FISHING AND EXAMS, THE GOOD AND THE BAD!

The GCSE's went pretty well although there were the obvious tests which were harder than others, so fingers crossed they come out alright and I get into the 6th form like I'm hoping! I'm now trying to get a job as a cashier in the Loomis cash centre in Kings Cross, London, for Sunday work (which means more money for fishing)!

SESSION 1 - CARPING AT THE GLADE with no carp, just tench - but welcome nonetheless!

I did masses of revision in preparation for the exams and decided that I needed a break, books were starting to annoy me and I was getting withdrawal symptoms. It was also a good excuse to try out the Diawa Mission overnighter brolly and the new Nash bite indicators I got for my birthday the week prior.
I got to the lake via awful London public transport for 7:00am and was properly set up at about 7:30am. I was using a safety bolt rig on both rods with backleads to pin the line down on the lake bed, not to spook fish. Bait for the day was: - 12mm Heathrow baits boosted 'pukka pineapple' pop-ups (try saying that 3 times in a row really fast!). 15mm Dynamite baits monster tiger nut boilies and my special stick mix.
I chose swim 2 on the public side - fishing to the opposite bank which is a hot spot for carping. The first rod was baited up with two 12mm pop-ups with a PVA stick of my special stick mix. The second rod was baited up with a single boosted 15mm tiger nut boilie with crushed tiger nut boilie in a PVA stick and cast to the gravel bar to the opposite bank.
My friends Dominic and Micky were coming over later to have a go at carping, but in the meantime I was happily sitting under the brolly quietly listening to the radio. Dominic and Micky turned up about an hour or so later just as the left hand rod screamed off, after a lively scrap, the first fish of the day was netted.
Happy that the pop-ups had worked with a fluorocarbon hooklink, I re-cast, rebaited and sat patiently. Dominic and Micky had set up and called me over to advise where to put their baits. As I walked over to Dom, my right hand rod screamed off - I struck in to a sizeable fish, which hookpulled - NOT very happy! I recast and rebaited that rod and as soon as it had hit the deck it was off - VERY rare for the Glade, so I struck in to yet another cracking Tinca and when weighed, it turned the scales to a respectable 5lbs 6oz.
Excited that I was actually doing well for my first ever proper 'carping' session at the Glade by catching a couple of fish, I was full of confidence. Micky had also caught a tench and Dom unfortunately lost the only fish of the day for him.
With the patience came rewards and another hour or so after the last tench, the right hand rod was off again. I hit in to another tench and this time it was a bit more lively and kicking more than the others, so it was a good fight! Dom kindly netted the fish for me and it was weighed at 4lbs 10oz
Things got a bit slow after this fish. Micky had caught another tench for himself on corn. It then started to rain, so I suddenly had an extra party of two under the brolly. The time was dragging on and things seemed to get slower and slower, until my left rod burst in to action, again making us all jump out of our skins. The pop-ups had done it for me again with another Tinca on the end of my line which, when weighed, came to a weight of 5lbs on the dot.
And on that... I decided to call it a day, I packed up and had to take that terrible public transport home.

After this however, I had to knuckle down to some revision and throughout the next week I had several exams. Some easy...some not so easy. But I coped with it and tried my best, hopefully the effort will pay off. But then came the holiday and myself and the family went to off to Somerset. Being near to the sea I asked if I could take some of my sea gear along. The answer was a yes and the preparation began ...

SESSION 2 - SOMERSET HARBOUR FISHING :
Not a long one here and no pics unfortunately. But throughout the duration of the holiday whenever I had a little time off to myself, I would walk over to the beach at high tide for a bit of beachcasting. Rigs were a 3 hook flapper baited up with ragworm, mackerel and fake peeler crab. The fishing at the beach proved unsuccessful, but I didn't really fish it long enough to catch anything - an hour or so at the most.
But one day we went over to a harbour near a place called 'Blue anchor'. This was really the only proper session I fished during the holiday. It would have been nice to catch a variety of fish but all everyone seemed to be catching were whiting! The same went for me when I got a couple of knocks on the rod tip and ended up bringing in the smallest whiting in the sea! But at least a fish was caught.
A brilliant holiday overall!

There was then another week of exams to account for which I felt went ok, and to celebrate my well-earned freedom, I treated myself to a session at the Docks...

SESSION 3 - A DAY AT THE DOCKS :
Bait for the day was:- Maggot, 15mm Dynamite baits monster tiger nut boilies and my special stick mix
I arrived at the docks at 7:00am via that blummin' London transport again. I put my gear down between the two docks and went for a walkabout.The west dock was buzzing with silvers, I saw hundreds of small roach fry on the surface of the water. I walked over to the east dock, to find that down by the wall at the end of the dock there were two koi, a mirror and a common carp feeding on the first step.
I threw in a couple of handfuls of micro-pellet, which spooked the fish for a bit. They returned about 10 minutes later and were feeding like wildfire. So I crept back to my rod holdall and set up my Koike Thor waggler rod with a reel loaded with 4lbs line. I put on nothing but a size 16 hook baited with double maggot and a no.4 shot. I plopped it on the step where the fish were feeding in hope of a take. I left the bait in there for about two minutes and as I lifted the reel screamed off and I was in!
After a somewhat exhausting 7:20am fight - I landed a small common. I weighed it up and it turned the scales to 4lbs. I was happy anyway as it had been the first carp I had caught in 3 months!

4lbs long and lean Common

My mate Alfie then came along later in the day, we switched docks and were happily catching silvers for the rest of the day!
My uncle then gave me a ring that night asking when I was off. I told him that I had finished my exams and was off for the best part of 13 weeks. So he suggested that we went to fish a new place to us, Elphicks farm fishery, for carp.


SESSION 4 - ELPHICKS CARPING :
My uncle was going to pick me up at 6:30am to take me to Elphicks. We were both excited as we knew that we were in for a good chance of a carp. An hours drive to the complex and we were in the middle of Kent. It was a beautiful place in the middle of nowhere, but the only downside to it was the fact that the banks were coated in astro turf. Not very pleasing as we only had banksticks on us.
We decided to fish the Prairie lake, I was going to use two safety bolt rigs baited with pineapple pop-up and an 18mm shaved tiger nut boilie on the other. My uncle used one rod in the margins with spicy pepperami or halibut pellet on a safety bolt rig and on the other rod a method feeder using vitalin and pepperami.
My uncle had 3 carp on the vitalin method feeder but I had had nothing. I was getting constant knocks on the pop-up rod though. When all of a sudden, after a couple of hours, the rod with the tiger nut boilie on the end of it burst into action and I was in to my first carp of the day. A 5lbs 12oz ghost mirror...

5lbs 2oz Mirror

The day progressed nicely with my uncle and I catching a steady amount of carp. My uncle ended up with about 13 carp and lost around 5, I ended up catching 7 carp and losing 3. We stuck to basically the same tactics all day and it was proving a success, especially for my uncle, who was raking the carp out like nobody's business.
Another brilliant day out with my uncle, as it always is when I'm fishing with him.

Thanks again Tim, a 'Blinding' day out again, cheers for everything mate!

A couple of days later I thought I would take a trip to the park next to my school. Danson Park in Bexleyheath used to be the most rubbish lake in the area, weed everywhere, no fish caught and lots of lost tackle. But the people who manage the place realised that there could be profit in the lake, so they sorted it all out and stocked it right up, and now it's a brilliant lake! Which brings me on to my final session...

SESSION 5 - A DELIGHTFUL DAY AT DANSON :
I got to the huge 13 acre lake at around 7:00am, again on that devil transport, to find that I was the only person on the lake. I picked a lovely looking swim which was in good casting range to the island in front of me, with brilliant marginal prospects to the left of the swim. I decided to leger a shaved 18mm boilie on one rod, corn legered on another rod and floatfish maggot/corn on the waggler too.

The maggot proved deadly as I was catching roach like anything on the float. About half an hour later baiting up I hooked in to something a lot bigger and I saw it was a stunning looking common, unfortunately the hook pulled out...hopefully this carp was the first of many.
The Optonic went screaming off and I jumped for joy (and out of surprise) as I hooked in to another carp on the legered corn, a minute or so and he was in, a beautiful common which was kindly photographed by a passer-by ... thanks mate!
The day ended up with me catching 110 fish, 18 of which were common carp, 1 of which was a 4oz tench and the rest were small roach and rudd.

And that's what I've been up to people!. If you're still awake from reading this - thanks for reading

Check out my own little Fishing Series on Youtube, to see the videos of me type in: ashtheangler on the search bar - I look forward to your comments!

Tight lines

Ash

Editor's Note: