Search the Community

I bumped into the Newbury Fisheries Manager walking back to the car after yesterday's blank. 'Why don't you try Willows?' he said. 'They'll take a pellet.' So this afternoon I took some pellets and myself to give it another go after blanking there last Saturday. Tackle: method feeder, banded 8mm pellet - First Red Robin and then halibut Tactics: I scattergunned my casts, one every 20 mins, looking to search out fish rather than focus on one area. 3 hours in, not a touch. The forecast 'possible shower' turned out as 2 hours wet and non-stop rain. I prepared wording for this blog and another blank. Deciding that pellets weren't on the fishy menu today, I swapped for a faded pinkish 15mm pop-up. I opened the jar for the first time. They smelled so sweet and delicious I could have eaten them myself. I'm glad I didn't, and not just because the jar was marked both 'unfit for human consumption' and 'warning: may contain nuts' because about half an hour later, the bobbin suddenly leapt and cracked against my rod hard enough to make me jump, the bait runner immediately spinning wildly. With the method feeder being fab for self-hooking, I was in without need for a strike. It wasn't so much a fight as a slow tug of war, but it took line several times as it came to the bank quite quickly before taking another 10 mins to land as it rose to the surface and saw muddy, soggy me for the first time. It swum up and down and flopped about not fancying coming out, clearly embarrassed about being suckered by the Newbury Blanker. But in she came, a beautiful common, 11lb 10 and some way to beat a blank. A photo, a kiss and an ease back into the lake, I cast out again, but hardly had time to relish my angling skill when the rod went again and after a shorter battle, in came a mirror, right in front of some chaps who were kind enough to take photos of the first carp I've had at Willows that wasn't a common. Again in superb condition, it looked smaller than the Common in the pics, but came in at 13lb 11. Phew - 25lb of fish in 20 mins - what sort of fraud blanker am I? I had a quarter of an hour left to fish, which had ticked down to three minutes left before sunset, when the reel screeched again - this time 'just' one of the new 3lb mirrors stocked last month. What a day - what a 45 minutes! Who's the blanker now?