My heart belongs to the sea.

It was always going to be tough this weekend and I knew it. I had awoken early to the sight of frost powdering the car. This felt like someone pushing me down as I struggled to get get up. You see for the last week or so my vim or vigour towards fishing has been... well, lacking. Truthfully I miss the rivers and although I am going through the motions and I am in need of some contrast. I need to get away! Luckily I am going away in little under five days time towards the edge of our island to once again fish the biggest and ultimate venue the sea. As I wrote that I just thought of something... although we think of seas as individual entities they are actually just one massive body of water that surrounds all land. So yes it is the biggest venue here on planet dirt.

What got me onto this topic was this: as I froze my protrusions off in the savage wind, the sun mocking me by burning away at twenty seven million degrees Fahrenheit whilst I froze in clear sight of it, I fell into a trace as I waited for a run, and watched the small breakers at the end of the wind lanes down the bank.

It was almost as if I could hear the waves breaking on the shingle. That was it. Watching for rolling fish was forgotten and I was off in la la land day dreaming of heaving lead over the horizon towards shoals of sparkling silver bass and golden cod.

As with all dreams they end only too soon and I know you will expect me to confirm a heart thumping run but no, the alarm screamed not, instead my bobbin jiggled up and down as if some annoying bream had sucked up my bait and was wallowing round in a numb panic, as they do. And that's when it hit - me the lake I was fishing is rumoured to only contain around ten to fifteen bream. The last one caught if I remember rightly was a mere double... Trust me the thought of that got me moving. My strike met no sack fighting fish but throbbed instead as if I had hooked something of the silver variety.

It turned out to be a female tench of around three pounds whose fight was as insipid as her outfit. I did hope to snap the little darling but after I had stowed her safely in the net and put her gently on the mat, she found just enough energy to perform a single flip into the air and back in the lake leaving me looking like a numpty.

After that I tried desperately to get back into my day dream but like those times when you are woken in the middle of a wonderful dream and are unable to get back to sleep, I could not get back to dreams of the rolling waves.

Later after a visit from Keith and his son Max I was considering a nap when my right hand rod did one. Half way through the fight with a tench my other rod seemed to wake up. At first I thought the fish had gone through the line but the moment the tench slipped over the rim of the net the other one sparked off.

This felt very odd indeed. It was powerful but not, if you get my meaning. It was kiting round all over the place and that made me suspect maybe a larger male tench was on the end of the line.

When it rolled on the surface it clicked straight away. The carp in this lake are freak shows! They are an odd stumpy strain whose single common trait through the ranks is a short stumpy body type. Most look like they have consumed a beach ball, and when I pulled this one out it was no different.

Lying side by side on the mat the little carp made the little tench look quite big, but the tench although unweighed was no way over two and a half pounds. Macabre interest made me quickly weigh the carp at just under 4lb.

I couldn't stop looking at this weird thing and the more I did the more it looked like a perfectly scaled down big carp. As I know how much carp anglers like to name their catches so I am going to take this opportunity to name this one. So from this day forth it shall be know as 1:10

After that bit of excitement I recast and willed the alarms to sound one more time before I went home and moth balled my coarse gear for a while, dusted off the beach caster rods before stripping the old line of my reels in earnest .