the newts.net

After a long break from the coarse fishing (nearly 20 years!) I’m pleased to say I had a pleasant debut comeback at a beautiful little private local water.

After a spell of dreadful January & February weather it turned out to quite a mild and pleasant day at this lovely pond owned by our friends Trev & Ian Oliver.

Tony was first off the mark with a little roach, with me close behind with a small perch.  Garry quickly got in to his stride after that though and netted an almost constant stream of small roach and perch.  Tony was still getting the odd small fish while I was just getting the odd finicky bite but no action.

Later in the afternoon the slightly larger fish started to show with Tony starting to catch mirror carp around the 1 - 2lb mark.  Tony then started to diversify and managed to tick a few boxes on his Fish n Trips species list after netting a small barbel, mirror and common carp, roach, perch, tench, a rudd and a little gudgeon.

Garry continued with a regular stream of small roach interspersed with the odd perch and finally I hit in to a decent fish.  It took a while to land ( so Gaz & Tone will tell you), but a 6lb mirror on 2lb line and a size 20 hook can’t be bullied in.  It has to be played with sheer mastery; It’s nice to see I haven’t lost my touch :O)

It was the biggest fish of the day, but specimen of the day had to go to Tony with a gorgeous perch approaching 2lb.  Infact it was that BIG he daren’t pick it up!!

So in a nutshell:  The 3 of us bagged an approximate total of 40lb of fish.  First fish to Tony Martin, top weight was Tony Martin as well (though Garry started to catch up with a flurry of small mirrors towards the end of the day), Best specimen was Tony’s too, most fish definitely belonged to gaz with a netfull of roach, and I sneaked on to the board in the latter stages with biggest fish.

More pictures are available on the Fish n Trips scoreboard here.

Great afternoon of fishing - thanks to Trev & Bov for the pleasure.