Once again I’ll apologies for the delay in my monthly update piece. For a number of reasons I have become ridiculously busy and I’m struggling to get much done. The kids are now on their Summer holidays, the football season is now in pre season, we are due to go on holiday soon, the wife has a number of weekend trips away arranged and it’s also her 30th birthday coming up. So my fishing has been restricted to short session carping. Given the heat (which I’m not complaining about) it’s making things very difficult.

Since I last wrote a update for the Catch and release website, I’ve attempted to fish a local club water with my mate Joe Jagger. I say attempt as we really struggled to make an impact and after a couple of sessions Joe unfortunately lost one and I caught a 6lb tench for our efforts. We have decided to leave the water until the Autumn when the temperatures drop off and conditions are better suited.

Although my syndicate has been doing a few bites I’ve only managed one session. Although I did catch, it was another of the lakes stockies. Don’t get me wrong they all count from this water, but seeing as there are so many bigger fish resident. It would be nice to be catching those instead.

As I’ve mentioned I have been really busy recently, so a lot of my fishing has been short sessions. I fished a 3hr evening session on the Grand union canal with my good friend Steve Sharp and managed 3 fish to 12lb. It was also a good session as I managed to use a couple of the new Korda products (Dark matter braid and tungsten sleeves). I like to use new products on short sessions and easier venues to gain confidence in them. I also made a stick mix and Livesystem hook-baits which is soaked in the coconut goo. So it was nice to get some confidence in those methods, tactics and tackle items.

Another of the short sessions, came about after my two sons (Marcus and Ben) came down to see me and Joe fishing. They were interested in what was going on and enjoyed everything about being on the bank. Bar not catching.

A couple of days later my wife said that Ben would like me to take him fishing and she suggested that we all go for the morning. It was a nice day and I thought the local water might be ideal for a quick bite and a decent sized fish

When we got to the lake I found some carp in the margins. This was the plan, as I’d found them here before and managed to quickly stalk them out. With all my excitement I totally forgot about my son, who was also overly excited and managed to spook the fish with his noisy approach. Plan B was to feed some CC Moore floating pellets and fish zigs or a kruiser controller over the top. Although a number of carp were feeding, they continually spooked off the surface line and we changed to zigs. It took me a while to get the right depth, but once I did it wasn’t long before we were away. The 18lb 08oz ghost carp was my sons very first carp and he lapped up the attentions of the newly formed audience of dog walkers and passes by, who’d stopped to watch.

I’ve got a mega busy month ahead and little time for fishing unfortunately. However I am fortunate enough to be once again taking part in the Linear fisheries charity event (Fishing with the stars). I attended the event last year which is well attended by some angling greats ; Chris and Angie Lowe, Ian Russel, Nigel Williams, Dave Lane, Tom Maker, Adam Penning, the Apache and many others. I’m once again fishing with the band Occasion with my friend Lee Robin of Sonubaits. The event was one of the best experiences I had last year and I’m very much looking forward to attending this year. Especially as it’s the best opportunity to wet some lines this month.

So next month I’ll have plenty of updates from the Fishing with the stars event and hopefully some carp to.