The month kicks of with a Wednesday match at the Glebe near Hinckley with the MaggotDrowners. We were on the strip lakes (4,5,6,7) and I picked out peg 90 on lake 6 which I was not too unhappy about as I had fished the area some years ago and knew it usually produced some fish. The weather was drizzly when setting up but soon dissipated but the overcast sky was constant throughout the day. I set up a bomb and pellet rig, a long pole rig, a 5m rig and a margin rig with micros, 4mm and 6mm pellet, corn and worm plus 8mm hook pellets being on offer! Kicking off at 11 my first bite came at 1:30 on the bomb having not had any indication on any of the other lines. This turned out to be a carp about 4lb (I thought) caught over the 6mm pellets I had been pinging out regularly since the start about 3/4 of the way across.I had 3 other bites, one a hook pull and the other two ended with similar sized carp to the first, the final fish entering the net at 3:30, leaving me with no further actions until the whistle at 5pm. Now I had tried the margins in the last hour and had no response or indication yet peg 92 had the majority of their fish in that last hour, peg 88 had caught from the off on the bomb and pellet! At the weigh in it was apparent that many had struggled for the majority of the time with some catching in the last hour. My 12lb on the clicker turned out to be 15-08 and fourth on the lake- only because two anglers didn’t weigh in!

Life then got in the way of fishing with various family visits, etc but Sunday 12th sees me at peg 10 Bowood with the lake to myself! I really just wanted to see the situation with the weed and if it had died back enough to consider pike fishing on subsequent visits. I set up a heavier winter rig with 0.12mm hooklength to an 18 with a homemade teardrop style float of about a gram with a long multi-coloured antenna. Starting with just a single ball of groundbait and double maggot I immediately had two small rudd which prompted the change to corn. I fished from 9:45 to 11:45 and ended up with 52 rudd, 2 hybrids and a solitary roach for 6-14 all on corn save for the first two small rudd.

Now on the other side of the world Gareth decides to pay a flying visit to Bungsamran Fishing Park outside Bangkok where we had the 220lb Mekong catfish. I say flying visit as he flew out at midnight was there by 9am and flew home just after midnight! His plan was to fish until 5pm but he gave up well before that as he was exhausted by the action and heat. His day started with a striped catfish and went like this…

He then had a rest and followed up with two more Mekong to finish with 20 fish for 604kg (approx 1329lb). Some day’s fishing!

Next for me is a meet up with Sidestreambob on the K&A plus the start of my pike fishing this winter.