Star wars day May the 4th be with you! Horseshoe lake

What I find wonderful about fishing overnight is that you don’t need an alarm clock to wake. I find the first bird to sing is the robin followed by the blackbird and then the song thrush. The crescendo from these birds is enough to wake anyone.
Often you hear the cuckoo early too.
He was there on my last visit and again this time. I even saw my first mayfly hatch yesterday

This was at about 4.35am. As I crawled out from beneath my bivvi, the air was cold in fact it was -2c and the grass was tinged with white ice. This was not what I wanted. The wind though had subsided and was due to turn around to the south later in the day and stay like it for a few days.

Nothing had interfered with the rods during the night, so I reeled in and made a cast towards the clear spot. All of the carper were still fast asleep missing out on the lovely morning with mist floating off the surface of the lake. A proper tench morning.

What a start to the day.

So with the rods on the spot it was time for a brew of coffee. The surface of the lake was like a mirror which I knew wouldn’t last too long.

At 5.30am i had a savage take on the left hand rod which had the free spool singing nicely. I tried to pull into the fish but could only find weed on the line and as I gathered more of the line after about 10 seconds and it was that long, I could feel a powerful tench on the other end. The fight was not spectacular but dogged to say the least. At one time it tangled with the other line. However soon I had a beautiful tench laying in the bottom of the net.

On the scales she went 8lbs 10oz.

Beautiful tench of 8lbs 10oz

I jut held her in a sack for a few minutes and was lucky enough to find the carper next to me packing up, so he was thoughtful enough to help me with the photo’s.

He had been there for 3 days and had one carp, but what a carp he had. It must be the one that so many people are after. I don’t like naming fish but this one was called patch. It hadn’t been caught since last August at just under 40lbs. However this guy caught it at 43lb which is a great achievement and a wonderful way to get your first English 40.

He took some great shots for me.

So with the day so young and with this big fish I thought there would be more to come. Sure enough a few more tench showed themselves by rolling other had a fizz or two but they were certainly not feeding hard.

Time drifted by so did the tench and carp and any other fish for that matter. It got to 9pm and time to return home.

it would certainly seem that the fish are not in the area in any great number yet, but they will soon. I’m going to have another go for them next week and with the warmer weather and some rain who knows it could be better fishing for me. But hey ho 8lbs 10oz I’ll take that each visit.