Pressured Day Tickets – Karl Brandreth

When I started out fishing it was for the smaller species like roach and perch etc, and I had to rely on my Grandad to take me fishing at weekends after school, at that time I was fishing Capesthorne Hall in Cheshire ran by a club, sat there watching and learning how to cast and put bait on but I noticed other guys weren’t doing the same as me so one day I said to my Grandad I’m going to have a walk round and chat to some of the guys, I was young and well into my fishing so I needed more info.

Any way all that ended when I grew up a bit, still into my match fishing but life had other ideas like pubs and clubs so fishing kind of slowed down.

Years later I ended up being a doorman on our local bar and met my wife Julie, who then introduced me to her friends and two of her friends were carp anglers and took me carp fishing a couple of weeks later to a day ticket in Cheshire for the first time, and I must admit I was hooked but shocked.

Well that was a short insight to how I came across day ticket waters, at the time I couldn’t afford to be in any big clubs so I was just getting on waters where a can, I live in Manchester so the waters around here are a bit rough and ready so you have to be careful where you go fishing, there’s a couple of reservoirs I tried in the suburbs but found out the hard way not to go back on there with some bad experiences, so I looked around and found some jet ski and boating lakes which I thought were OK so I settled there for a bit on Sale Water Park and caught some nice carp up to around 20lb.

The only thing was you couldn’t get on the pegs that produce the big carp, they were always taken by a clique, one bivvy would stay up for weeks at a time and the anglers in the clique would take turns in using the bivvy and they would bait up for each other, the bailiff on there at the time was included in the clique as well.

So I continued on there until I had enough of jet skis and speedboats ripping it up in front of you or taking your lines out too, it was hard work.

So I started to look at fisheries that were ran on private land I started in Macclesfield, there was 5 lakes and we were on the specimen lake they were ran better because the owners had rules if you didn’t stick to them you were off the only problem is you’ve got guys casting over you, or you don’t know how much bait was put in the day before, when the gates open everyone runs down to the lakes and grabs a peg, it’s like a shop sale when the gates open its crazy.

So after trying out a few more day ticket waters like a circus, I managed to get into the club I’m in now but that’s another story.

I then found RH Fisheries and down in Shropshire but with having a better job now I can afford to go and enjoy, plus the chance of catching a PB.

I’ve been fishing there on and off for around ten years and I’ve seen good and bad things on the lakes but nothing major like what I have seen on other day tickets like I say they have strict rules, you can pick your peg in advance as long as they are free to get on but same old story is how much bait was put in before your session, do you get the spod out and fill it in or fish singles over the last guys bait what do you do?

You do get the odd guy to see you catch a fish then he casts over to your area pushing his luck but I just shout over to him and tell him to move his line, I’ve even seen other guys sneak a 3rd rod out at night but It’s not my place to say anything.

As I said I live up in Manchester so I’ve had a couple of trips down South to certain waters and they are so busy it’s unbelievable, it’s like one in one out kind of thing that’s not my kind of fishing.

Plus there’s loads of carp to catch from up here from various day ticket lakes and venues with some decent carp in to say the least.

The only thing is with busy day tickets is that the carp grow bigger due to the amount of bait put in by anglers day in day out all year round, I know of some places that have daily rules about how much bait you use in one session but not all of them eg. 2kg of bait per angler per day.

The downside to day tickets is some rules and I know they are there for a reason but there’s one rule that I can’t get my head round is when there is fresh water mussels in the lakes they ban lead core, now to me you need it so you don’t keep getting cut off and leaving trailers everywhere which in turn causes the carp to get stuck in the snags.