FUN IN THE SUN – by Tim Childs

After a particularly tough spring on my chosen venue, I decided it was time to change venues and get the rods bent once again. Three months of very hard fishing and god knows how many bream, had taken its toll on me and sapped both my enthusiasm and drive. As we were now into June I seemed to have lost the bug for a couple of weeks and needed some time out. The weather didn’t help as the torrential rain was making me feel even worse! With a couple of weeks break I felt refreshed and was in need of some fun once again. I initially planned a couple of trip to Linear Fisheries to flex the carbons but as usual, family demands and other distractions put the trips on hold. I decided to stay local and planned a few day sessions trips on a couple of waters to see if I could find my enthusiasm. I attended the Great Northern Fishing show at Cudmore Fisheries in July and working with Lewis Alan Stagg and Paul Hatton was the injection I needed, we had a great weekend and as always it was a pleasure to be involved.

On the fishing front things got off to a good start with a few tench and a couple of small carp soon finding the way into the net. Tactics were simple and effective, Gardner standard sized solid PVA bags with short soft 4 inch Trickster heavy hooklinks and hand rolled k-g-1 hookbaits.

My bag mix consisting of various small pellets along with some Richworth Halibut powder and a few small oily shellfish 6mm mini match boilies. I was also crumbing and crushing whole K-G-1 boilies into my mix to give the fish something familiar to eat and to also leave some food near the hookbait when the pellet mix had dissolved. A few 14mm free offerings where spread over the area to get the fish searching, perfect for intercepting fish as they moved from different areas of the lake.

The next couple of trips I managed to land a number of lovely fish over 20lb including some really nice looking scaley one’s topped by a dark old common of 25lb 2 oz. The bag mix and K-G-1 combo seemed to be working well as both tench and carp couldn’t leave them alone.

The weather improved no end by mid July and with the sun finally beaming the bites kept coming, by keeping mobile and fishing shorter sessions I seemed to be able to keep on top of the fish nicking bites on most sessions.

With a few 20’s under my belt, my confidence and enthusiasm has returned once again. Hopefully the second half of the year will see me bank one of the bigguns from my spring venue, as well as banking a few more lovely carp from a couple of other waters I plan to visit.

Tim Childs.