Abbey Lake, Cambridgeshire

It’s a great place to test new tactics and every type of fishing can be used at Abbey; stalking, surface fishing, PVA bags or even pub-chucking produce fish.

The average fish is over 20lb and the biggest swimmer in the lake is around 35lb.

Standard carping tactics will stand you in good stead here, once you’ve found a nice area to present a rig, keep the baiting approach simple and use a good quality bait.

PVA bags full of pellet and boilie crumb, casting to the main plateau or in the margins. The deep trough will catch you plenty of fish too if they’re not in the shallower areas.

Rig wise, spinners have always worked well for me or if Im using PVA bags the standard supple few inches of braid works well.

I usually start my sessions with one on the plateau in the middle of the lake, one in the margins close to the bank side reeds and the final rod in the deep trough.

This will help me understand fast where the fish are on any particular day.

Once I’ve had a bite, I’ll switch all rods to the spot as fast as possible.

The water at Abbey is quite murky so a good quality stinky fishmeal is the way to go if you’re not using PVA bags.

I found that particles were mopped up fast by smaller fish, whereas boilies stuck around and would sit there until the bigger fish turned up.

One of the biggest mistakes I’ve seen people make at Abbey is to not find the fish first and dump a load of bait in an area where the fish are not occupying.