48hrs of rain, pain and a blank saver

I had pre booked a 48hr session on my favourite lake on Todber Manor complex called Wadmill, little did I know the weather was going to be horrendous all weekend. I picked up my 8 year old from school, bundled the dog in the van and off we went. We arrived just before 17:00 and there was only one swim left for me so we put a bucket down and went to grab the gear. After getting soggy setting up the bivvy and rods we took cover on our beds to wait for the fish, plenty of liners but no bites, I baited up and refreshed my rods before we got settled for the night.

Didn’t sleep all night as there were alarms going off all night unfortunately just not mine. As I didn’t sleep I decided at 05:00 to pop out a couple of X-Spods of bait on my spot using my X3K 4lb TC Spod/Marker rod. Still getting liners I was confident there were fish in the area, so fought the urge to keep messing around with my rods.

Come lunchtime I noticed the swim to the right of me packing up, the weather was bad with the constant rain so I’m guessing they’d had enough, looked over towards their swim and was planning on moving one of my rods once they had left, the corner of an island was looking good with fish showing.

To my surprise the couple then start launching all their bait in the lake, all over their swim and throwing it very close to the boundaries of mine, I was gob smacked! Half a bucket of spod mix, 1kg of boilies and numerous handfuls of pellets, there is no rule against doing that before packing up and leaving so I couldn’t say anything or tell the bailiff, what made it worst was the couple were looking at me in the eye and smirking, no idea why they would be so spiteful but suppose that’s fishing for you, as you can imagine I was getting rather angry, worried that my swim was dead enough as it was without them doing this.

As soon as they left I moved in on the island with my right hand rod and left the other out on the spot I had created. Again liners throughout the evening but no bites.

Sunday morning came and so did more rain, I was debating packing up early but after a coffee I convinced myself to persist, I refreshed the hookbait on both rods and cast them with just a mesh bag. Then finally the sweet sound of my alarms!

I couldn’t get to my rod quick enough, it was stripping line pretty fast, she really put up a fight staying deep in the water and diving left and right, but playing a fish on the X3K’s is no problem, it felt like an alright size so I was getting rather excited to see her head pop up, bosh in the net, when I saw my prize I was elated 24lbs of gorgeous mirror carp.