About time!!!

Sneaked off to Straits yesterday evening and was surprised to see just one car in the car park. Spoke to the guy fishing in swim no.1 (the dreaded chairmans cup blank for me!) and he had caught 4 fish and was the only person there all day!

I had a good look around and found a few milling about in the giant weedbed up in the corner and saw a couple roll in front of the point so plumped for the compass swim (as usual!).

I put one rod out near where a fish had rolled over the silt and a close in rod over the big clear patch to the left of the point. A few fish soon came in close and started feeding so I sat down well back and waited for some action. After an hour I had a twitchy take on the silt rod and reeled in a 1/2lb bream! Soon after a local guy came down for a chat (after making me jump out of my skin by suddenly appearing!) and I had another take on the silt rod that surged all over the place like a train, I thought it would be a good double. It turned out to be the parrot mouthed 12lb common I'd caught from the 'Alex' swim a couple of weeks ago!

I now recast this rod into the channel between the end of the point and the weedbed.

Soon after it was my turn to make him jump out of his skin as the clear patch rod which he was sitting near went off without warning! This fish hardly fought at all and after a fight of less than a minute the guy kindly netted it for me. It felt fairly heavy but we both agreed it looked around 16lb. I zeroed the scales with the sling and weighed it, 20lb absolutely on the nose! I couldn't believe it! After a few shots I put him back and as it swam off saw that the fish was unusually wide across the back. Graham arrived about a minute later so missed out on seeing it.

The guy knew Graham and we all chatted for a bit. As I lowered the bait back in the channel rod flew off and after a short fight I landed an old looking 14lb 2oz common. The guy went off home at about 9pm and around 9.30pm the channel rod screamed off but the hook pulled after a few seconds but I wasn't too bothered.

With a Straits twenty finally under my belt (had to catch 26 other carp first this year from there!) and the repeat captures I made the decision to make this the last season there. But still a few months left so maybe some more of the bigger ones will be caught?