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.