Serendipity

Those useless feckers at the Met Office had on Sunday told us we'd seen the last of the rain , so don't worry folks, it's going to be a dry week.

By Monday evening it was, erm, Tuesday is going to be wet. Very wet. All day. 

With the local river thoroughly messed up, I headed down to the estate lake. It's part of a carp syndicate and I was told there were "big" perch, roach, a few tench and half a dozen grass carp, along with the prized carp.

It's only five minutes from the house, so I've been having a good look round recently and  deep in a wooded valley, so protected from the worst of the wind. Its shallow, being three, possibly four foot maximum. 

I decided to select four swims, all ultra close in and uncomfortable, so ignored by the carpys and lightly bait them with mixed seed, sweetcorn and chopped worms, then fish them in rotation for twenty of thirty minutes and keep on the move.

First fish was a 1lb 11oz roach, pleasing in size but a really poor old thing, having suffered terrible cormorant damage ( yes, them again ). This was followed by a couple of pound plus perch, thankfully in nice condition.

Before every move a handful of bait was scattered and the swim left to rest. Back in the "roach" swim an hour later I hooked into a much bigger fish that turned out to be a nice early season tench of just over 4lb. 

The swim in the corner, where I'd yet to have a bite, was showing signs of activity with tiny pin head bubbles periodically showing. Nudges and dips on the float but nothing positive until it slid away and a tiny but beautiful mirror carp surfaced. 

He couldn't have been more than a couple of pounds.

More bait, more bubbles and when the sweetcorn/flake cocktail was taken a much bigger fish bolted away with a huge cloud of silt colouring the water in its wake.

I definitely didn't want to end up hooking lots of carp, but there was a chance this could be a grassie so I played it gently on the float rod and perch tackle, more worried about the B983 light gauge hook than the line.

Whatever it was didnt want to come in and my estimate of its size was increasing as time went on. I just couldn't get the head up and was thinking it might be foul hooked. Every time it neared the net it would surge away and there was no way of stopping it on light gear.

With near bank snags I wanted to get it in the net first time and after fifteen minutes or so it seemed to be tiring and with a bit more pressure a head appeared and a massively long body which somehow slid into the, now very undersized net.

A monstrous grassie, it looked huge. Hooooooge I tell you.

The first I've ever seen, let alone caught and weighing 23lb 14oz.

To using my overused expression I was well chuffed or as I believe da yoof say, "buzzin".

Now, do you think I'll be able to get on the river today , for one last try ?