“Take me to Church”
A few weeks after my successful trip having captured three mid thirties on the “mead” I’m back down RK Leisure’s fantastic Horton complex, just in time for the reopening of the complex, this time last year i was in exactly the same place, but it was my first time I’d ever seen it, and what an opening session it was last year!
To come to the “home” of English carp fishing and have 4 fish up to just shy of forty pounds on my opening session was the stuff of dreams; my fishing partner Ash Hoskins also bagged a brace including a 44lber!
The question was would we be pushing our look to try and do it again?!
Should we have left well enough alone?
Ill be honest on the final morning of a 72 hour session the answer was yes, with only one stockie caught between us things were looking grim, that said having witnessed the biggest fish in the lake (Fingers) be caught 2 swims to our right at a colossal 48 and a half pounds the trip was worth it for that alone! (well done nobby btw)
It wasn’t that the fish were not feeding, there had been an exceptional number of captures during this time frame around 19 or 20 I believe!
That said it was rammed, with 22 people on and the fish being hungry they were having it!
Watching the captures materialize we could literally track the pods movement around the lake, we knew they were coming but would we run out of time before they got to us?
The baiting approach and rigs were the tried and tested spread boilie approach at 60 yards to a firm silty area, the rig was my “Horton rig” consisting of an 8 inch Gardner ultra skin hook link attached to a size 6 covert Mugga at the business end, once again the Mainline new grange snowman rig was attached via a size 12 swivel multi-rig style to compensate for when the fish are “vortexing” around your hook bait and baited area.
To be fair all the above meant nothing as the fish were not in front of us forb the first 60 hours and due to it being opening week options in terms of a move were more than limited, finally on the final evening i noticed a few carpy signs in the area and sure enough the following morning i was picturing a clonking 38lber for a new member (well done Darren) in the swim next door.
It was about an hour after this whilst starting to get my gear together for the packdown Ash popped round and we stood discussing the session, we got what was going on and we accepted it, during this conversation i turned round to ash and said,
“ dya know what, I don’t really ever remember having a packd own bite to save a blank”
I swear right on cue and with the word “blank” having barely left my lips a single beep alerted me to an occurrence, wide eyed and with barely enough time to glance at each other and back to the rod it ripped off, it was a truly fantastic disbelieving feeling as i lifted into the culprit that had so welcomdley punctuated my statement with a delkim beep full stop!
The deep heavy lunges told me it wasn’t a stockie and after a few minutes I started to tame her, with hands shaking and a strange look on my face (as you can see) I finally subdued her engulfing her in the outreach mesh.
Peering into the net we could see it was a good un’ and Ash popped to his swim to retrieve my Huge XL pro matt that hed used to care for the aforementioned stockie.
I stayed in that position with rod in hand for honestly 2 to 3 minutes; the only thing that moved was my face with little smiles and disbelieving head shakes as it sunk in.
It was during this day dream state I realised that ash had yet to return with my unhooking matt?
He was only next door, I left Darren to field the fish while i walked around to ash’s swim to see what he was doing, the words
“he can’t have one on had barely left my lips” 
When skipping round the corner like a leprechaun on heat was ash!
“Mines bigger than yours, Mines bigger than yours”
“ ya Having a f*****g laugh?!?!” I wailed!
Huge grins adorned our faces as we weighed the fish and the realisation that we had had a last knockings brace to continue our fantastic opening week form on the church lake had continued
Mine went 36-14 and ashes went 41-04
So to conclude our two opening 72 hour sessions had resulted in 2 forties 3 upper thirties a low thirty and 3 stockies.
I think anyone who fishes with a bro would admit this was the stuff of dreams!