Red Letters

After an initial success on the new bait the next session drew a blank but then again so did everyone else so I put my confidence crisis on hold. Due to a family comitment I didn't make it back on to the bank until last night. It was a warm day but without ripple but I still felt extremeley optimistic. By dusk my confidence was on the slide and had to work had to remind myself that the session was still young. Shortly after dark the right hand rod raced off and after a good plodding fight a mirror of 15lb 1oz slid into the net.

Feeling very relieved I recast and sat back to take it in, an hour later the left hand rod went off and the fish stayed deep. The fish managed to stay deep and despite back leads picked up the centre line dragging the lead completely out of position. A mirror of 17lb 3oz was a really nice bonus and incidently came on a S7 glugged in Pure Krill.

So there I was with gear in dissaray and baits pulled out position feeling relieved and fully over the moon and coming to the conclusion that it may be time to pack up when out of the blue the centre rod flew off. I was amazed, the last thing I imagined after having the bait and lead dragged across the bottom was to have it picked up. It was then I realised I'd left the net next to my unhooking mat at the top of the bank. after some deft shuffling and back winding I had the net in the water with a 15lb 4oz in it

So 3 good fish in a short evening session, I'd call that a right old result.

After the Dought

To further muddy the water I visited my local water armed with my new bait. I managed to land 2 carp to rapturous applause from a sympathetic Kev. The first pulled the scales to 14lb 15oz and the second was a common which may have struggled almost to double figures.

After tying a brand new wallet of rigs, changed bait and rethought my tactics it came as a huge relief to bank a pair of fish in a short session.

The Great Bait Debate

Its an age old discussion that's heard on every venue....Bait and does it really have a massive impact on someone's catch rate? Up until a few months ago I would have agreed that if you put a good quality bait in front of a feeding carp and it hadn't been caught more than once or twice on it then there's no reason it wouldn't take it. That was before I came across Trigger with Blue Oyster. No one else has any trouble catching on it but I can't get so much as a twitch on it. On the plus side my good friend Scotty has supplied me with a some new DNA baits secret 7 and a big bottle of Sticky's Pure Liquid Krill. Lets see if that ends the blank spell.