.....One More Time !

Now we are into Autumn my Dad and I have been considering our options with regards venues for our next few sessions, at the moment a canal campaign looks favourite, but yesterday we decided to have one more bash at Jubilee and it's carp.

Again we were to take the gamble of relying on sweetcorn as bait with a single tin of luncheon meat as back up, we settled in familiar swims at the far end of the bottom lake and used straight lead tactics. With the weather being slightly warmer than last time out we both felt quietly confident of nabbing a carp or two and sure enough my first cast resulted in a fierce bite which in turn resulted in a twelve pound mirror carp on the bank after a powerful fight.

Two casts later I was in again after a similarly ferocious take but this time the fish sulked heavily near the bottom making slow and determined runs up and down parallel to the bank about twenty feet out. After a good five minutes the fish continued one of it's powerful runs into the lily bed to my right and everything went solid.

The only real option in these situations is to slacken off and wait in the hope that the fish will swim out again, doing this is surprisingly effective. Some minutes later the line floating on the surface began to move very slightly and, showing great impatience, I tightened up again. It seemed that the fish had moved up in the water as the resistance posed by the vegetation caused me few worries as I towed the carp through. Suddenly the fight resumed in open water and the fish slowly chugged out towards the centre of the lake taking line at will.

It was some time again before I felt that I was winning the fight, with the fish about ten feet from the bank and now doing it's fighting in the surface layers I finally saw it, a big mirror maybe twenty pounds in weight. Then disaster struck just as I was about to pick up the landing net the hook pulled out the end tackle flew into the air and I swore, swearing helps I find.

Meanwhile dad hadn't had any joy at all, not even a line bite and now my swim was seriously disturbed so to cut a long story short we struggled badly from there on in, the only other action came when a kamikaze 2lb hybrid hit my sweetcorn at a hundred miles an hour before going completely loopy during a short scrap to the net.

I'm looking forward to next Summer already !