A freebie for a PB (or 2) at Anglers Paradise...

I finally managed to make use of my 5 year loyalty weekend at Anglers Paradise this December, where they kindly provide loyal customers who have holidayed with them for 5 consecutive years with free accommodation for a weekends fishing on the well known complex.

On arrival on Friday morning, Steve and I were kindly greeted by Zyg who opened the bar just so we could have the customary "magic glass" of his infamous wine, where we were surprised to learn that we were in fact the only guests there for the whole weekend, and as such had all the swims, on all of the lakes completely to ourselves!

After a quick trip to the on site tackle shop for a few last minute bits and pieces, we decided to spend what was left of the day with minimal gear having a roam of the complex, more to try and suss out where the fish were and which lakes looked most likely of doing a decent fish or 2 than anything else.

After a quick look around octopussy, main and the specimen lake, they all looked fairly dead with nothing showing or any signs of feeding on any of them, and with that in mind we decided to give the specimen lake a go for an hour or 2, in a few spots we knew held fish in the warmer months, and as it was unseasonably mild with temperatures into double figures, hoped would still hold them now.

2 gallons of maggots for bait

I fished around 15 maggots on a hair, popped up ever so slightly, with a pva bag containing a handful of freebies cast into areas I thought might hold a fish or two. It wasn't long before there were signs of life in the area and I had a few liners before the rod tip banged round before the line went slack indicating a take. I had a fish on, but sadly it was only small, so expecting a little carp I quickly reeled it in to avoid disturbing the spot too much and kind of hoped it would come off so that it wouldn't get lost in my 50" landing net. It turned out it wasn't a carp at all, but a nice sized blue orfe, and definitely a new PB, but sadly in my lack of urgency to ready the net, it did come off as I fumbled to find the net handle. Oh well, at least something was feeding, which was somewhat encouraging!

Over the next hour or so, both Steve and I saw a bit of action, but it was all from small carp that had been the result of breeding since the lake was last netted a few years ago. We both decided to stay on the lake as at least we knew the smaller fish were active at least, and hopefully it'd only be a matter of time before the bigger fish muscled them out of the way. With this in mind I put out about a pint of maggot spread around the area to keep the small fish occupied, and switched to boilie hook baits with a handful of freebies. It was around this time that I saw a big fish jump in the opposite corner of the lake. I considered moving, but decided to stay put for a while and give my baiting plan a chance to pay off. I thought it had when my left rod suddenly hooped round, and I lifted into a fish that certainly wasn't a little 2lb pasty. It soon became apparent however that it wasn't one of the big girls either, and soon had a pretty little mirror of around 6lb in the net.

This renewed my hope that it was only a matter of time before a bigger fish made an appearance, so I decided to stay where I was for the remainder of the day. This turned out to be the wrong move, as I didn't get any more indications of fish in the area, and as the light faded and we started to pack away, I saw another big fish crash in the same corner as the one I'd seen earlier.

Mr Robin eyeing up some escaped maggots

On Saturday we decided to do a day-night-day on the main lake, as this holds a lot more carp than the specimen lake, and we thought would give us the best chance of bagging a 20. We set up in the newly named Nev's point swim, as it meant we could make use of the pagoda instead of getting our bivvies wet and covered in mud, and we'd fished the same area in the summer to great success. The morning was pretty uneventful with no signs of fish anywhere on the lake, in fact the only sign of life was a robin who'd taken a liking to the spillage from our maggot filled spods as we baited a likely area of the lake.

Morning turned to afternoon, and afternoon to evening with only 1 fish showing itself all day, about 60 yards to my right. I put a rod to the area as best I could due to the overhanging trees for an hour but nothing materialised, and as the light started to fade I moved it back to my baited area for the long night ahead. I'd decided to edge my bets a little, and had a large ball of maggots (21 to be exact, my OCD requires that I count them as I thread them on!) on my left rod, and a paradise baits "pink stink" wafter on my right hand rod. We had some food and decided to crack open the complimentary bottle of Zygs wine that we'd brought down with us from the villa. We filled a mug each and decided we should say a kind of prayer to the fishing gods in the style of Zyg from an old Matt Hayes TV show.

"Oh monsters of the deep, 

please make our alarms go beep,

even if it wakes us from our sleep,

and give us memories we may keep!"

That was the best we could come up with (or something close to that, my memory is a little hazy of the exact words, I can't think why!) and while we were trying to come up with some more words that rhymed with deep for another verse, our concentration was broken by the wail of my left hand alarm indicating that our little prayer had worked!

Lifting into the fish I knew I'd hooked something worthy of my over sized landing net, and as it made it's first run into the darkness to my right I had a sneaky suspicion that it wasn't a carp and was the very reason why I use such a large net when I fish at Anglers Paradise. Instead of the racing run often given by a carp, I was subjected to a slow steady pull, pulsating with the rhythm of a large tail slowly kicking back and forth in the waters depths, and no matter how much I tightened the drag of my reel, it seemed to make no difference to the amount of line the fish was taking. Thankfully I remembered I was only using a 20lb esp carp braid hook link and size 8 hook before I cranked the drag too high, as by this point it was pretty obvious I'd hooked a fairly large catfish.

Having caught (and lost) plenty of catfish in the past, I knew only too well how much damage the pads in their mouths can cause to even the tougher, stronger catfish braids, and how easily a sudden lunge can bend a big size 1 hook, so I'd have to be careful if I were to stand a chance of landing it on such relatively light tackle. Of course the longer I allowed it to swim around, the more time there was for the pads to slowly wear their way through my hook link, so I made the decision to give it some beans and try and get as much line back on it as possible whenever it gave me the chance.

I managed to stop its run off to my right, at which point it did a U-turn and started swimming back towards me, which saw me frantically reeling in line to keep up with it. It was far from beat however, and upon getting within probably 20 yards of me it took off to my left heading towards an island. It was too dark to tell exactly where it was, but when Steve's left rod starting beeping away from where the cat had obviously crossed his line, I knew it wasn't far from taking me around the back of the island at which point it'd be all over, so I prayed the hook link hadn't seen too much damage and gave it as much pressure as I dared, thankfully turning it back into open water. The rest of the fight was fairly trivial, and I backed the drag off a little to take some pressure off the hook link. About 10 minutes later Steve got it in the net for me 1st time (the extra size to the net helps so much with netting catfish) and the battle was over.

At first I thought it was going to be a relatively small fish for the lake at somewhere in the high 20's, simply from the fight that it had put up. After having my first glimpse of it in the net still in the water I changed my mind and thought I had a decent 30. Steve thought I was mad and that it was quite clearly a new PB, beating my old 44lb 8oz best. I mocked him by saying it was maybe 40lb at best, before swiftly changing my mind as we attempted to lift it from the water! A brief struggle later and we had it in the sling, and weighed it in at 57lb! Not a bad fish on the humble maggot!

57lb catfish, a new PB!

We polished off the rest of the bottle of wine in celebration, and decided to top up the bed of maggots with a few more spods as a marauding catfish could quite easily have mopped up what was out there in just a couple of mouthfuls! That was all the action we saw for the night however, and after some breakfast in the morning we decided that we were on the wrong lake, and that we'd cut the session short and head up to octopussy for the day and try and catch a few doubles.

I decided to fish the big bay on the shallower side of the lake (though still fairly deep), as it was sheltered from a fairly chilly and strong wind, and Steve opted to fish the shallow water near the lily pads at the top of the lake in the hope the fish were shoaled up in the cover that they provided.

It soon became clear that the shallows weren't where the fish were as a sizable carp crashed in the deeper water just round the corner of the island to my left. I informed Steve and gave him the option to move into the area before I did, as I was content with my catch from the previous day and would rather Steve caught something worthy of weighing. He made the move, and almost instantly he was getting runs and catching fish, albeit small ones, while I still hadn't had as much as a twitch on the line. I decided I was in the wrong place and moved to the opposite side of the lake which was noticeably deeper. I too got results almost instantly, also from the lakes smaller residents. A number of good sized fish showed themselves over the next couple of hours in the areas that we were fishing, but we just couldn't seem to get away from the smaller carp. I decided to take a bit of a risk, and fish the margins where I could accurately feed maggots on a regular basis in the strong winds. The change of tactic paid off and within half an hour I'd had 2 fish of around 7lb and 10lb, which while still on the smaller side for the lake were at least large enough to put up a fight and so were welcome.

Oddly, the limited action seemed to tail off as the light faded into darkness instead of increasing as it usually does, but something was crashing around over my shoulder in the specimen carp lake behind me, and while I couldn't see where it was, it sounded like it was from the same area I'd seen the fish on the Friday. It was time to pack up for the day, but Zyg had told us that as it was quiet, he was happy for us to stay the day on Monday too instead of leaving by 10am as is the norm in the summer, so I decided that I'd have a go for the fish for a few hours in the morning before we headed home.

After a good nights sleep in the villa, we headed off to the lakes. Steve headed to octopussy again as he saw it as his best chance to get a half decent carp, and I headed to the specimen lake as while it may be one of the trickier lakes on the complex, to me it seemed the most likely to do a fish as I'd seen signs of fish in the same area all weekend.

Almost as soon as I arrived, a fish revealed it's presence in the same corner of the lake as the others only a few feet from the bank. As there was no chance of anyone else coming to fish the lake, I set up quietly a few pegs away and cast up the bank to the fish in an effort to avoid spooking them. As I wanted to keep disturbance to a minimum, I decided to put my other rod in the middle of a choke point between the island and the bank. I'd decided to use the pink stink wafters as hook baits, to avoid a repeat of Fridays session with the juvenile fish.

About an hour later the fishery manager Joe came around to say hello, and while we were catching up the fish showed itself again. He offered me some advice, most of which I was already doing, but he explained that the fish don't see much angling pressure in the winter and as such I could fish both rods to the same area without really worrying about spooking the fish off, and suggested a spot in-line with a tree about 20 yards from where the fish had jumped where he had had some success before. After he had left to continue his rounds of the complex I decided to re-cast my other rod with a pva bag of maggots to the spot that he suggested.

A mere 20 minutes later and the rod screamed into action! My only real concern was that the fish would get around the nearby monk, so I gave it a bit of welly at first before backing off after I'd safely guided it into open water. A nerve racking 5 minutes later and I had it in the net. Over the years I'd managed to catch just about everything but a specimen carp from the specimen carp lake so  I was rather proud of myself of finally beating the curse of the specimen carp! I had a quick look in the net before calling Steve to see if he could come take a photo for me, explaining I'd caught a half decent fish that looked like it was a twenty.

A few minutes later Steve appeared and took a look in the net, and once again told me I had a new PB, and once again I told him there was no chance and he needed his eyes testing!... Obviously I was completely wrong, and the needle on the scales crept around to the 28lb mark, beating my previous PB by 4lb! To say I was happy with the result is a bit of an understatement!

My new 28lb PB from my nemesis lake!

The eagle eyed of you reading this will notice I'm no longer sporting a marvellously ridiculous moustache in the second photo. There's no shenanigans going on, I simply had a bet with Steve that I'd keep my 2015 Movember effort until I caught a 20lb fish, and as such had hacked the thing off with my braid scissors after landing the cat fish and had a shave back at the villa! You can still donate if you would like to even though November is now long gone too, just follow the link above.

Bit of a long blog this one and I applaud anyone who made it this far! I still can't get over the fact we were the only people there, while just a couple of hours away back home in Gloucestershire many carp waters are still quite busy! I couldn't have wished for a better weekend and hopefully will be able to find the time and money to do an off peak weekend next year too.

Barbel on the Wye

My PB Barbel!

The rivers have been open a while now, and the initial mad rush to fish them has worn off enough to make it worth the gamble of making the trip to the River Wye and hoping there's enough space to get on. This year my plan was to try beat my PB barbel, which shouldn't be that hard as that's it pictured to the right! With that said, I tried a few times on the Wye, Severn and Thames last year with a couple of friends, and none of us managed to land a single one! I had an idea where I'd been going wrong though, so I got myself organised making sure I had the correct gear ready (instead of just taking thinned out carp gear with anything I "might" need thrown in the bag, like last year!) and set off to the Wye on a Friday afternoon with my friends Ben and Lavis.

Upon arrival at our chosen stretch and walking the ~900m of bank available, it became clear that the three of us weren't going to fit on, as there was only 1 peg left that looked like it had the remotest of chances of containing a fish, so we opted to hop back in the car and drive to a different stretch about 20-30 minutes away. This proved to be a good move as it appeared to be completely void of any anglers, though somebody had obviously been fishing one of the pegs earlier in the day, as they'd decided to leave all their empty crisp packets, drink bottles and what appeared to be a box of still wriggling wax worms spread all over the bank, how utterly delightful! We chose some pegs that we'd fished last year, the bigger of which I decided to share with Ben.

The view from my peg at sunset

Ben wanted to fish the upstream side, next to an overhanging tree, which suited me as I wanted the downstream side anyway. To my left was some deep slack water with a submerged tree, which I figured would be a good place for a crack at a river carp (another fish I want to tick off my list) while out in front of me was a faster channel between the weed beds that I hoped would contain a barbel or 2. I set my rods up (2.25lb fox stalker carp rods, a bit over gunned when the rivers not in flood but I can't really justify the expense of dedicated barbel gear). The left rod I set up with a 30g pellet feeder and a shortish braided hook link to a size 6 hook with a piece of hair rigged Peperami, to fish for carp in the slack water, and the right rod I set up also with a 30g feeder (on a quick link so I could change it if it didn't hold bottom) but with a much longer hook link of around 3 feet, made from 8lb mono, as I felt this was one of the areas where I'd been going wrong in the past, using hook links that were too short when the water was pretty low and clear. For hook bait I was going to try some spicy sausage flavoured pellets that I'd bought from my local tackle shop, Lobby's Tackle in Stonehouse that looked to be about 14mm. I chose to load the feeders with a mix of hemp, halibut pellets, betaine pellets, micro spicy sausage pellets and just enough meaty groundbait mix to hold it all together in the feeder for casting. It was while I was mixing this all up in my groundbait bowl that Ben got his first bite on his quiver tip, and from the bend in his rod I guessed it wasn't going to be a bream or a little chub...

Ben's first river carp

I stopped what I was doing to give him a hand landing it if he successfully managed to keep it from diving into the branches of the overhanging tree as it was obviously a decent sized fish. I had a feeling I knew what it was going to be, and my suspicions were confirmed as the golden back of a common carp broke the surface whilst he was desperately trying to wrestle it away from the snaggy tree. Wrestle it away he did though, and after a few minutes and an incident with a small snag in the margins, I managed to slip the net under it for him. My memory fails me a Little but I think it weighed in around 14lb and was pretty much fin and scale perfect, a cracking fish so well done my friend! This boded well for my carp catching efforts I thought, so after taking a few snaps I quickly got my pellet mix ready and my rods out into the water...

And how wrong I was! I was getting plenty of little knocks on both rods as the numerous small fish in the river plundered the contents of my feeders, but after a couple of minutes of casting out all went quiet and that's how it stayed for most of the afternoon other than a small chub. I made sure to recast regularly though, trying not to leave it any more than 10 minutes between casts so that I could keep a steady trickle of pellets going into my swim, another area where I felt I'd been going wrong in past by not getting enough bait in the water. Ben wasn't fairing any better either, and I was starting to lose confidence, but was still hopeful that I'd get a take later on during the magic hour around dusk. I slouched down in my chair to "rest my eyes" for 5 minutes when I thought I saw a big knock on my right rod. I sat back up, and as I did so the rod banged violently a couple of times shortly followed by the buzzing sound of my spool spinning into life! I quickly clicked off the bait runner and lifted the rod into the fish quietly hoping that something would pull back, and it sure as hell did! The hook was set, and the fish set off at a rate of knots downstream across the river, where I managed to turn it, but now it was heading towards the sunken tree, still ripping line from the spool. I had no choice but to put the brakes on and hope it turned before the line gave out. Thankfully my rod, being designed for surface and margin fishing for carp, has a soft through action, so although quite heavy for barbel fishing managed to soak up all the lunges with ease and the fish was soon coerced away from the tree and into the safety of the open water, and a minute or so later into the net, and I had myself a new PB barbel of 8lb 4oz, almost 8lb 4oz bigger than my previous best!

At last, a proper barbel! My new PB at 8lb 4oz

Needless to say I was feeling pretty chuffed, either my Chris Yates inspired beard was having the desired effect of making me more "barbely", or the changes I'd made were paying off (I suspect a combination of the 2)! Seems as in all the fishing shows about barbel you usually see a group of them feeding rather than just the one, I was eager to get my rod back out and try catch another. I'd just cast back out when Lavis appeared behind us. He hadn't had any luck all afternoon and was moving swims for the evening, so we told him of our carp and barbel success, which he thought was a wind up!

About an hour and a half went by with no further excitement. The sun had vanished below the horizon, time was running out and I was just thinking to myself that if I was going to get another I'd have had it by now when my barbel rod screamed off again! It felt like another good fish, and behaved much like the first, tearing off down stream. It didn't cause any dramas though and the beast was soon tamed and in the net, another barbel, probably a little longer than the first but noticeably thinner, and weighed in at 7lb 12oz, not bad for a stretch of river I was told they averaged about 6lb!

7lb 12oz barbel

Quite content that I'd finally got the hang of this barbel fishing lark, I started to pack my kit away ready for the journey home. I balled my remaining groundbait over my carp rod in a last ditch effort to try buy a run while I packed the rest of my kit down. I soon realised that packing up was going to take a bit longer than I first though due to the cosy and sloping nature of the peg, so I figured I may as well chuck the barbel rod back out for 10 minutes. It was too dark to see, and I had no groundbait to load the feeder with, so I "pub chucked it" in the general direction I had been fishing, with what I guessed to be the right amount of force to get the same distance I'd been casting with a loaded feeder. As I put the rod on the rest, Lavis turned up with his gear, ready to head back to the car. He told us he'd had a few nice chub, and I told him he'd just missed my second barbel, when the rod screamed off again! A similar battle to first 2 ensued, only this time it was too dark to see what direction it was heading in, other than downstream. There wasn't any drama though, and with the help of Ben it was soon in the net, a PB equalling barbel of 8lb 4oz!

8lb 4oz barbel, joint PB

This one was missing one of his whiskers, but other than that was in perfect condition, as were all the others that I'd caught. Ben took a couple of snaps for me and I rested him up in the net making sure he was well recovered before letting him go, as I had done with all of the fish. I decided that was a rather fitting end to a good days fishing, so packed my gear down and called it a day. I'm really starting to get into this river fishing, you never quite know what you're going to get, and when you do get something you know it was there because that was where it chose to live, not because someone chose to put it there like with a lake, which somehow seems to make it more rewarding. Hopefully it wont be so long before my next report, tight lines all!

Anglers Paradise 2015

I'm back from my annual week at Anglers Paradise in Devon with my friend Steve, and this is how it went...

 Fri 5th - Sat 5th June: Nirvana Specimen Catfish Lake

The weeks holiday proper didn't start until Saturday, but we like to extend it a little by going a day early and doing a 24h session on one of the complexes day ticket lakes, and after the success of last year we decided to try the specimen catfish lake on the nirvana day ticket complex.

Nirvana Specimen Catfish Lake

This lake has a relatively low stock of catfish with around a dozen whiskered residents, but they're all a good size for English fish, going to over 60lb! We arrived just after mid day and had the whole lake to ourselves, so we decided to fish the same peg as last year which allowed us to access pretty much the entire lake other than the small area on the other side of the island. The weather was a rather chilly 12ºC with patchy cloud and a brisk northerly wind, not ideal conditions but we've caught in much worse so were still hopeful for some action.


I decided to stay clear of the island this year and concentrate on the open water to my right, where I'd caught my PB from last year. Again I used a free running low resistance set up with my simple pellet rig, about 18" long 35lb fox coretex coated braid tied to a size 4 fox kuro s3 hook, with a single 20mm halibut pellet and a sticky baits white krill pop up presented snowman style on the hair. It's what worked for me last year, and as the saying goes, if it's not broke, don't fix it!

Instead of baiting up an area and fishing over it (which never seems to have worked for me in the past) my plan was to put 3 or 4 20mm pellets in a pva bag and cast to a new location every couple of hours in the hope of landing a nice pile of food close enough to a big old moggy to tempt it into having a light snack without having to stray too far from it's resting place. Usually this would be the part of the blog where I describe an epic battle between man and fish and display a beautiful trophy shot of my catch... But the truth is I didn't catch one, so I can't! I didn't have so much as a beep (except those caused by the wind) for the whole of the day and night, and neither did Steve.

In the morning, I decided to change tactics on my left hand rod, and swapped over to my popped up meat rig, with a big old lump of luncheon meat popped up about 9 inches off the bottom, and try fishing closer to the island. It wasn't long until the rod was off, with a rather tentative take, but alas there was nothing on the end when I struck, but my big old lump of meat had vanished... As I hadn't felt any sign of a fish on the strike, I figured it may well still be in the area, so baited up another big lump of meat and cast back to the same spot. Sure enough after about half an hour I had another very tentative bite, but this time I decided to sit on my hands and see if it developed into a proper take. It didn't, but my swinger continued to dance up and down with the odd couple of beeps from the alarm, so I very carefully tightened down and could feel something tugging on my line, so decided to hit it. This time there was something on the end, but it was far too small to be one of the catfish, and after a very short battle, the culprit was revealed to be a very greedy perch!

A nice perch of around 1.5lb

That was all the action we saw on the catfish lake, and at 10am it was time to pack the gear away and have a wander around the lakes while we waited for the bar to open for Zyg to greet us with a glass or 2 of his famous wine.

Sat 6th - Sun 7th June: Octopussy

After seeing Zyg, doing a bit of food shopping in Holsworthy and having a bite to eat in the villa, we decided to do a session on the octopussy lake, as we were already geared up for the cats.

Octopussy lake

We had the lake to ourselves when we arrived, and set up at the dam end, with me on the left near the monk and Steve on the right, as he had a score to settle with a catfish he'd lost at the net on that peg on our first visit in 2010, and it's been haunting him ever since (with a fair bit of help from me!). I decided to fish just off the reeds on the corner of the island with one rod, as I'd had 2 cats from there a couple of years ago, and the other rod in the open water to my left, though not too close to the monk to give myself a fighting chance of steering a catfish away if I was lucky enough to hook one.

It was bright and sunny, but still unseasonably cold with the brisk wind only easing up later on in the evening. Nothing much seemed to be happening for most of the day, but as the wind eased up a little I noticed a fish I assumed to be a carp constantly topping over my left hand rod. I fired out a few dog biscuits and almost instantly the fish was aggressively taking them off the surface. I quickly made up my surface stalking rod, and reeled in my left cat rod to have a crack at the topping fish. I already had a surface rig made up, with 2 pieces of fake corn on a small wide gape hook. A dull brownish piece closest to the hook to mimic the colour of a dog biscuit from below the water, and a normal bright yellow piece on top to make it easier for me to see from the bank. I cast to where the fish had been topping and catapulted out some more dog biscuits. The fish however appeared to have followed the last few remaining biscuits I'd first fired out closer in towards the monk. I gently eased my bait back into position, and I'd barely stopped reeling in when there was a splash and my rod was being torn out my hand! A short scrappy battle ensued and my prize was in the net, a little grass carp which I guessed to be around 10lb

Grass carp off the top from Octopussy

I fired out some more dog biscuits but to no avail, it seemed the grass carp had been the only fish feeding off the top, so I put the stalking rod away and recast my cat rod.

Sunset over octopussy

As the evening wore on, the lake seemed to come alive with carp crashing around in the margins and bays, I would have suspected they were spawning but I wouldn't have thought the lake temperature was anywhere near warm enough yet with the rather chilly start to the summer. As the sun disappeared below the tree line and the light started to fade, I recast some fresh pellets to my island spot, and switched my left hand cat rod over to an eel rod, as I'm quite a fan of the slippery little fellas who most people seem to deem as a pest, and I had it on good authority that were some good ones in there, possibly over 6lb.

Due to lake rules I was limited as to what baits I could use for the eels (usually I'd fish a small fresh deadbait) so I opted for cooked king prawns, which I'd managed to catch a small one on the year before while miraculously managing to avoid the carp and cats. I had action almost straight away, but the suspected eels were either bootlaces and far too small to eat the bait, or they were being rather cunning (which is pretty typical of eels in my experience) and were chewing the bait clean off the hair. I had to make a change to my rig, as I was burning through baits pretty fast and I'd only bought 1 pack of prawns, so I ditched the hair rig and made up a shortish rig consisting of 45lb quicksilver gold (I know Joe hates this stuff, but eels will chew through pretty much everything else with ease) and a size 6 hook to which I mounted the prawn directly. I soon had some more action and it seemed the change had worked as I soon had a fish on, but was it an eel? At first I thought it may have been a cat as it was pulling pretty hard and refused to come off the bottom, but after about a minute I managed to lift the fish off the lake bed and it suddenly felt much lighter, so I knew it wasn't a cat and was almost definitely a half decent eel. It was soon up on the top and was indeed my target species, and with my new 50" net didn't manage to pull the usual trick of wrapping its tail under the net and pulling itself back out, so was netted with ease in the dark, result!

Not one of the monsters, but not a bad one. I didn't weigh it but would hazard a guess at around 2 to 2.5lb

I had another eel of a similar size about 40 minutes later, but sadly I'd managed to deep hook it despite using a short hook link and being on the rods within a few seconds of the first beep, and was forced to cut the line as it's widely believed amongst eel anglers this gives the fish a much better chance of survival than probing around with discourgers and forceps, which in itself can cause severe damage to the fish even if you do manage to unhook it. Because of this I decided not to risk deep hooking another, and switched back to fishing for cats.

The next thing I heard as I was awoken from my slumber in the early hours wasn't my alarm screaming off, but my friend Steve asking if I could give him a hand. I got up and wandered over to his peg, to find he had a catfish resting in his landing net! Apparently he'd been fighting it for around 20 minutes and I'd managed to sleep through the whole thing! Still, I was awake now and able to help lift it from the water and take some photos. Steve wasn't sure if he'd managed to win a bottle with a 20+ (I should probably note here to people not familiar with Anglers Paradise, that you are able to win up to 3 bottles of Zygs wine during a weeks holiday by catching fish over a certain size, and for cats and carp its 20lb or bigger)  but I took one look in the net and could see he'd done it easy, and upon lifting it onto his mat it felt even heavier than it looked and I guessed it'd probably go over 30lb!

After unhooking we weighed it in my sling (as someone hadn't got theirs ready!) and the dial went round to over 42lb! After taking off the weight of the sling, Steve had a new PB catfish of just over 37lb, well done mate!

Steve's new PB cat, over 37lb!

That was all the action we had for the night, and we awoke the next morning to another cold sunny day. The lake was pretty quiet throughout the morning and I didn't hold out much hope of catching a cat in the bright sunshine with such cold temperatures. 

A friendly Chaffinch searching for some breakfast

The other various birds and animals that call Anglers Paradise home were active throughout the day, with chaffinches, robins, a rather brave baby moorhen (who we named bigfoot, because, oddly, he had rather large feet!) and possibly a pied wagtail (I'm not that up to scratch on my birds) making regular visits to my peg, and even in my bivvy picking up stray pellets and bits of boilies, so I took the opportunity to get a few snaps of the birds while the fishing was slow.

As the morning turned into afternoon, the suns rays had had a chance to warm the water and the lake seemed to wake up, with carp constantly crashing in the first bay up the left hand side of the lake. A couple of other anglers had set up down the right side of the lake during the morning, but the left hand side was still completely free, so I decided to cast my left rod up into the opening of the bay, still with the cat "snowman" rig on as I'd had a few mid to high double carp on that rig last year. About 20 minutes later my left rod was screaming off and I was into a fish! I had to coax it back out of the bay at first but other than that there wasn't any real drama during the fight, and I soon had a carp in the net, a rather pretty fully scaled mirror weighing in at 13lb

13lb fully scaled mirror from octopussy

I put the rod back out to the same spot, and it wasn't long until it was off again! Only this time my line snapped almost straight away, and on closer inspection I'd obviously damaged it at some point during the previous fight or on the wooden platform when landing the fish, as the line felt rough and scraped near the break point. My own fault, I'm usually pretty religious at checking my line after a fish if its been near snags during a fight, this time I forgot and I paid the price. I went on to have another run from the bay spot, which turned out to be a small carp of around 6 or 7lb that came off during the fight, before we had to pack up at 5pm ready for the Sunday night barbecue and a night in the villa.

Mon 8th - Tue 9th June: Main lake

Refreshed and re-energised from a decent meal and a proper nights sleep we had a quick walk around the lakes before deciding what to do for the day. We'd have liked to have fished the specimen carp lake as we could see some real big lumps basking in the sun, but it looked like there were already 3 people on the lake and in our experience it doesn't fish well when there are loads of lines in the water, so we decided to hold off till later in the week and fish the main lake instead, as it was unusually empty bar 1 person on the little point, and we could see quite a lot of fish cruising around in the big point swim. It's worth pointing out at this point that we have historically done really, REALLY bad on this lake, we just don't seem to be able to get to grips with it despite all the advice from Joe (the estate manager) who seems to be able to nail it every time he fishes it, so despite having many fish in front of us confidence was mildly optimistic at best! We did however, get some tips from Dion on what pegs had been fishing well lately (which included the big point) and how he'd caught some big fish on the Saturday from the little point swim, which seemed to more fit our fishing style than some of the other advice we'd had in the past.

Big point swim on the main lake

I set up in the big point swim, and baited an area with about 100 boilies to the left of a set of dwarf lily pads at about 30 yards which was right in the path of the visible cruising fish, and over a nice hard clear area on the bottom that I found with the marker float. Steve fished in the peg to my left which didn't have a lot of water to go at, but was a channel between an island and the bank so an ideal ambush point for any passing fish. I changed my free running cat setup over to a bolt rig lead clip system, and decided to fish a cut down cell dumbell tipped with fake corn on one rod, and a big catastrophic (AP's own bait) snowman on the other. Catastrophic is designed as a cat bait, and while there are some very big cats in the main lake, I was using it to try and single out the bigger carp as I really wanted to try break my current pb of 20lb 4oz.

It didn't take long before Steve had a take, a little pasty of maybe a couple of pound, not exactly what we were after, but at least he wasn't blanking, which was a big improvement over previous years! He re-baited his spots and cast back out, and it wasn't too long before his rod was off again, only this time it definitely wasn't a pasty! A fairly lengthy battle broke out as he tried to wrestle it away from the various danger areas of lily pads, and at one point it looked like he was going to lose, but he didn't and eventually he slipped the net under a lovely fully scaled mirror of 24lb 12oz, his second bottle winning fish!

Steve looking rather chuffed with his 24lb 12oz mirror from the main lake

The rest of the afternoon passed without so much as a liner, despite there being groups of fish constantly cruising around the area. I tried zig fishing for a couple of hours about a foot below the surface in an attempt to intercept one of the scaly submarines but it just wasn't to be. As evening approached I put out 20 or 30 fresh baits over my spot and switched my rods back to bottom baits. I was busy sorting out my rig wallets in my bivvy when my cell rod beeped a couple of times before screaming off. I did the obligatory "wave your hands around your head" dance while my brain took a few milliseconds to wake up and register what was happening before dashing to my rods and lifting into what felt like a fairly good fish. Obviously it ploughed straight through the set of dwarf lily pads, but I wasn't too worried as they weren't very thick and pulled out the lake bed fairly easy if the line did get caught on them. Thankfully the lead clip system had worked like a dream and dropped the lead, allowing me to easily navigate the fish out of the pads and into open water where I played it safely to the net. It looked a nice fish I was sure it wasn't a bottle winner and guessed it would weigh in around 18lb. I let it rest for a while in the margins in the safety of my sling while I got the scales and camera ready and weighed it in at 17lb 4oz. A much welcomed fish from a lake I've struggled with.

17lb 4oz mirror from the main lake

By now the sun was riding low in the sky, and it was time to top up the swims with some more bait, and get the spots measured out with a set of fox marker sticks so we could be sure of hitting the right spots in the darkness of night. The insects were out in force as soon as the sun had set, and we were being slowly eaten alive, so we called it an early night and went to hide in our bivvies behind the safety of the mossy nets. It felt like I'd only just drifted off to sleep when I was rudely awoken by a high pitched squealing and blue flashing lights. I don't know why but it took me a second to realise that this wasn't a police car passing my bivvy, but in fact being caused by my receiver set as my right hand rod was tearing off across the lake! Maybe it's old age as I had just turned 36 on the Saturday! I got on the rods as quick as I could and lifted into the fish. The sky had clouded over and the moon hadn't yet risen so it was very dark. I had no idea where the fish was, only a general sense of its direction from the force on the rod and the occasional splash of its tail. Eventually it came into head torch range and was soon in the net, and looked to be a little bigger than the first one while in the net. Had I done it? Had I landed my first bottle winning fish of the holiday?.. No! I hadn't. While it was indeed an inch or 2 longer, it wasn't quite as deep or fat as the first fish, and weighed in at an almost identical 17lb on the nose!

17lb mirror from the main lake

I was still pretty happy though, I'd had 2 good fish from a lake I'd fished for 96 hours in the past without so much as a line bite! Maybe I was finally getting to grips with the main lake... The rest of the night passed without event and we managed to get a fairly decent amount of sleep. The morning proved more eventful however as Steve's rod was off again and he was in to another good fish. Again the game of cat and mouse (or Steve and carp) was played dangerously close to the lily pads, but Steve was once again the victor and had caught himself a lovely 19lb common, just 1lb shy of winning his 3rd bottle and we still had the rest of the week ahead of us!

Steve with a 19lb common from the main lake

As the sun rose into the sky, the mist burnt off the lake and it seemed to go eerily quiet... That is all apart from the guy on little point who seemed to be reeling them in 2 at a time from the sounds of it! We had a decision to make, we could stay on main for another 24h, or we could try our luck on the specimen carp lake. We reeled in and had a quick look at the specimen lake. Everyone had left apart from 1 guy, who was fishing round the opposite side of the lake that we wanted to fish, and the area we wanted to fish still had at least 4 or 5 big carp basking in the morning sun... I think our mind was made up!

Tue 9th - Wed 10th June: Specimen Carp Lake

We moved all our kit up onto the specimen lake ready for 9am when we were able to get a day ticket from the tackle shop and receive some worldly advice (mostly abuse!) from Rich, the resident tackle shop goblin, who found it highly amusing that Steve had won 2 bottles while I hadn't won any, and had for some reason developed a fetish for withy pool rigs...

We got all our gear set up as quietly as possible on the lake, but after watching the water for a while I wasn't really feeling it, it didn't feel right. There were big fish in front of us, some as close as just a few feet from the bank, but they were just sitting there. Usually in this lake you see the big fish quite often, but they're generally cruising around their patrol routes around the island and a few margin spots, this year they were just sat there still, doing nothing. The area we were fishing (near the ramp swim) had also become completely covered in a light scattering of dwarf lily pads since last year, and it was proving tricky to get a bait out where I could be confident I hadn't snagged any lily pads, and hadn't pinned so many down with my mainline so as to create a big flashing neon arrow telling the fish exactly which area to avoid like the plague. Also, the whole area was a lot more coloured than the rest of the lake, at first we'd (rather hopefully) put this down to feeding, but given the time of year, the odd fish behaviour and the now weedy environment, I began to wonder if they had been spawning, or were getting ready to spawn. Because of this I took the decision to move round the corner to the narrow channel just past the pagoda. It was a lot clearer here, and was a good choke point that the fish would pass through if entering or leaving the bay area we'd originally intended to fish.

Specimen carp lake

Steve decided to remain where he was, just around the corner to the right of the pagoda, and then another couple of anglers turned up and set up a couple of pegs to my left, so it looked like my plan was failing, as now any fish that did decide to swim through the narrow channel had to swim past either Steve's baits, or the other 2 anglers baits and lines to get to mine, so confidence was starting to bomb pretty badly. I baited the gaps between the points of the island and the bank with around 30 boilies each, and cast a rod to each, the left with a paradise baits pink stink wafter, the right with a trusty old whittled down cell dumbell.

Specimens of the future?

For the whole 24h we did on specimen carp, I didn't see 1 single big fish pass through my swim. In fact I didn't see 1 single big fish anywhere on the whole lake, except in the weedy area by the ramp. The only other signs of life I saw were a couple of grass carp amongst the pads up around the top end of the lake, and a shoal of baby carp that seemed to appear like magic after I baited a margin spot with a handful of pellets. Needless to say I didn't catch anything, I didn't even get a liner or a single beep from an overly optimistic baby carp. Steve caught a small carp around 6lb in the night but that was it. The story was the same for the anglers to my left too, not so much as a beep between them. As soon as the sun was up in the sky in the morning I packed my kit down with no real plan as to where to go next, I just knew I didn't want to stay where I was.

Wed 10th - Thu 11th June: Octopussy - Part 2

After consulting with Steve, we decided to give octopussy another go. There had been a freezing cold wind the day before on the specimen lake, but on Wednesday the wind had changed direction and was much warmer and gentler, it felt a little humid and generally more like how summer should feel so we felt we had a good chance of a catfish, and octopussy only had 1 person on it, in the swim Steve had fished on Saturday.

Octopussy lake

This left the 2 pegs with the big bay on the road side of the lake completely free, and I'd caught 2 catfish from these pegs in previous years, both weighing in at 27lb 8oz. I opted for the left hand peg, and Steve took the right hand peg. I opted to fish 1 rod half way up the left side of the bay near a small set of lily pads, and the other rod in the corner of the lake under a tree, where Steve had caught his 37 earlier in the week. I decided to fish my catfish snowman rig on the right hand rod, and a 3 * 20mm pellet rig on the left. Almost instantly I had a rather snatchy take on the right hand rod, no more than 2 or 3 minutes of casting out, but there was nothing there on the strike. I recast, and had another take within a minute, this time I connected with what I think was a small carp as it didn't stay on for long, whatever it was it wasn't very big. On re-casting again, I got more snatches at the bait and it became clear that I was being plagued by some ambitious pasties. I switched my cat rig over to a small carp rig for a few casts just to try and catch them to stop them messing with my cat rigs, and hooked a few small fish of around 1-2lb, only 1 of which I got all the way to the bank, at which point the bites dried up, so I swapped back to my cat rig.

Steve caught bigfoot!

Not much really happened after that for the rest of the morning. There were plenty of carp crashing around and the other guy on the lake (who was carp fishing) seemed to be getting some good action, but we were here for the cats so resisted the urge to go after the carp. The lake certainly felt more alive this time round and I was much more confident, but as it was bright and sunny (and actually warm now!) I figured I'd probably have to wait until the sun was lower in the sky before the cats came out to play, so decided to have a little snooze in the sun. I was awoken by Steve laughing, and it transpired that bigfoot, the fearless baby moorhen, had jumped off of Steve's peg into his landing net, rather than into the lake and was having a bit of trouble getting back out! After a quick photo of the incident we set him free, at which point he just calmly climbed back out of the water onto the bank and continued to stride around our pegs laughing in the face of danger as his mother nervously chirped away at him from the safety of the island.

As the afternoon turned into evening and the shadows started to get a bit longer on the lake, I had a very slow steady take on my right hand rod which had catfish written all over it! I jumped out my chair excitedly, rushed to my rods and then struck... Into thin air. I was starting to get a bit frustrated, it seemed like things just weren't going to go my way at all on this holiday. Then to make things worse, almost straight after my missed take, Steve gets a run and it's clear he's into another catfish! It gave him quite a run around in the bay and I was expecting to see some giant mutant tadpole come sailing towards the net when he finally had it beat, but it was only a baby at 13lb, so naturally in the style of Des Taylor I told Steve to man up and stop fighting them like a pansy and questioned how he ever managed to get the 37 pounder in at all!

Steve with a 13lb kitten

Naturally karma was soon to come kick me square in the balls as Steve's rod rattled off again, and it was clear he was into another catfish! This time it was REALLY kicking his arse, dragging him all over the place into parts of the lake so far under overhanging trees I genuinely thought it had climbed out the lake and started going across the island! I'd like to say that Steve manned up and took control of the situation, but in reality I think the catfish just got bored of toying with him and decided to swim into the net. Nether the less in the net it was, and Steve had obviously done the grand slam of winning all 3 bottles of wine in a week, as the scales twirled round to show a cool 26lb 8oz. Well played my friend, well played...

Steve with a 26lb 8oz catfish. Did you notice they both have the same facial expression?

I succumbed to defeat. It was clear that despite finally finishing "The Compleat Angler", sir Izaak was not happy with me (maybe because it took me over 3 years to read his book and I still didn't understand half of what he wrote...) and had decided to smite me down with some kind of anti-catfish or bottle winning curse to get his revenge. Still, never a quitter I re-baited my rods and put them back out ready for the night ahead, only this time I moved the left rod to the middle of the thin channel between the island and the bank to my left so that any roaming catfish would have to pass by it at some point.

Obviously the next time I opened my eyes was because the sun was shining in my bivvy and the birds were singing so loudly I could barely hear the massive bird scaring air canon that decided it was going to fire off at 5 in the morning. I was feeling quite sad that my best chance of a catfish, and probably a bottle had all but slipped through my fingers, but also weirdly relieved that the pressure was off to win a bottle. Still, I decided seems as I was awake, I may as well change my baits before going back to sleep as chances are my pellets had been whittled away to nothing during the night. I changed the bait on both rods which had indeed turned from 20mm pellets into pathetic little matchsticks and put them back out onto the spots I'd fished during the night with a handful of freebies over each. 

I climbed back into my warm sleeping bag and closed my eyes. I was just drifting off back to sleep when that police car was back that I'd seen on main... Wait, no I had a run! And it was on the 3 pellet rig in the narrow channel, so hopefully wasn't a greedy little carp either. I leapt out of bed and over to my rods where my left hand spool was slowly ticking round with the culprit obviously unaware it had been hooked. I said a little prayer to Izaak hoping that this time there would be some resistance when I struck, flicked the bait runner off and lifted the rod into the air. The tip arched over and all hell broke loose, finally, cat on! I played it hard at first, preferring to turn the fish well before it reaches the snags rather than Steve's method of letting it do what it likes and pray it doesn't come off. Once I'd shown it who was boss, the catfish was soon under control in open water so I backed the drag off and played it out until it was ready for the net, which it glided into clean as a whistle, that little extra size over a standard 42" really seems to have helped. I quickly weighed it in and rested it up in the sling before phoning Steve to get his lazy arse out of bed and come photograph my 26lb catfish for me. Yes, I'd won a bottle!

26lb catfish from octopussy

Upon photographing the fish, it looked oddly familiar as half of its left whisker was missing, and I was sure I'd caught one like it before, so upon arriving home after the holiday, I checked my old photos and sure enough, the 27lb 8oz fish I had last year, not only from the very same peg, but from within 10ft of the same spot I was fishing also had half its left whisker missing! Was it the same fish? I think so, what do you think?

2015 catfish at 26lb

2014 catfish at 27lb 8oz

Suddenly feeling somewhat happier I recast my rods and went back to sleep for a couple of hours dreaming of making an amazing comeback at the last minute and "winning" the holiday. When we awoke it was already really warm but still fairly early in the morning. The sun was out but it was forecast to turn stormy by night time with heavy rain and even thundery showers. Any sensible person would have called it quits and packed all the gear away and just done a day somewhere, after all we'd paid a load of money for the villa and only slept in it for 1 night and the holiday was almost over...

Thu 11th - Fri 12th June: Main lake - Part 2

Of course, I'm not sensible and convinced Steve we should do another night on the main lake. It had been pretty much empty all week, where as its usually rammed to the gills (excuse the pun) I guess we'd just hit a lucky week where most of the residents were more match / pleasure anglers. The weather felt right and with some warm wet stormy weather forecast for the evening was only going to get better (fishing wise, not necessarily for us!). I really wanted to have another go at breaking my PB and it didn't really take much twisting of Steve's arm to convince him it was a good idea. We had a quick recon mission down to the main lake to find it was in fact completely empty, and decided to fish the same pegs we had earlier in the week as they'd done quite well for us and were some of the only places any decent amount of bait had gone in all week.

After moving all the gear down from octopussy and setting the rods back up for carp fishing, we baited up our swims with around half a kilo of boilies and headed back to the Villa for an hour or so to get some food and freshen up a little as we had gotten a little on the ripe side by now! Upon our return another angler had set up in the little point swim, and shortly after a whole stream of people appeared and headed off round the far side of lake. We put the rods out and set about getting the bivvys tidied up ready for the day ahead, and it wasn't long until one of my rods was screaming off. A fairly short battle later I had a nice sized common in the net. I knew it wasn't a PB but weighed it in all the same at 16lb 4oz.

16lb 4oz Common from the main lake

Hopes were high with a fish so early on in the session, and in the middle of the day when it tends to be fairly quiet. I had to re-make my rig as the hook point had become damaged at some point, but I soon had it back out on the spot and surrounded it with another 20-30 boilies. Fish could be seen cruising around all day over my spot but they didn't appear to be feeding. I did manage to get a couple of fish up on the surface later in the evening at about 60 yards by catapulting out pva bags of dog biscuits. I tried for an hour or 2 to snag one but they did the usual trick of eating every floater out there bar the one on the hook. Still, I was pretty confident we'd be in for a good night and so far we'd only had a couple of short but heavy rain showers so it didn't look like we were in for a pasting from the weather either. I put the cell rod back out over my spot, but decided to put the pink stink rod next to an overhanging tree only a rod length or so away in the right hand margin where I'd seen a few fish loitering around while I had been surface fishing, and covered it with a handful of boilies.

Night time came and we went to bed with a light drizzle in the air with a good feeling about the night to come. The next thing I know, it's morning. Not a single beep during the night and I was feeling slightly cheated that neither of us had caught and that my chance of beating my PB was pretty much over, when out of nowhere my right hand margin rod let out a couple of beeps before screeching into life! I dashed out of the bivvy to find my rod hooped round top the right, line zooming off the spool as something had ran off into the marginal bay to my right. It was a little dicey at first as my line had gone through the overhanging tree branches in the water, but by dipping the rod tip into the lake it was soon free and the fish was heading out into the open water in the middle of the lake. It felt a big fish and I was optimistic that it could be a new PB while gently coercing it into the net. I looked down at my prize and it didn't look as big as it had felt, it looked another mid double sized fish, if not a little smaller than the ones I'd already caught. Still, it was a fish all the same and I was keen to have a look at it so began to lift it from the water. It was at this point I realised that it was a fair bit heavier than it looked from the top down, and I was wondering if I'd maybe managed to just sneak a new PB after all. Once on the mat it become clear it was full of spawn as its belly was huge, so I didn't want to mess it around too much. We weighed it quickly and took a few quick photos before resting her up in the sling making sure she was well recovered and ready go back to her watery home. It was indeed a new PB of 24lb and a second bottle winning fish in under 24h, so I was a very happy camper, but the story doesn't end there...

My new PB of 24lb from the main carp lake on a pink stink wafter hookbait

I was quick to get my rod back out on the margin spot, with another 8-10 boilies scattered around it. I'd barely gone back to sleep when the rod was off again! I lifted into another fish, this time it hadn't taken me through the tree so didn't cause any drama. It didn't feel very big and came in pretty easy. It looked a low double in the net, and I'd just collapsed my net to lift it out the water when my other rod screamed off. Stood on the bars of my collapsed net to secure the first fish in the water, I lifted into the second fish which almost instantly rolled on the surface at about 35 yards and looked to be a good size. I yelled at Steve to wake him up as I had no net to land it in, so he kindly netted it for me using his own net. The first fish, as suspected was a low double of 12lb 8, and the second fish was another bottle winner at 21lb! 3 bottle winning fish in the space of 24h. I could hardly believe it, everything had come good right at the end, happy days!

My 3rd bottle winning fish in 24h, a 21lb mirror from the main lake

Sadly Steve didn't get any fish on our 2nd visit to main, but he'd already had an amazing week so I don't think he was too bothered by the blank. And as a Brucey bonus, there was a gap in the wet weather that had been forecast for the whole day, so we took the opportunity to get all the kit down and packed up in the dry. We were completely knackered and had skin like the surface of the moon from all the insect bites, but we still had the best part of a days fishing left, so we carted all the gear back up the villa and decided we'd have a bit of fun with minimal gear on the smaller fish lakes for the day.

Fri 12th June: Float lake

After a couple hours rest in the villa and a quick trip to the tackle shop to taunt the goblin, we grabbed a couple of rods and headed to the float lake for a few hours fishing. We only barely managed to squeeze ourselves on as the lake was pretty full, but oddly the pegs that were free were our favourite ones anyway, so it didn't really matter. The lake soon emptied though as the weather forecast came true and the heavens opened dispensing the famous Devonshire "liquid sunshine" over everyone that hadn't run for cover, which was pretty much everyone except for us! Despite the rain, heavy at times, it didn't put the fish off, and I must of caught 20-30 fish off the top using a tiny floater rig I'd made just for the float lake. Most of the fish were koi to about 4 or 5lb with the odd chub and blue orfe thrown in. I did hook a rather nice looking golden orfe at one point of probably around 3lb but the little bugger came off. Steve had a good day fishing on the bottom with corn, catching just about every species imaginable, with a few odd looking creations that seemed to be a bit of everything themselves! I only managed the one photo of a rather pretty little koi before the monsoons came, as I didn't want to risk ruining my camera in the rain, but all in all it was a rather fun end to an eventful week.

Pretty little koi of maybe around 2.5 to 3lb from the float lake.

Summary

We had a good week as always, with plenty of banter with Zyg and Rich, met a few new people, got some sound advice from Dion, Rich and the other tackle shop guy (who we decided to call fake Joe, sorry!) so thanks to those guys for helping us out. The only thing that was missing was Zenia and Joe who were off on their own holidays with their little family. Looking forward to next years trip already, only 365 days to go... ;-)

Spinning for brownies

It's trout season again and as the Easter weather was actually nice for once I thought I'd spend a couple of hours in the evening wandering the banks of my local river Frome.

The river Frome in the Stroud valleys.

My spinner of choice, barbs crushed down.

I take as little kit as possible, just a small 1000 sized reel, an ultra light spinning rod, a pair of scissors that double as forceps, a net and roll up mat, and a small box of spinners. My spinners of choice are the plain Mepps Aglia range, in a size 00 to a size 1, as the local trout rarely go over a pound. The river pretty much contains nothing but trout and the odd micro species (bullhead, minnows etc...) this far upstream, so there's no need to worry about pike or anything like that so I use a 6lb braided line tied direct to the spinner. I'd prefer to have a swivel and quick link in the mix, but I find them too bulky for the smaller spinners to work properly, and also the trout can see them in the clear water and will often shy away from the lure once they get close.

A small wild brownie near the rivers edge.

The trout are pretty easy to locate, in the shallower runs you merely need to take a stealthy approach and look in the water to find them. They can blend in quite well with the bottom in places, but the movement as they swim against the current is what usually gives them away. In the deeper sections it's still possible to see them if the lighting is just right, but the usual sign you'll get that there's a trout about will be the sound of a splash as it takes an insect from the surface of the water. Obvious features like undercut banks, protruding roots, fallen trees etc. are good places to try too as they're quite often the home of a trout or 2.

My first brownie of the season

I had my first take on about my 3rd or 4th cast, but the hooks didn't take and the fish was off again just as fast. The same happened for the next 4 takes! I do get quite a lot of fish drop off as many are quite small and I think aren't heavy enough to provide enough resistance to set the hooks, despite using a brand new spinner with sharp hook points. Still, 5 in a row seemed like a pretty harsh run of luck, but it didn't take long before I finally got one in the net. It wasn't very big, maybe 6-8oz but on the light gear still put up a good scrap in the flow.

After catching that first fish my luck seemed to turn and I didn't have any more drop off or missed takes, until towards the end of the session when a monster of a fish smashed the lure hard enough to hoop the rod tip right round just for an instant before it was off back to its hiding place. I managed 10 fish in total in around 2-3 hours, all in the 6-10 oz range. Previous experience tells me that the fish are quite territorial and tend to stay in the same area, so I'll be back for another crack at the legendary "one that got away" another day. All of the fish I catch are returned, and I urge everyone else to do the same. If you want a trout for the table then buy one from a shop or fish a stocked trout fishery, our wild fish already have enough problems and don't need us adding to them.