Hooray for Henry

The excitement and sense of achievement experienced when catching your first ever fish as a young angler is a moment never forgotten and as an older angler the opportunity to teach and advise a youngster and subsequently help them catch their first ever fish is priceless.

A three night camping trip at Greenhill Farm in Oxfordshire along with my sister and her three children, Oliver, Imogen and Henry during the recent glorious weather in the half term school holidays presented the perfect opportunity to get the kids fishing again. This is the same site we visited last Summer and is an ideal location for young anglers, there are two relatively shallow, well stocked lakes in a separate field alongside the main camping area, the bottom lake is stocked with silvers while the top lake is a carp pool.

Once we had set up the tents and settled in we were soon at the waterside and fishing the bottom lake. A little earlier Henry, by far the keenest of all to try his hand at fishing, had listened intently as I helped set up his starter set of tackle alongside the ten foot glass leger rod I had taken along explaining as I went what purpose the individual items of tackle served. At the lake I helped Henry plumb the depth and explained the principles of loosefeeding and then we set about catching some fish.

As I mentioned earlier these are very well stocked lakes and it wasn't a long wait before the bites started in fact the float was rarely still and after only a short time Henry was landing his first fish a small skimmer bream. A great moment.

Imogen and Aimee both had a brief go and even our Jess took the rod long enough to catch her now customary single small roach before becoming bored but it was Henry who had the bug, his enthusiasm grew with each fish he caught and he was learning to do more and more for himself.

In the short time we had together Henry and I made three more trips to the lakes, concentrating on the top lake where the small carp were more than obliging and where he also hooked a couple of larger specimens which he unfortunately lost.

It had been a great trip, nice to see my sister who I seem to see all too rarely these days and nice to relax with Sheryl and the kids in the blazing sun, we had a barbecue each evening and ate bacon and eggs each morning, My nephews and I threw a rugby ball around, Aimee and Jessica loved spending time with Imogen and we even tried (unsuccessfully) to fly a kite but most importantly of all we enjoyed the simple pleasure of catching some fish.