After being let down with work numerous times, I decided to use the time I had off to my advantage. Unfortunately it meant having a very tight budget on what I was to spend my money on. I decided I’d go with the logical approach of only fishing if I had found fish (which sure enough paid off in the end). I’m not too keen on all the long distance fishing, as many of my friends know, I’d rather be tucked away in a little bay or somewhere that I can see the fish in close, instead of blasting choddies and hinge stiff rigs 180 yards towards fish that 90% of the time you won’t catch.

I started by walking laps of the lake daily, until I found fish that I thought I could angle for. The first relatively hot day we had this year saw a huge amount of carp enter one of the bays, and although I was on it quickly, Sam, a friend of mine happened to find them just before me and with a quality bit of angling ended up landing two.

Over the next few days, I continued to walk round, until on the Monday I finally found a group of around ten fish sat off the end of some snags in one of the bays. I attempted to fish for them for around three hours, but with no luck I decided to throw in a mixture of 16mm Krill boilies, some tiger nuts and a few Brazil’s. Hoping that the bait I threw in would keep the fish there until I returned the next day.

Tuesday morning came, and all I could think about was getting back to the lake. However, fortunately for the bank account but unfortunately for my fishing, I had been offered a bit of bar work helping out a friend at her pub for a couple of weeks, so I could only pop down the lake in the morning and try to pop back down after work for a quick over-nighter.

I popped into the lake whilst I was on my way to work, and I was gutted when I noticed that the bay had completely changed colour and there seemed to be a large amount of fish present. Burnt wasn’t the word!

Luckily, I managed to get away from work slightly earlier than I had expected and I soon found myself on my way back to the lake! Result!
Shortly after I arrived back in the bay, only to be greeted by a friend of mine, Jayde, sat in the swim where I had put bait. He informed me that he had seen the colour of the water and knew he had to give it a few hours (extremely good angling in my eyes).

After a brief chat, I figured I could fish the same spots from a swim opposite but I agreed to not put my rods out until he had reeled in as I wouldn’t want to ruin his chance of a bite.

Soon enough, Jayde had reeled in and I found myself putting my rods out. The first rod that went out was a PVA bag, containing crushed Krill boilies with ground pellet and a tiger nut mounted to a size 11 Covert Dark Mugga. The second rod had a shaved Brazil nut topped with a white piece of fake maize, this time mounted on a helicopter rig made up of a size 6 Covert Dark Mugga and 25lb Ultra Skin. The third rod was then placed in the margin with a simple hair rig, again tied using 25lb Ultra Skin and a size 6 Covert Dark Mugga. This time a 16mm Krill Wafter was my choice of hookbait.

Each rod went out with a firm ‘thud’ that filled me with nothing but confidence.

I had just begun setting the brolly up when the middle rod burst into life. I lifted into what felt like a big fish, followed by an extremely large yellow shape coming straight up to the surface. I tightened the clutch up and began to heave, attempting to get the fish away from the snaggy tree line, but unfortunately I couldn’t do anything else and the fish ended up ‘doing’ me in the snags.

I was livid. All of the hard work I had put in and I lost the only bite I had. I went to bed that night extremely gutted, but would you believe it, at 3 o’clock I was away again!

I hit into what I thought was the correct rod, but it’s turned out it was the margin rod that was away. Slightly embarrassed with myself, l finally lifted into the correct rod, and I felt myself connected with a powerful carp, this time swimming away from the snags.

After a short but violent battle, I had Rusty do the honours and lift the net under a lovely low thirty mirror. He went 33lb and 12oz on the scales and was a typical angry spring male.