Two days in a row.

6th and 7th August.

I checked the dates on our Environment Agency licences and could see we were approaching a full first year of fishing that would end on the seventeenth of August. We both had, in that year, caught carp of nine-and-a-half pound and ten-and-a-half-pound so we were satisfied that the first year had gone well. Wil was keen to fish Mallard again on Tuesday and I had no problem with that because I knew that the following day he was flying to Turkey with his sister and father, so I could go out again and the choice would be mine alone.

I have been keen, for some time now, to learn bomb and pellet fishing so gave it a go at Mallard while Wil stuck to his pink wafter in method feeders. The connectors were found at the bottom of a box for my fishing seat and I soon had the rod rest (and pole sack) attached at the rear of the seat and the extending multi-rod holder at the front. I tried the system of not clipping up that day, catapulting pellets to an area and then casting to the same spot, and soon found that it was easier to cast out and then get the pellets near the same spot. It seemed to build up a bed of bait in roughly the same area but produced no carp, only two missed bites.

I had also been feeding a margin swim with the pellets that were on my hook, tiger nut flavoured eight-millimetre, by hand throwing to a spot defined by an overhanging branch, and late on decided to try it. This produced a carp that fought hard and luckily didn’t try to snag me in the margin but took off for the centre of the pond. He looked on the sling in the carp bath to be a chunk of muscle of around eight pounds but weighed exactly six.

When we’d arrived that morning, we were setting up when Jonko did his rounds. He asked, sarcastically, if we were growing beans because I was setting up a metal tripod, taller than me, so I explained that it was a tripod for the weighing scales and he laughed and had obviously seen them before as a fishery owner. To get over my embarrassment, I added that it was to make us look as if we knew what we were doing.

That was it for fish that day. Wil blanked but didn’t care and his philosophy is that blanking is a day out in the countryside breathing in fresh air. I agreed with him and loved his mood that day of laughing, joking, and running away from a wasp that invaded the brolly, seemingly addicted to Wil’s Doritos, even venturing inside the packet.

The following day, instead of unloading the car of fishing gear, I headed off for Hazel Court, alone, because Wil was on his way to Turkey for a five-night holiday with his sister and father. On arriving, Debbie informed me there was a few pegs left on the pleasure pond and only one angler on the specimen lake. I decided on a day of experimentation on the specimen lake, unloaded my gear, and left it at the first peg due to the effort needed from this old boy getting equipment to the peg and back.

I was in the bottom right-hand corner of a rectangular pond where the right-hand edge, next to my peg, was a wavey, reed filled, area that went in and out, looked fishy, and had obviously been fished a lot. Anything on the hook was obviously going to make for those reeds and it would be my job to stop them.

I’d arrived at ten and was looking forward to eight hours of uninterrupted fishing, in glorious sunshine, and to starting to pack up at six in the evening. To make carrying easier for me, I’d left anything I didn’t need, like Wil’s rods, the alarms, the rod-pods, the weighing tripod, and the brolly, in the car and had set up two rods that I would try hard to handle on my own along with the large landing net only, leaving the small one in the car.

I set my chair that still had the ‘anychair’ bits on it, and the right-hand side bits took my new rod with the one ounce tip that was still set up for bomb and tiger nut flavoured pellet, the other rod, mine but snapped so a little stiff at the far end, I set up with a method feeder and followed Wil’s successful pink wafter and pink haze over the sticky pellets but placed this in the left hand margin.

I was soon getting the hang of getting the bomb and double pellet, being an eight-millimetre banded tiger nut with a three-millimetre liver flavoured pellet, to land in roughly the same place each cast, without clipping up, and also catapulting those same pellets to an area about the size of a snooker table rather than the recommended smaller pool table. This however produced no fish and no bites. After an hour of this experiment, I reverted to my normal eight-millimetre pellets but changed the hook length from four inch to six inch because on each retrieve, it felt as if the bomb had stuck in silt. During the hour I’d also rebaited the method feeder and cast it out a similar distance to the bomb, realising that margin fishing was probably for later in the day.

The method feeder rod was lying on the ground with the bait runner set, no alarms because they were still in the car, but instead I was watching for line movement cutting through the surface of the water, and later the movement of the stiff rod. This produced the first bite of the day that felt like a bream, kited like a carp, and ended up being a six-inch long common that embarrassingly had to be lifted up the bank in a four-foot-wide landing net. A specimen this was not. He was returned from the net and I later asked Debbie if it was a stock fish from a month or so ago. “None of the stock fish went into the specimen lake,” she told me. “If the fish was six inches long it’s from natural breeding and if you catch another, please place it in the pleasure pond.”

After another hour I gave up on the bomb and pellet experiment and changed that rod to a method feeder but used scopex wafters and scopex haze. This produced a six-inch bream that was transferred into the pleasure pond and both rods were changed to the scopex baits.

With both rods on method feeders, it was time to sit back and enjoy nature. Rods were ignored as a large group of house martens and swallows decided that the specimen pond was a good place to drink and swooped down, drank on the wing, and took off again.

With no further action on the scopex, I changed yet again, converting my new rod to a pellet waggler and changing the other rod, still with method feeder, back to pink wafters. The pellet waggler tactic, again with catapulted pellets, produced well, albeit not with anything like a specimen. A four-ounce roach was first to somehow get his lips around a double pellet of eight-millimetre and three millimetre, followed by a one-pound common, a four-ounce rudd and a half pound common.

The method feeder rod, now back on scopex, then started producing with a two-pound, fully scaled, mirror carp and a one-and-a-half- pound common, with the pellet waggler having the last word with an eight-ounce roach.

On packing up I realised that although specimens had not arrived, a day of experimenting had been not only useful but fun as well. I think my next venture out, with Wil by my side, might see both of us using method feeders on alarmed pods. With Wil having a three-rod-pod where he uses the two outside stations, there may be a case for us each paying more in pond fees, more for tackle and rods, and having three rods each. My pod only takes two rods so I may have to have any third rod on my chair rod rest.

Looking back at the pond before leaving, I could see that the group of four teenagers, of about Wil’s age, that I’d been chatting to throughout the day, were camped under the tree that Wil and I had camped under in the spring, and they were accompanied by maybe a grandfather and had lit their barbecue to cook their dinner before an all-nighter. I hoped that I could somehow persuade Wil to do a second all-nighter, before the winter came around again.