Our First Year Goes Out With A Bang.

With the old and the new Environment Agency licenses, we were both fully licensed for the upcoming year and both with concessions. Wil was still under sixteen so his didn’t cost anything but he still had to have one, mine was around twenty-four pounds, the concession being for old-age but also for being a blue-badge car parking holder, for some reason. 

We had to pick the venue carefully. Wil was still looking for a ten-plus fish, I’d just about scraped that weight by ounces, the specimen lake at Hazel Court produced few bites for us, the specimen pond at Tri-Nant we had never even seen never mind fished, but we had some success with bigger fish last autumn on Kingfisher Lake at Tri-Nant. I use the term ‘some success’ loosely in that we were using method feeders, we got snapped off by some big fish, and later beefed our gear up.

On the day of our one-year anniversary of the day we started coarse fishing, we set off for Tri-Nant Fishery and the Dragonfly Lake. We discussed whether this was late summer or early autumn and decided it was still just in summer and, in fact, it was a muggy heat.

Wil, no surprise, took up his trusty method feeders on two rods on an alarmed rod pod, while I decided to use my rod-pod and two method feeder rods also, to sit next to him under the umbrella, to reminisce, and to marvel how far we’d come over the year.

There’s only so long that I can sit and wait for a bite though, so I took out a top kit, measured from my chair to the edge of our concrete platform and the top kit reached, plumbed up for that edge, and fished a banded pellet six inches out into the lake.

Both our rods were one-out and one in the margin, me to the left, Wil to the right. We were on the far side of the lake from the cars on peg maybe fourteen or fifteen, and both needed a rest after carrying all the gear.

My out-in-the-middle rod struck first with a pound bream and then my margin rod with a common that we estimated at seven pounds. Sitting back down again, we discussed how things had changed, and how at one time, a seven pounder would have been seriously weighed.

With my top-two kit in my hand, I was now feeding sweetcorn into the margin and fishing the 8mm pellet with the hook above the pellet but disguised by a piece of sweetcorn. A double helping I thought. The float zoomed under and I was into a big fish that swam towards the middle of the lake, stretched out my 18-20 elastic, and when the hook slipped, the rest of my gear sprang back at me and wrapped itself around the pole tip.

“Let me show you how it’s done,” Wil told me. With him holding the top-two and me trickling sweetcorn in, Wil struck into a good fish, and it gave such a fight that boys from the next peg and their mother came to watch. With the fish almost tired out, I messed up and let him go under the landing net, and in my attempt to free the net, the fish was gone.

A quarter of an hour later a chap from the farm, not Jonko, came and switched on the aerator that acted like a six-foot-high fountain to the right of us. Wil thought the aerator cooled the muggy air, I thought it was goodbye to any serious fishing, but then Wil spotted something. 

Other anglers must have been either using bread on the hook, or putting in small bits of bread to see if the carp were top feeding. Neither of us had seen any carp topping all day, maybe they were lethargic because of a lack of oxygen and that is why the aerator had been turned on. We agreed that the welfare of the fish was more important than our angling day, but Wil pointed out that the bread that was being pushed down the lake, away from the aerator, was congregating in a little nook to our left where the bank stuck out a bit.

He decided to have my top-two kit and to fish amongst the bread, but on the bottom. His theory was that if the bread was forced there, maybe underwater carp food was also. I added to his carp-brain by saying that the top-two kit had failed to land a fish, twice, and under normal circumstances, we would have added sections. Rather than use the whole pole I got my spare number three section out and added it to the top-kit. Because Wil was further away from the nook than me, the top-two plus one was an ideal length.

Wil’s float didn’t actually signal a bite, it was more a case of signalling that a fish had picked up the pellet and sweetcorn concoction, felt he was hooked and he was off to the middle of the lake with Wil hanging on for grim death. With the pole sections arched in a semi-circle, and the elastic cutting through the water, it drew a lot of attention. Whether it happened or not we don’t know but it felt as if the people on the lake stopped and all stared at Wil’s stood figure and his aching arm. I was glad it wasn’t me.

This fish came in towards the bank, as if looking for snags, showed himself to be a big fish, then swam back out into the middle again, fighting against the strong elastic. Because Wil had him on, he was the one giving instructions. “He’s out in the middle and over the top of the two rod lines. You take the landing net to behind the umbrella and I’ll join you.

That’s what we did and although it gave us a better chance of landing the fish, it also exposed us to more of an audience. I prayed, having seen the size of this fish, that I didn’t mess up with the landing net again. These fights against larger than our normal sized fish, probably take a couple of minutes but feel as if they take a quarter of an hour. After many journeys out and back in again, Wil announced that the fish appeared tired and could be netted on his next venture into the bankside.

This time, thankfully, I did not mess up with the landing net, he was wrapped in the bottom of the net, safe, and it took the two of us to lift him out of the water and to take him to the carp cradle and weighing sling.

Twelve pounds exactly, the scales settled on, then the common carp flapped, the scales settled again and twelve pounds was confirmed.

He was coated in water, Wil had a photo with him, we both thanked him as he slipped back into the water, and Wil did a personal best dance.

One of my rods, five minutes later, picked up a bite and it was a five-pound mirror. It was a beautiful looking fish with one line of mirror scales down both sides close to its dorsal fin, the rest of the fish appearing scaleless. It might have been a pretty fish but we realised that after Wil’s PB everything would be an anti-climax. We packed up and took everything back to the car and started to drive home in celebration.

Exactly a year ago, to the day, we started fishing in Jim’s pool with the cheapest equipment possible, to see if Wil liked fishing as a hobby. Shortly after, Wil caught a small one-pound carp and enjoyed the fight and that’s when things got more expensive. We fished through the autumn and winter snows, with the aim of increasing our knowledge and with a target of both of us catching a carp of over ten pounds. Mine was ten pounds and a few ounces, Wil was stuck on nine-and-a-half. Until today. His twelve means that we have achieved our aims for the year and wil have to set targets for the following year.

One thing we did learn from today, I believe, is that the Preston Innovations ten metre edge monster is capable of bringing in a carp of twelve pounds, but for anything bigger, a sturdy rod and reel with sturdy end gear will be needed. Sounds like more expense.