Yesterday I fished the private lake in Surrey I have spoken about before. I’d been invited by Weller of the Yard (who manages the estate) to provide a short period of coaching for the son of a friend of the owner. The offer of some of their fresh eggs and an opportunity to practice my newly learned pole techniques was too much to turn down. My student, Lewis, was a confident young man, keen to learn and he was soon catching rudd and roach to half a pound with a bonus tench towards the end of the short session.

Lewis and a nice tench/>

I chose the wrong swim to fish with a pole, too many lilly pads in which I managed to lose every carp I hooked despite stepping up to a sixteen elastic with an eight pound hook length. I caught several tench up to about four pounds, mostly after I switched to a rod and centrepin. By this time the carp were totally spooked and had stopped feeding.

One of the better tench

This pole fishing is a very steep learning curve, the pole is not the tool to control carp to double figures in a confined space.

During the day two of the lads from the Molesey Anglers Curry Club arrived. They’re both named John which adds a surreal element to any curry club conversation as there is at least one other member called John. They fished the far corner of the lake and just before I packed up, the one we refer to as “Big John” for obvious reasons, came up to me to complain that a fish had just pulled in his rod and taken his front bank stick and bite indicator with it. Presumably his reel was not switched to “bait runner” mode and he did not hear his bite alarm.

It would seem that he had been legering with two rods with bite indicators and when he stripped one rod down to change to float fishing, the other rod was pulled in when he was not watching. He managed to hook the line with his other rod and even landed the carp but the rod and reel were firmly lodged in a patch of lilly pads.

Les the estate manager arrived with his breast waders and was able to retrieve not only the rod and reel but the missing bite alarm and bankstick as well. On checking the bite alarm it was found that it did not work, only to be expected after a total immersion in the lake. Les took it back to his workshop to dry it out with a compressed air hose. When he opened it he found it did not have a battery fitted!

It would seem that Fox do not make a solar powered bite alarm after all!

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