So Sunday 18th I finally kick myself in to gear and get on the bank! The weather was not great, rivers up and flooding, Bowood chocolate, possible match on canal so I opted to go to Blacklands for a change. I paid my money at Reception and said I would fish peg 13 – my first mistake as they had re-pegged it! So instead of being near the overflow I was now on the opposite side of the island- the furthest point from the car!! As it happened I was the only one on the lake but I stuck with my choice and primed two areas both at 11m, the left hand swim with worm and caster and the right hand with micros. Groundbait is not allowed so loose feed was the order of the day, fishing with a 0.10mm hooklength to an 18 barbless under a 1g Paster.

Bites came straight away with a piece of worm about an inch long and despite a couple of slow periods when I was playing around with different shotting patterns and baits it was a pleasant few hours with 18 roach averaging 3-4 oz, the one in the picture is one of the smallest, 8 skimmers (best 1-04) and 3 perch(10oz best) for a total between 7 and 8lb.

Wasn’t until the following Sunday I got out again this time for the rearranged pike match at Peatmoor. I had missed the first one when everyone blanked as we were in Yorkshire.The plan was to fish two deadbait rods on floats (Bowood style) one with smelt the other with sardine. I fancied two pegs- peg 1 which was right in the top corner that had form in previous years and peg 13 which was on the corner of the bay. I ended up going to peg 1, blanked and only one pike caught – that’s right from peg 13 in the first 10 minutes!

No further visits this month as life got in the way! However on the other side of the world Gareth made is trip to Thailand to fish at AmazonBKK, a predator lake. The rules were lure fishing until midday then bait fishing, but after a couple of biteless hours the guide had a word with the owner and he allowed Gareth to bait fish. The results were over 30 runs, that produced 2 Arapaima (110kg and 30kg) 2 Alligator Gar (12kg and 7kg) 1 Red Tail Catfish (25kg), one snap off and several hook pulls. The alligator gar are notoriously difficult to hook due to their hard tooth beak of a mouth and that was the cause of the missed bites and pulls.

Even as I have been typing this he has been fishing the bass commercial he went to earlier this month and has sent me this!

February is likely to prove interesting as he arrives next week!