“Please be gentle with me – this is my first time….”

On my first tutorial session I took out a young angler by the name of Thomas, he was eager to get out on the bank and catch what he thought was the hard to tempt ‘elusive carp’.

As I was supplying the tackle for the day I had the car loaded and sat waiting at home for his arrival. Shortly after Thomas turned up we were on the banks of a local lake setting up in the anticipation and hope that we would catch a few fish. Thomas was a keen young man and I had my fingers crossed that I would be his gillie and land a carp or two for him.

The awesome size 5 Covert Chod hooksInitially we were using chod rigs combined with the ever faithful Vor-tex, coupled with Gardner Chod hooks – a deadly combination.

Disruption hooklength material and size 6 Covert Incizor hooksAfter a couple of hours casting to various parts of the lake I decided to put both rods on bottom baits as I had put out quite a few freebees. I decided to stick using the Vor-tex, but this time hook choice was a size 6 Covert Incizor hook tied to a section of 15lb Disruption hook length. This was the hooklink of choice as its excellent brown colour would blend into the lake bottom.

During the last week there had been torrential rain and conditions were not looking good for a bite. I was constantly scanning the water for any sign of movement that might give the location of the fish away.

I recast both rods with a small Micromesh PVA bag of Sticky’s Baits Bloodworm Pellets, more in hope and as luck would have it fifteen minutes later the left hand rod roared off. In the excitement Thomas was running around like a headless chicken, but as the initial adrenalin rush subsided he was soon lifting the rod into what was to turn out to be a carp. After a few heart stopping moments and what seemed an age Thomas decided his arms were hurting too much and tried to pass the rod to me. With a bit of persuasion I managed to get him to play the carp to the waiting net and as we lifted the mesh around it his smile was evident for everyone to see. A large crowd of onlookers had gathered to savour the moment. It was not the biggest carp in the world but the smile on his face most defiantly was!

Thomas and his first carp caught using Covert end tackle