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So, I had been fishing for a few weeks in the canal and river and been catching small fish and it was not enough. If I was going to carry on I wanted to catch something bigger and a bit more interesting and thought about the club’s still waters. I wasn’t feeling confident enough just to rock up and start fishing so I spent a couple of days driving round to find the lakes and chat to anglers there, at a social distance of course!

It was all quite interesting, it was clear that carp fishing was the “in thing.” Every lake I visited had their fair share of carp anglers with their alarms beeping every now and again and I saw some good fish being caught and thought that I would like to have a go at that. I also looked on YouTube and other sites and fishing forums and was getting overwhelmed with information! Let me give a shout out here for Carl and Alex as I spent a lot of time watching their YouTube videos and learnt a lot. In case you don’t know them they are two brothers who have been posting videos since they were kids and now that they have grown up have gone full time. They are well worth a watch.

What I realised was that if I wanted to catch bigger carp then I needed a stronger rod and a suitable reel. I was still not sure at this stage if angling was going to be a permanent thing for me so didn’t want to spend too much money. Normally I would have gone into the local tackle shop to support local business but as we were shielding I decided to buy online. I did some research and it was then that I realised that I was a tackle snob! I could have bought a rod from Sports Direct for under £20 but I didn’t want to be seen on the bank with really cheap gear, I could imagine the pitying looks that I would get from proper anglers! I ordered a 12ft Daiwa Black Widow rod with a 3lb test curve which I thought would be a good allrounder along with some method feeders, hair rigs, boilies, pellets , line and other bits and pieces that I thought I would need and they all arrived within a few days. I also ordered a baitrunner reel, a NGT Dynamic 6000 from Ebay at a reasonable price and when it came I was all set to go.

I had a practice at rigging up in my garden then I was ready. The plan was to go to one of the club’s smaller, less popular waters and catch a carp. Whether I did or not you will have to wait and see in the next blog entry!

I will leave you with a picture of one of the more exotic inhabitants of the canal!

I was quite pleased with my first fishing trip. I had remembered how to tackle up and managed to catch some fish so I thought that I would carry on for a bit. I tried different techniques on the feeder rod using both quiver and swing tips. I also tried different floats and baits and had a go at breeding maggots as I was still staying away from people and didn’t want to go to the shop.

After a couple more sessions on the canal where I caught small roach and rudd again I thought that I would have a look at the river that the club had the rights to so set out to explore a quite remote location. When I arrived I could see that it was going to be difficult fishing. The river itself was no more than a large stream and as it was by now late summer it was very shallow. It was also very difficult to get to in places as the banks were overgrown with nettles. I managed to find a couple of swims and was soon pulling out small fish again including minnows which seemed to have the habit of swallowing the bait and hook as far down as they could. After this session I had a look on Youtube on how to use the disgorger properly, which helped!

I was a bit disappointed with my efforts as I had heard that there were some decent fish in the river and decided to wait until the nettles had died down and the river had filled up a bit before trying again.