Mike’s Diary

River success...

Work and family commitments soon took over though and the close season work parties at my Springwood fishery meant that apart from a few day sessions on a Devon estate lake, I didn’t get the chance to concentrate on my fishing for another six weeks, but I couldn’t wait for the arrival of June 16th and a spot of river fishing. The new bait development has been picking up pace and after a few final tweaks, myself and Lee were confident that everything about it was absolutely spot
on - we weren’t wrong!

Despite the new bait going well it had a lot to live up to because the B5 had done so remarkably well on the river during the past 2-years, including a hat-trick of thirties, which was unheard of before on the river. Based on our usual high food value philosophy, the new bait was introduced regularly for 3-weeks leading up to the season and it soon became obvious that they wanted more and it was very pleasing to see that the bait was holding them in our chosen spots ready for ‘the off’ – perfect!

Most of the carp were feeding very close to the edge amongst the soft marginal blanket weed where the bream were spawning and it soon became apparent that they were mopping up the eggs, as well as foraging on the big black water snails that colonise here. The bait was a nice free snack, but a nutritious one at that!

Now I don’t want to go into too much detail here because I’m compiling lots of fresh material for my follow up book to Carp Life due out next year, but the season has got off to an absolute flyer with a very consistent amount of action together with some fantastic river carp, including a number of big commons, mirrors and leathers.

Incidentally, I’ve been using the new Covert range of terminal tackle from Gardner, including their new Mugga hooks and the hook holds have been quite amazing. I’ve also had a few calls from anglers enquiring what reels those ‘small silver things’ are in my shots! Well they’re the Caldia 4000 reels from Daiwa and are simply brilliant for short to medium range work. I’ve been and ‘old school’ user of Cardinal 55’s since the 70’s but I’ve now finally found a reel that supersedes them in every department!