Hello all,

I've only recently joined the forum but after becoming encompassed by Chris Plumb and Rusty's blogs I've decided that it would be nice to set up one of my own.

I guess to get the ball rolling I should set the scene a little.. I'm 23 years old, living in Wiltshire but doing most of my fishing in Berkshire, both on the Kennet and the surrounding lakes. I've been an angler around 15 years on and off, with the last 10 years or so seeing me on the bank at every opportunity.

I started the proper way, float fishing on the local canal, sat on a bucket next to the old man fascinated by the little roach and perch that threw themselves upon my hook.

From then on I started accompanying my dad to the Kennet as much as possible. For the first year I almost exclusively fished with lures.. roaming miles of bank over the day and catching my fair share of pike and perch, as well as the occasional chub. I loved this active style of fishing and it allowed us to get to know the stretches in a relatively short space of time. It was probably a year later when I started going along for the evenings and trying my hand at a spot of barbelling.

After a few sessions and my first barbel on the bank I never looked back and the next 5 years flew by with numerous fish up to 9lb gracing my net. I was always slightly "unlucky" with the size of fish that I caught.... to put it into perspective, over those 5 years I caught upwards of 50 barbel but had nothing over the 9lb mark. My younger brother who tagged along every now and then had 3, 2 of which were doubles. I had brief flirtations with other species during this time, catching perch to just over 3lb, chub to 4.15 and pike to 18.10, but it was barbel that I always found myself coming back to.

Following the 5 or 6 years spent exclusively on the Kennet, I started getting an itch to try carp fishing. I knew of a few lakes that bordered the Kennet and after securing a guest ticket and catching my first double and first 20 in the same afternoon a new obsession had begun. From that point carp totally took over. When I wasn't at Sparsholt, supposedly studying fishery management but realistically spending more time pursuing horsey girls, I was by the side of a lake. This continued for another 5 years and brings me to the spring of 2011.

After fishing harder than ever, averaging 1 or 2 nights every week from March through to late October and not managing to get amongst the bigger fish I started getting the urge to get back on the rivers. Wandering the banks with minimal gear started to sound far more appealing than stewing in my bivvy for hours on end.

It was from there that I rediscovered my interest in general coarse fishing, and after reading every word of the aforementioned blogs I got myself a float rod and pin for Christmas. It's at this point that I'll stop rambling and start my blog with a couple of particularly interesting sessions that I've had over the past week.

I'll leave you with a picture of one of the nicer carp I caught over the summer..