I would like to share a session I had a couple of years ago , every May I have a few days off around my birthday to go fishing for a few days, and it’s became a bit of a tradition over the years. So this time it was decided we was going to have a go down at the very popular venue Yateley Sandhurst, as usual I done a bit of homework to see what methods were working best, and being a very busy day ticket water it wasn’t going to be a easy one by a long way.

On arriving I decided to take a bucket and do a lap round and hopefully drop in somewhere where the fish where, and being a Sunday didn’t really make much difference to the crowds , this really is a busy place and no wonder as the fish stock in this lake is incredible, fish to over 40lb and god knows how many over 30lb. Anyway on the way round the guys in pipes 1 and 2 were then packing down , and its one of the hot swims on the lake, and to boot the fish were showing about 90yds straight out, so the carp gods must have been with me on my birthday, as a mad dash back to the van to get the barrow loaded up and as quick as I could back to the swim to get set up and get the rods out, a quick marker up to see if I could find anything to fish to , it was mainly flat with a small amount of patchy weed here and there , I settled on a small silty spot on the edge of gravel, so without further a due I got a rod on it and put a fair bit of bait over it and set about finding a couple of spots for my other rods, I had just finished setting my second rod up when my left hand rod burst into life a single toner , they don’t mess around here, and what a epic battle it was, a good ten minutes later I was slipping the net under a lovely big mirror, excited was an understatement, the bailliff was standing behind me ,and he seemed as excited as I was as he informed me that this is one of the A team a fish known as Scaley, on the scales it went 38lb 10oz , so a few pictures and then I slipped her back.

The fish where still showing out in front so I decided to just go for it and go heavy on the baiting over one rod as the fish I caught was certainly munching the bait , so I went with half a gallon of maggots and four kilo’s of boilies chopped and whole , I did use my boat to get the bait out as I wanted to do quickly and as quitely as I could, I do like to cast my hookbait out though and make sure I feel the lead down, so left hand rod was back on the spot , and time to get my third rod out , which I did and now time for a smoke and a brew ( I’ve give up smoking now btw) . It must have been only a hour or so since I had caught Scaley , and still mesmerised by it , my left hand rod was away again and yet another epic battle of around ten minutes and as I slipped the net under this fish I couldn’t believe it as it was another descent looking fish this time a common of 35lb 8oz , wow what a birthday I was now very happy indeed.

so same again rod back out and topped up with more bait , and while i was at it I got excited and loaded a bit more over my middle rod as it was only about 3ft away from my left rod anyway while i was boating a bit of bait out over my middle rod , the left just melted line , this was getting crazy now , as this angry fish was giving me the run around as like the first two, could this be another big fish I thought , and yes it was another stunner of 35lb 7oz mirror carp.

so back out it went again and another top up , these fish were proper munching as my unhooking mat was a mass of munched bait , nearly a gallon of maggots and 5kg of boilies in a few hours , unbelievable as I was going to be here for three days , I had 10kg of boilie and 2 gallons of red maggots with me so I was thinking I might run out of bait.

late afternoon now and a quite spell for around an hour before my middle rod decided to jump into life and it felt just like the rest, hard fighting and staying low in the water, could it be another on what was already probably the best fishing trip i’ve had to date for catching biggies. I couldn’t believe it when I slipped the net under my fourth 30lb fish, another fine looking common at 31lb 2oz.

I really couldn’t believe my luck four fish over 30lb in one day was crazy, into the night and I had a couple of smaller fish , which carried on into the second day I had another two low 20lbers and a mid 20lb common on the third morning so all in all 10kg of boilies 2and a half gallons of maggots as I had to go to the local tackle shop for more maggots and nine fish was going to be a birthday I will never forget, and goes to show when it all goes right it truly does make memories we will never forget, and this is why I go fishing.