Florence The Carp Queen
Florence and her dad Craig have had a lot of success fishing the river and recently managed to break both of their PB's!
We stared fishing the river in 2020 but due to covid didn’t get to do much angling, but the walks most days was the key to our success for 2021. We had 6 out in our first season, a koi being one of which Florence caught after school. This is a tidal river and therefore we found that the carp tended to keep 2-3 miles up stream and liked to hold up on the first s bend. We had three different areas we would bait regularly with maize, hemp, tigers and CC Moore pacific tuna and live system. We also found fishing around full moons and low pressure was the key as with Florence at school and covid I liked to give her the best opportunity to catch.
I fished the opening night 2021 but had no luck, the next time we fished due to lock downs and the river being overgrown in the summer months was October and I caught 2 carp. When we wasn't fishing we still walked the river a lot and pre baited over 500kg (there's lots of bream in there) through the summer and autumn months. Our next session 19th November and it was a full moon, Florence and I went to our local tackle shop and got some essentials for our trip. Florence chose her three favourite pre-tied Korda rigs, a Multi Rig and two Spinner Rigs both with size 6 hooks. We both used white CC More tuna pop ups over 2kg of our bait mix on each spot.
We arrived in the new van that we converted into the fishing camper so we could drive to our spot on the s bend, we got the rods out and the rain was in all day. We had just laid our heads down for a nap when Florences' alarm screamed off! She was into a fish on her right had rod, the river was starting to flow fast and the carp gave up a good scrap. I netted it for her and it was a beautiful river common weighing bang on 12lb. Florence was over the moon and I was so proud of her. The smile on her face when she was holding the fish in the torrential rain was a picture, she didn't have a care in the world. We got the rod back out and headed back to the van for a celebratory chocolate!
After the rods went quiet I decided to change my left had rod to a Snowman Rig using a Korda Wide Gape size 6 hook and Dark Matter hooklink. Around an hour later my wife and 1 year old son came up to see us to have a cup of tea, and within 10 minutes the left hand rod ripped off and headed round the s bend. I could tell it was a decent fish and caught a glimpse of it after gaining some yards back, it was a mirror! I have only seen two in this section of the river and had caught one last season, so I knew it was what we call the big river Bessie. We weighed her at 32lb 12oz and it was amazing to share it with my daughter, wife and new son.
The star of the show though is Florence, she had walked the river so many times with me and learnt how fish behaved and really enjoyed it. She also enjoyed being outside with nature, it is what she has loved doing since the age of 3!
