Return to the lagoon.

The only fishing action I had got all week was a prospective canal carp session on new bit of canal with Andy on Thursday evening, which produced not so much a sniff from a carp and thoroughly reinforced my theory that you really have to know the location before you try and catch them otherwise your just pissing in the wind.

My session for the weekend had been organized for a week or so. To join my friend Neil and his daughter for her first fishing trip to an old haunt of ours 'Lannys lagoon'. Some years ago I spent a huge amount of  time fishing both lakes and as a result got a very good idea of how to fish these secluded lakes. Sadly Neil had to call off but I still went because I was confident of a point or even two for the challenge.

With my pole dusted off and the top kits re elasticated I felt confident that my pole fishing days of yesteryear would come flooding back. Which they did after two hours of me slapping the pole into trees and the water.

I cupped in a mix of liquidised bread, fishmeal  ground bait and good sprinkling of pinkies onto one long line and an inside line as well. The only real problem that arose with my adventure back into the world of pole fishing was my lack of a pole roller, which I begrudge wasting money on since  I would hardly ever use it. I however overcame this problem with a clever use of other tackle. I took two small bank sticks with the carp style grip heads and put a third longer rest into the tight fitting heads then attached my unhooking mat over the top which worked like a dream, though a couple of other anglers seemed a little confused when they saw me putting it together.

As I suspected the float never even settled for more than a few seconds before dipping under.This went on all morning as a steady stream of roach, roach/bream hybrids, Rudd, Roach/Rudd hybrids, Skimmers, Bream, micro Carp, f1's, Crucian hybrids and best of all, goldfish were landed. At dinner time I ran out of bait and pulled the bulging net from the  water. 19lb not counting the ounces of goldfish topped by a extremely thick 3lb+ example gave one point. 9lb's of Crucian hybrids would be another if I didn't lack confidence in their linage (I am not claiming that point lads!) The only other point was again the Rudd and the total weight overall was 57lb.

After taking a wander round the other lake before I left I found a large group of carp feeding on the surface under a large mat of scum collected in one corner of the lake. Unable to resist I lugged all my gear back to the car and walked back with a single rod, landing net and few other bits of gear to have a crack at them.

Two hours of non stop action produced eight carp from 4-12lb before the rain came in at which point they all sank out of sight. Though for two hours work 49lbs of carp punched me over the 100lb mark for the day.

If only it would have lasted two more hours I would have had the carp point in the bag too......