It’s not every day that a social involves something other than bite alarms, big pits and brews so when my long time angling mate Jordan Dales asked if a days float fishing was on the cards I just couldn’t refuse and made straight for the tackle shed to get together some bits and pieces I hadn’t used for weeks, maybe even months!
The venue choices were simple, a couple of lakes with a very good stock of silvers but the chance of a bonus bigger fish too. Brandesburton 3&4 pond was the first venue to try and I turned up at 5:30am with Jordan arriving a couple of hours later after the local tackle shop had opened. We only spent a few hours here, Jordan fishing your usual float methods whilst I opted to fish shallow with rather unconventional, but very effective tactic involving Fox’s smallest bolt bubble to get the distance, 1ft of 3lb hooklength, a size 12 with a single big grain of corn picking off some very nice Rudd in the process! The biggest of the morning tipped the scales at 1lb 8oz with another only marginally smaller following it on the very next cast. Nothing monstrous but larger than I think either of us were expecting to see for most of the day…although I did manage to lose 3 Carp on the bounce off of the surface! A real killer!
The crosswind eventually picked up which made our float control next to impossible, the rain came with it and whilst huddling under 1 small match brolly we made the decision to move to a slightly more sheltered venue to target a few more species.
Gear packed, more bait bought and lunch eaten we headed off up the road to Ray Fosters lake in Leven, a place we were 110% confident, if you ever can be, that a few more species would turn up. Now Jordan and I have a competitive history to say the least and on the rare occasions that we do get to fish together our socials always appear to become matches! In this case, who could catch the most species before packing up at 4pm. I instantly did away with the bolt bubble tactic, no distance required as we would be fishing off the rod tips for the most part here. Not that a change of methods helped me much with Jordan quickly taking the lead! Bream, Rudd, Roach, Perch all seemingly jumping in his lap. I did somehow manage to claw my way back to make it even though and we both felt that a humble Gudgeon would surely take the crown, that is, until a fluke bite from and ornamental orange and black Rudd, seemingly the only one in the lake, was swung into Jordans hand and thrust in my face with a smug grin to go with it. There was absolutely no arguing with that and like the sore loser I am, a maggot was dropped down his hoodie before I finally accepted defeat. You just can’t beat that kind of luck!
All in all, it was an absolutely fantastic day out and really did make for a refreshing change. A big thanks to Jord for the catch photos and the invite.
The Carp rods will be appearing again soon but it won’t be long before I go chasing some little bars of gold again!