Today I helped another lapsed angler, Jon DeCecco, to return to the fold. Like many of my students, Jon had fished a lot when he was younger but had not fished with any success for eight years. He has recently come to live in a house that backs on to Cemex’s Wraysbury two lake and with some fishing literally on his doorstep he decided to take it up again and purchased a permit. His background was in match fishing and after three outings all he had was a list of blanks, the dreaded comorants had got there first.

He contacted me via All things Piscatorial and asked for an introductory day so that he could re-familiarise himself with the sport. These days are quite challenging for me as I must rapidly assess the student’s knowledge in order to pitch my instruction at the appropriate level without the risk of insulting them. This was easy to do with Jon as he was honest about his lack of knowledge with not a pretentious bone in his body. He started float fishing with the new Skinz pellets and was rewarded with a fourteen and a half pound common carp. Nearly three times his previous best.

Fourteen and a half pound common carp

Before leaving home I found some frozen prawns in the freezer thatI had bought to use on another fishery and had refrozen some months ago. I put them in the bait bag never having used prawns at Twynersh and decided to give them a go. Jon caught all day on them, including one more ugly mirror carp and these two lovely male tench.

First male tench

Second male tench

Most of the other fish he caught were perch and roach, including this fine specimen. The roach took soft hookable pellets fished just under the surface. A real test of the speed of his reactions.

Fine specimen of a roach

Another great day in very pleasant company, his thirst for knowledge showed in his well thought out questions and the fish were a bonus.

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