25th November. Between fishing days, we had a week of the weirdest weather with the barometer not knowing what to do so swinging from one side to the other all week. The wind was constantly from the north, most of the time we were in heavy rain, the very West of Wales had snow, and on fishing day we had bright sunshine with hardly a breeze. It was the type of crisp autumn day where coats come off because the sun is on you, but as soon as the sun starts to go down, you reach for the handwarmers. Dragonfly was the obvious pond to try, where fish were larger than on Mallard, but harder to catch. We set up at the northern end of the pond, near the gate on the hill, where we’d fished before and you could load and unload your gear but had to move if anyone came down the single track. Bampa had his pole and sat on his box seat with foot plate with one swim ten metres to his left, in a margin, the other swim in front of him at top kit plus one. The obvious thing was that even after the ground

My own personal writing journey began from an incident that happened while I was on holiday in St. Ives in Cornwall, England. Returning from a restaurant, late-ish, we spied a large man carrying a woman who was worse for drinking, over his shoulder. Obviously, others were concerned so we stopped to listen to the conversations. The man assured the gathering crowd that she was a friend, he was carrying her to her bed up many stairs, he would sleep in an armchair in her lounge in case she became ill, and then a female friend said she would also accompany the couple to ensure the lady was okay. My imagination whirled. Was the man (Kitto) in love with the woman (Rebecca) but the woman saw him only as a friend? Had she been celebrating the accomplishment of something, maybe the solving of a case she’d been working on? Did she work for a police department, as a paid civilian, in a department that couldn’t officially exist? Who had she caught? What would be her reward? A trip to Greece to recu

We knew we hadn’t built up years of experience, but we did have the previous year to go on, so on the Saturday before fishing day we delved into our first book “Newbie Anglers,” to see what conditions were like, this time last year. It had rained at Hazel Court on that day, a year ago, and we fished on a peg that was pure mud (since rebuilt with timber piles and levelled out) but we had caught five or six carp of around the six pound mark and some big bream, including personal bests for bream at the time for both of us. The surprise to both of us, on reading back the chapter, was that at that time we only had one rod each. It seemed that every time we walked past the barometer, the pressure had dropped, as a low came in to cover the country and the forecast for this coming Tuesday was for rain showers. It rained heavily on the Sunday, the ComiCon day, where Gandalf’s hair and Spider-Man’s costume both got wet in the queue to get into the venue, then we spent a shedload of money on book

Sunday was meant to be a free day, but it ended up with all the rods coming in and being changed ready for Tuesday with the knowledge that some of them would have to be changed again for our Wednesday carp fishing. We had to work out the best way of doing things and we’d had time to mull things over. Wil remembered the two telescopic rods with reels that were in the garage and only usually came out for family holidays on the coast. Digging those out showed that they had surf-seeker lures on them so those were removed. The main line was then threaded through a Bombarder float, then through a coloured bead, and tied to one end of a swivel that was used as a stop. The other end of the swivel received three or four feet of trace line, finishing with a small mullet spinner which is a normal spinner with the treble removed, then six inches of line added instead, down to a single hook that would take the artificial ragworm. This was carried out on both telescopic rods and then the bread-and-f

We kept an eye on the air pressure all week because a storm was coming in from the west and we watched the barometer fall as it approached. Dipping down and down the pressure dropped and all seemed well until the storm passed, mainly to the north of us. A local tree had come down in the winds to close a road, and then the pressure annoyingly started to go up again. On the day before fishing Tuesday, we were back to blue skies, wispy clouds, high pressure, and cold nights. Everything pointed to fishing the relative shallowness of Mallard Pond at Tri-Nant, maybe the deep end that isn’t that deep, casting freely because Jonko had given the place ‘a haircut’ and we could still have the main trees as shelter. We reasoned that there, the water temperatures may remain steadier, especially overnight and the pressure wouldn’t have so much of an effect, and anyway, Wil had a score to settle with ‘the monster.’ On Tuesday the pressure hadn’t moved from ten-twenty-two but the day was grey and dism

A carp just under my PB is regarded as a tiddler by Wil.