pity on me as they put me on a favored peg and provided the tackle, set it up, provided the bait and pellets and showed me the area to fish, even setting up a purple floodlight when it got dark for me. I did far better this time and had one tilapia of about 8lb but lost 2 and missed 9 bites!

Final day and 6 hours at the Grass carp lake with 2 missed bites. Plenty of fish cruising but very wary and spook at the slightest thing. Next day sees a 24 hour journey home! May not have caught a tremendous amount but did I enjoy the experience – you bet I did!

September 2 and October 1 2026 – A visiting I will go!

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Returning from Torquay I managed to get out once before leaving for China, armed with a spare no 6 section(I have several old poles of the same make so I have spares!)I revisited Crookwood descending on peg 21. Once more I took just pellets and paste – a red and yellow mix with the jellyfish powder. The idea was to fish until the paste ran out- about 3hours. It was hard but I managed to sneak out 5 skimmers, best 2-10, 2 carp a tench and a solitary roach for around 10lb. Tackle was as previous visits.

Monday 28th morning sees me catch a bus to Chippenham, hop on a coach to Heathrow, take a flight to Beijing, have a couple of hours before taking plane to Shenzhen to be met by Gareth and then a taxi ride to Zhongshan arriving at approx 10pm Tuesday!

Wednesday sees Gareth in work so Wendy looked after me and dropped me off with some tackle to go fishing on the river near the apartment while she went to a yoga class for an hour. I was directed by Gareth to fish the high wall in the trees at the back of the sports court that we had fished before.

Now fishing from a 10 foot drop with a 3m whip is not ideal but the overhanging trees ,made anything else difficult but the shade was welcome in the 35C heat. Worm on the hook, depth approx one foot I missed the first bite but then had a small tilapia.

The hour passed quickly with 13 tilapia coming to hand but a larger tilapia was hooked but couldn’t be lifted by the whip, so hand lining up the wall it flipped and came off the barbless hook. While there a guy came along with a reel strapped to his wrist and went past a couple of meters and cast out a heavy spinner, only to hook a white trout of about 8oz that he gave to me but I returned it. Looking at the area close to the bridge there was a large shoal of I am assuming trout cruising around about 20m out. Oh for waggler I thought!

Thursday 1st October, start of the national holiday, Gareth takes me down to the river at 6:30am before it got too hot, to a new area upstream from the apartment. Again fishing 3m whips the depth was about 3 feet so more water to search!I had a climbing perch and 2 bleak with Gareth getting a climbing perch and a bleak, he spent time fishing the margins where bubbles were appearing but no joy!

Yes the bleak are big!!

That afternoon we went to the grass carp lake for about 3.5 hours. I was fishing a 7m whip, Gareth an 8.2m I had plenty of bobs but no definite bites. Gareth however had two grass carp by the end which were weighed in as 4 jin (1jin=500g), this was important as the fisheries here allow you to take the fish away but will buy back any fish caught by weight. Most anglers seem to take this route and get money back on the day ticket. It should be said that we used some interesting electronic floats that changed colour to red when a fish was touching the bait – we could not work out how they worked but they did!Also interesting was the use of old tyres as a rest for the whip, simply put the butt of the whip inside the tyre and rest the whip on the top.

Friday 2nd sees thunderstorms hit Zhongshan so Gareth takes me to an indoor fishery that had shrimp fishing in one area and tilapia fishing in another concrete pound. Given a 1.5m very light whip with the standard two hook rig but with a string of polyfloats as indicator. Very weird but interesting, sounds like hook a duck but trust me it was anything but. In the time allotted I managed 3 tilapia including a rainbow variety and lost 5 to hook pulls as they were not docile fish by any stretch of the imagination. Weight was approx 4lb in total.

That evening we returned to the grass carp lake fishing 7:30 to 11:30pm which produced 13 “red” indications and one missed bite! Was very humid 30c but felt like 36C according to the weather app.

Saturday 3rd Severe thunderstorms again with most lakes closed and very hot and humid. We headed off to Nanlan where I had never caught a fish despite numerous bites, however this time we were going to fish a freshwater lake at the end of the complex- lake 3 in the picture.

Now it has to be said that there were 30 anglers on the lake but only 3 proper fish caught, we did scratch to avoid a blank and by fishing in the margin with worm and slowly lifting the bait I broke my duck with a tilapia and Gareth snared two.

Four days left for fishing before returning will I catch a decent fish?

May 2026 Part 3 – will I catch?

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So Monday sees us back at the grass carp lake and this time we went on the far side bank of the first “lake” as the pegs we fished before were occupied, in fact the whole place was busy as it was the May Day holiday.

We collected a couple of boxes ourselves and set up in the same way with one notable exception – Gareth had now acquired a 7m whip that had been delivered to the apartment within 24hrs of ordering! We struggled to get a bite and there were no signs of bubbles like the last visit, the guy fishing where we had been last time had a few fish and when he packed up we decided to move into the area. I fished the same peg as last time and Gareth went to my left, away from the corner. Still no bites and then the son of the owner came around making his rounds on his electric cart and asked if we had any luck. On hearing we had nothing he got Gareth to show him the rig and he then proceeded to take the hook length off and put one of his own on which had significantly larger hooks. He said the pellets were right but use them for feed – he then got a bag of paste from his cart and made up a big ball of paste for us to use. He then attacked the rigs by shallowing up and reducing the weight until the float settled with two paste hook baits in place. He then put the depth back so the bottom ball of paste was just touching bottom. After this he did the same for my rig and used our pellets to put a couple of big handfuls out. Casting- we had been swinging out underarm but he said to cast overarm. The paste was soft but firm and stayed on the hook remarkably well, with the float rising when the paste came off. Now that is real customer service! As a consequence in the hour or so we had left I managed to miss a glorious bite, Gareth missed two but finally connected with a good fish that turned out not to be a grass carp but a black carp weighing 5-03 or 2.345kg which saw Gareth get 20 yuan back.

So Tuesday, my last day for fishing, arrives and I am on a two day blank streak! Back to Nanlan we went and although I missed two bites early on and Gareth four it was clear that the heavy rain had cooled the water as there were no cruising fish in sight. Gareth then managed to hook something that doubled his rod over (his was longer and more powerful than the one I was using) and ripped line from the clutch before pulling out. Apparently there are grouper over 100lb present! Heavy rain then started and it got busy as new fish were stocked and that usually meant a load of anglers rushing to the places where the fish went in.

Some grouper in the 4-5lb range were getting caught by sticking the rod under the walkways, releasing the line and withdrawing the rod then feeling the line for the shrimp being taken. Most were using light drop-shot style rods with multipliers so when they hooked a grouper the rods were bent double! The heavy rain continued and we were not getting any action so we decided to return back home.

After having lunch delivered to the door! Gareth took me back to the river where the visit started but this time you could see the bottom clearly. Fishing the same whip but this time without the isotope I had 90 minutes of fishing, 75 of them in the rain! It was interesting to see large circular craters in the river bed which Gareth informed me were tilapia nests. Indeed you could see larger tilapia in one or two, I managed to hook one of the bigger ones but it dropped back as Gareth was trying to hand line it up the wall! In the end I managed 27 small tilapia but saw several larger fish including carp just out of range. With the rain not easing we waited for a slight break in the weather and packed up.

Next morning (Wednesday) I was picked up by the taxi at 5am (10pm Tuesday UK time) to start the journey back home, 25 hours later after a transfer in Beijing I stepped through the front door-knackered! The traveling to and from China accounted for 12 806 miles while travel within to the venues took the total to a minimum of 13 000miles. Was it worth it – you bet! Putting the obvious family visit aside the opportunity to fish in a different environment using different tackle and tactics for new species will always be worth it. The blanks, well it is called fishing not catching and even blanking you gain a lot of experience and memories.

Now need to get back to catching some fish over here but I have brought back some paste I will try!

May 2026 Part 2 -Something different again

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Saturday sees a five minute car ride to a grass carp lake. Again we pay by time in this case the standard is 6 hours and rather than a refund per per there is an option to keep the fish or sell it back to the fishery at a rate per pound depending on the species. The lake was split into two by a causeway with a bridge over the connecting channel, the far part of the lake looks busy while the nearest half only has one fishing on it so we opted for the quiet lake and settled into a corner area. We had folding stool to sit on but the owner brought around seat boxes with whip rests for us to use. They really look after their customers as you will see later.

The owner even set up brollies for us when the sun came up! Now Gareth was using a 5m whip and I had a 6m whip, the water was about 10ft and we were using 1g floats with the standard double hook rig with grass carp banded pellets.

There was plenty of action on the other lake, particularly near the bridge area, after 2 hours I had a bite, the float bobbing and slipping away, a strike felt like I had hit a brick wall as the whip arched under the water and then came pinging back. The fish had snapped the 15lb braid hooklength! Gareth then told me that there were grass carp up to 25lb in the lake! At this point I swapped to a 10lb mono two hook rig and about an hour later the float slides under and I connect with the fish and after ten seconds the hook pulls – a size 6 !! A further hour passes Gareth misses two bites and I get another bite only for the 10lb hooklength to snap!!! With little more than an hour left Gareth sets up a 3m whip to fish paste in the corner margin with a dibber UK style in order to save a blank! That worked as he had four F1 type carp, a bitterling and a roach(?), he got me to have a go and a F1 type duly obliged so blank saved! The frustrating thing was that the fish were there and were bubbling all day although I did miss7 bites that may have been small fish.

Sunday morning arrives and we are off to the main river in Zhongshan, the Shiqi. So far all our travel has been done by taxi with impressive short waiting times for them to arrive. So we set up open end feeders on telescopic rods fishing segments of worm with a pink coloured groundbait in the feeder. We were positioned about 7ft above the water on a promenade with a flower box the water side of the railing.

Gareth was straight into fish and had nine silver bream and a small asp while I managed top miss five bites and blank much to the amusement of my daughter-in-law! That afternoon plans were changed as a major thunderstorm hit and moved along the coast and many venues closed as a result. We did manage at about 5:30pm to drive in their car to Nanlan to fish a salt water lake stocked with a variety of fish including bass. We started off with it being fine but about 8 heavy rain set in and although we continued for a fair bit the action slowed right down. Initially we were getting bites on shrimp- attached with a band and shrimp hook set up, with an electronic lighted bung float set as a slider at about 5 feet (the length of the telescopic rod I was using. For some reason my missing bites is increasing with ELEVEN bites on shrimp all missed, Gareth missed 2 while bass of 3-4lb were constantly seen moving around. We could have stayed until midnight but gave it until about 10 as it was so wet.

So Sunday was a blank day for me with 15 missed bites – must do better. As you can imagine I took some flak for missing so many, LOL. Last two days to follow- will I catch?