Saturday evening, 5pm. Phone vibrates its way across the table as a text comes in from one of the lads on the new syndicate saying “social over lake, you coming?”, couple of messages either way ends up with “of course bring your rods unless you want to hand line the fish in”. No sooner do I finish reading that then the kit is being rapidly chucked into the car and racing the light to get to the lake.
Now like most things in life not everything goes to plan so after a quick pit stop to the shop for a pot noodle and milk, finds us (I don’t drive so I’m lucky I have a very understanding girlfriend/chauffeur) following what seems like every slow driver that Colchester has to offer. Do these people not understand a carp angler is desperate to get to the lake! Well that was the least of my worries as worse was to come! As we turned down a little country lane we were faced with a car coming down the middle of the road and deciding not to move over it left us with 3 options of which 2 were a no goes so a nice deep pothole it was. This left a lovely 2” gash in the side wall of one of the front tyres, Great (or words to that effect), with no spare wheel in the car (it never came with one) a quick call to the RAC was needed and with that my quick overnighter wasn’t looking like it was going to happen.
The second they arrived the kit was rapidly thrown from our car to his and we set about driving the short distance to the lake. However, now the light had completely gone by the time I had unloaded my kit from the car and got to a swim. After getting the bedchair opened up and the rods baited etc I popped round for a quick chat and a much needed cheeky beer with the lads before I returned to my swim and stuck the kettle on. Whilst the kettle was doing its thing the rods were quickly flicked into position, with each rod receiving a small handful of Sticky Baits new Winterberry boilies scattered around the vicinity of the hookbaits. Finally the rods were in their rests and alarms on, the kettle was boiling away nicely, first brew of any session is always the best in my eyes.
I was laying in the bag listening to all the sounds going on around the lake, it was heaven. The coots were going mental at each other, the foxes were screeching, the owls were hooting and the little muntjac deer were being incredibly vocal. One of which must have done almost an entire circuit of the lake and the surround woodland barking/calling every 10-15 seconds for the best part of 25 minutes. All these things and a whole lot more are what a lot on non anglers miss out on.
A few liners during the night and hearing a couple of half decent fish roll (during those rare occasions when the coots were actually being quiet) was about all the action id receive on this unplanned quick 12 hour overnighter. To be honest with the limited amount of time I have it was just nice to be out on the bank again, and by 9am I was back home and getting sorted for another day of work.
Well I know it’s been short but I hope you have enjoyed reading it, hopefully next time I will have at least 1 fish under my belt from the new syndicate.