I arrived at the lake early on Thursday to find just two anglers already fishing. I had a quick walk around the lake and sat in the end swim on the road bank to try and see if I could spot any signs of fish activity. With the aid of my binoculars it wasn’t long before I spotted some fizzing and I made out about three fish that were evident, sending lines of bubbles to the surface. All of a sudden one poked his head out, only to go back down onto the spot to feed, so I rushed to the car to retrieve my tackle.

What I really wanted to do first, while the fish were feeding, was to get a couple of baits out in the area with minimal disturbance. I used a critically balanced Red Ammo bottom bait with a Disruption hook link tied to a nice new size 6 Covert Wide Gape Talon Tip. I crushed up some matching boilies and placed them into the Easy-Loada and cast them out into the area of activity. I placed both rods on the floor and set about putting up my house ready for the following two nights.

It wasn’t long before my left hand rod was away. It was a great fight in the very weedy water, but steady pressure and with the aid of the Covert lead clip system that enabled the lead to come off, resulted in the fish safely engulfed in the net. I weighed the carp and it was 27lb 8oz, a fish known as the Baby Half Lin.

So with this disturbance, I thought I would marker the area and measure how many wraps it was to the spots. I introduced 2kg of Red Ammo (crushed and whole). This whole process actually took a couple of hours to complete and I spent most of the day scaring away the great number of ‘water chickens’ away from the baited area…

At around 10pm, just as night fell, I got into bed early as I had been up since 4am and I was tired. Suddenly I was woken by a massive clap of thunder at around midnight. Startled, I sat bolt upright and found that I was fishing in the middle of a massive storm; the wind had got up and the thunder and lightning was immense.

I sat there making tea thinking that hopefully it would blow over. Eventually it stopped around 3am and I got back in bed and dozed off. I was only asleep a short while when my left hand rod was away again, I ran out with bare feet (which wasn’t great) and I had a mad few moments of trying to find my head torch. Once I found it I proceeded to play a hard fighting carp which was moving left, towards a snag.

I must have been playing this carp for 5 minutes when my right hand rod was also away. I had to loosen the clutch on that rod as I tend to fish them really tight because of the problems with weed. Once this was done I concentrated on getting the fish on the left hand in. Luckily, I managed to get this fish in quickly and netted it straight away and having secured the net and rod, I picked up the right hand rod and found that the fish was still on. I managed to pump this fish all the way in, until it was about 20 yards out and the tip ring became jammed with weed.

With little choice the rod was placed down on the ground, I hastily removed the weed from the tip ring and got everything moving again. The fish then powered down the left margin before I finally turned her.

Then the problem arose of trying to get this bigger fish into the net as well. Somehow I managed to get this one in position ready for netting and manoeuvred the net into position only to successfully land the second fish as the first swam out. I hadn’t unhooked it yet so I quickly sorted the net making sure the fish was secure and picked the rod up and played the first fish in again! Second time lucky.

I made sure all was safe and secure then rung my brother Phil to explain what had happened. He could not believe it and came round to do the photos.

The first fish was the awesome ‘Woodcarving’, which weighed in at 24lb 8oz and the second was the much sought after ’Leney’ at 32lb 10oz.

Once we had taken the pictures the fish was safely returned and I had a cuppa or two to relax before getting the rods back out. I quickly got changed into some dry clothes before jumping into bed for some much needed sleep and later that day I packed up a very happy chap.