The Secret Lake, somewhere in Essex

10.30

I very nearly didn’t go. I woke up with an overwhelming feeling that I shouldn’t be fishing - I don’t know whether it was some sort of premonition or just general anxiety. I knew I shouldn’t have come. Casting around with a lead and it’s wall to wall weed out there. I’ve settled for 12 + 1 wraps as being less dense than elsewhere, so my solid bags will be clipped up to there.

12.15

Despite early trepidations, confidence is high! I have seen fish out in front of me and my solid bags are giving me the best presentation I can achieve given the weed.

Two rods are on multi-rigs with Northern Special pop-ups, one pink, one yellow. The other rod is a 12mm. wafter fished on my own cotton hair rig on which I have done so well in the past. This has as its accompaniment a yellow Essential Cell. This approximates to the maize I have put out with the Spomb.

14.00

There’s a run on the left-hand rod! The multi-rig is away!… I hook the fish and it begins to move; it feels a good fish… Blast! the hook has fallen out! Bugger.

This is on the multi-rig tied with a size 4 Lorda Krank Choddy. Don’t like the look of it and decide to change it on both rods - this is what I have come up with:

Couldn’t be simpler. An AAA sinker counterbalances very well: could use a shot as I don’t think it makes a blind bit of difference. In a solid bag the shot can’t come off.

It is while I’m tying this rig up that the centre rod is away! A take on the 12mm. wafter! This fish puts up a real struggle and shows dogged resistance all the way to the net. Got him! In the net at the second attempt.

This fish goes 27lbs. 2ozs. and is an absolute minter. It certainly has the frame to become a thirty and I hope one day I can come back and catch him when he is.

16.00

Seems to have gone quiet now. Haven’t seen a ‘show’ for some time.

21.00

Absolutely soaking wet!

At a little before eight o’clock I felt the need to have a ‘dump’ - no denying this, it had to be done. So all rods were reeled in and I went off in the dark to use the facilities fortunately provided by the fishery in the form of the toilet block. On this occasion, open all hours thank goodness!

On my way back to my swim it started to rain again and I waited for a pause in the shower to get a rod out.

Rod number two was similarly prepared although it was really starting to rain harder now and I was extremely concerned the pva bag would melt in the rain before I could make the cast. Fortunately it held together so I now hd two rods out on their marks.

Rod three however did not survive the downpour which was now heaving down harder than ever and I had to abandon this rod to the elements. Door down, zipped up, listening to the rain hammering on the bivvy sides.

22.00

The very thing I was dreading happened - a take amid the driving rain! I got absolutely soaked to the skin playing the fish against a wind which turned right round one hundred and eighty degrees and was blowing straight in to the door of the bivvy!

This fish came to the yellow Northern Special pop-up fished to the left of the spodded area. Nothing for it - kettle on for a nighttime cuppa. Fish was seventeen pounds eight.

Postcript

I got so wet playing this fish it wiped me out for the rest of the night. I had to take my trousers off and hang them up in the bivvy for the rest of the night to try and dry them out although I just about had enough top clothing to preserve decency and a modicum of warmth. I confess I spent the rest of the night inside the sleeping bag so as not to have to get out and brave the cold.

There was mud everywhere! My slippers were caked in the stuff! The rain had turned the banks into a mudslide and packing up in the morning was a nightmare. To add to my problems, the front tyre of my barrow had a ‘flat’ and the exhausting barrow-push back to the car park (twice) absolutely finished me!

I’m getting way too old for this lark…