'It's not over until it's over...'

Not one for fishing bank holidays, but spring was rapidly upon us and I really fancied a day’s fishing, with my pal Joe.

Having booked our chosen lake, we were sure to get a swim, but when we turned up at the gates, we were joined by four other cars as keen as us and it seemed like it was going to be a race to place a bucket in a swim - not my idea of pleasure fishing!

Luckily, we ended up in the swims we wanted so the initial morning panic was over. Time to relax, put the kettle on and get some rigs out there. I was hoping the fish would be up near the surface, but I think I was being a bit premature. After all, it was only the beginning of April!

My plan of attack was to use pop-ups on a D-rig, with boilies, boilies and more boilies as freebies. And of course, nothing else but the Bait-Tech Poloni!

I opted to fish tight to an island in front of me on both rods and it wasn’t long before my alarms and spools were singing and dancing. It was midday and I had three fish to my name and a big grin on my face. The Poloni boilies were flying in by the dozen via throwing stick and the fish were loving it. I felt I had achieved what I came here to do, so It was time to relax and enjoy the afternoon.

Joe had a slow start but managed to bag himself couple of stunners around lunchtime before a quiet spell on the whole lake. Time was quickly whittling away and before we knew it, we were in the middle of packing up at 5pm. One thing I’ve always done is pack all the gear up, apart from the two rods left on the deck with no alarms. I’ve only ever caught one doing this but you just never know.

Now what happened next was quite incredible. Both Joe and I had packed away one of our rods so we were left with just one each in the water. I was about to put my hand on the handle of the rod to reel it in and I watched as my line tightened up and the rod tip went round!

I picked the rod up and I bent into an angry fish. It was kiting left towards Joe’s line. Then the inevitable happened, or so we thought. I apologised to Joe and he picked his rod up to try and avoid the tangle. But his line tightening up had in fact nothing to do with my fish, he had one on himself.

Within a few seconds we were both playing fish while in absolute hysterics. The result was two beautiful commons still with their winter colours on.

I don’t think I’ve ever experienced such a sweet ending to a session.

The morale of the story is: “it’s not over until it’s over”.

Until next time, good angling
John Bassili - Carp Catcher