Diary Piece - From the Cotswolds

I thought that It may be a nice idea to include a short diary piece about my own angling and also articles from customer's and Friends of Tackle Discounts. Well with the weather up and down I could not decide what to do this weekend, like most people I had a list of jobs to do at home so my time is limited and I have to try and make the most of my angling time. The intention was to do an afternoon and evening session on a new stretch of the Bristol Avon that I have just joined on Sunday. However Saturday was mild and wet and so I decided the river could wait another week or two and I would try one last session for the tench and carp on the syndicate lake I run. This lake is extremely difficult at any time of year with only a small number of fish, masses of natural food and carp that seem to always hide away! (don't they always!). I managed to talk a good Friend and fellow member, Matt Woods into an afternoon session on Sunday and we arrived just after lunch time. The plan was to fish a deep bay where the wind was blowing and put a couple of rods out for the carp and fish the float in the deep margin for whatever came along!!

We set up and both put out our carp rods, Matt opted for a scattering of 15mm boilies to a gravel patch against some reeds in about 8 ft of water whilst I decided to try and tempt a fish with Flouro hook baits and small PVA bags of mixed pellets. Carp rods sorted and a bit of float fishing was in order. Two balls of ground bait just of the marginal shelf and then regular loose feeding of maggots soon got me my first bite from a 5oz perch. Throughout the afternoon I managed to pick off an occasional roach or perch but unfortunately the tench seemed to have switched off for the winter. I did get a call from Matt in the swim next door when he hooked something bigger which turned out to be a pike of around 8lb, that had taken his maggots on his float rod. Just as it was getting dark a few fish began to roll out in the open water and so we decided to hang on for another hour or so.

At 7.30 I heard Matt's alarm sound a few beeps and then the sound we all love of a screaming alarm. The fish was obviously a carp but Matt could not tell yet how big as it swam towards him relatively easily. As he drew it towards the net we could see it was fairly fat but it only looked short. All of a sudden the fish woke up and the next 5 minutes where spent trying to keep it out of the reeds either side of the swim. Eventually the fish slid over the net cord and I was surprised to see just how fat the fish was. Onto the scales it pulled the dial around to exactly 31lb 8oz. A new Personal Best Common for Matt and only his 3 rd carp of the year.
A big well done to him, as he is an excellent all round angler who this year has had specimen tench, roach and carp in just short sessions from some extremely difficult venues. As for my session, well just a hand full of roach and perch and then just before packing up a bream of around 7lb. Next week it's off to the river Avon for some barble action(hopefully).