WHILE waiting for his club lakes to open, young Jon Lofthouse spent a few weeks bowling around Northlands Park road lake.

On several of these trips, Lofthouse noticed some very good fish, so he decided to pre-bait a few areas at each end of the lake.

After a week or two the conditions became favourable on the south end of the Basildon lake.

Lofthouse went down to Northlands armed with a couple of rods and proceeded to catch a 16lb common carp and the lake record, a fish known as cut tail weighing in at 30lb 4oz.

Also Lee Wilcocks has been at it again at Northlands Park. During a four-hour session he landed a 16lb 4oz common.

Gloucester Park is also fishing well, with Albert White catching 17 carp weighing up 17lb 13oz while fishing a 24-hour mid-week session.

White’s successful method was fishing the far margin on the canal stretch and he introduced 5kg of trout pellet and two kilo of scopex squid liver plus boilies.