Andy Spreadbury's Fishing Blog

Thursday, 29th.March Great excitement during the week as my ticket for Bough Beech arrived; I decided I have to get over there and have a good look before my first session. With the camera and plumbing rod in the car, I left home in the sunshine full of expectation! By the time I got to the reservoir however it had started to rain and the place looked a very dark, dour, forbidding place. No fishery looks its best in such conditions and my mood reflected this rather depressive aspect. I was determined to have a plumb though and found eight feet at eight wraps, straight off the Dam Wall, the water’s edge being only a metre from the foot of the wall. This of course will fall during the following months and in my head I put in place plans for fishing it. In a southerly wind it would be nice and sheltered and this fact immediately began to change the way I thought about my approach to the place… Even though I had yet to wet a line in Bough Beech, how to fish it had occupied my ...

Friday, 16th.March The Ultimate Challenge One of the exciting things about this time of year is the renewal or acquisition of new club or syndicate tickets. In one particular case, I have been waiting for the past three years to be offered a place - Kingfisher Angling and Preservation Society at Snodland (KAPS for short). So popular is KAPS and the waiting list so long, and the drop-out rate so low, many years can pass before a place comes up. Recently, I reached a bit of a crisis with my carp-fishing. For more years than I care to remember I have scoured the South East of England in an endless search for my ‘ideal’ carp water - a ‘Spiritual Home’ if you will, where I can go and fish and immerse myself in total carpiness and this quote says it all as far as I’m concerned - “Carp-Fishing is who I am. It’s not what I do”. This search has taken me as far north as Linear Fisheries near Oxford and as far south as Swanborough near Lewes near the south coast. Although I ha...

Thursday, 15th.February Swanborough Fishery, Sussex 10.15 Bivvied-up in the crap-hole that is Swanborough. I have rarely seen such mud! Take a look at this!- We have hit a sudden mild spell. Overnight, the temperature has shot up to 13.5° in the sun, the water temperature is still however 5.8° - considerably better than it was - very near the ‘magic’ 6° which I reckon is the getting near the bottom limit of where a carp is willing to accept a bait in the winter. Swanborough is a small water of just over two acres, ideally suited to the ‘small water’ kit I am using - the Chub stalking rods and Daiwa SS2600 reels and fluorocarbon line. I have put 5 spods of corn and pellets on a mark about half way across the peg and put both rods on it. One, a balanced pop-up on a 360 rig a la Tom Maker, the other, a balanced bait in a pva bag. I am really confident in both these presentations and would quite happily fish The Secret Lake in Essex with them; if it wasn’t so wet...

It's been a while since I last posted anything for the simple reason that my fishing has been pants! Since I don't believe in posting stuff unless there is something interesting to say, I have left it until now before adding anything. Although this post is dated 1st.March, the following relates to sessions several weeks ago... [Note - I've decided to record these Blogs a little differently to that previously. The text you see here are direct transcripts from my Field Log, notes made at the waterside, at the time of fishing. I feel that not only are they more relevant but more accurate in recording my mindset at the actual time of fishing. Well that's what I think anyway!] Notes shown in italics are my afterthoughts made subsequent to events. Wednesday, 10th.January The Willows, Langley’s Speci The Willows is a relatively new 'commercial' water that is very close to my home and contains a good stock of carp, four (at least) of which are...

The Secret Lake 12.00 At last I am installed on the Meadow Bank in (I think) Peg 9. Well, it’s the one past ‘The Point’ swim. Saw a fish show right smack in front at about fifty yards, so clipped at 13 wraps. Leading showed only light-ish weed so well confident with my solid bags. Another fish showed down to the right, proving once again there are resident fish here. 12.30 Another fish showed to the right. 13.00 Weather overcast but very mild - small airborne flies on the wing. Wind from the SW. More fish out to the right. They seem to be right in front of the last ladder on the opposite side of the lake. At some point these fish must move down the lake and over my spodded area. 13.30 No line bites - I’m assuming there are no fish in the area. Line bites on this lake seem a pre-cursor to a take. 14.30 It’s gone quiet now - haven’t seen a fish for an hour. Wind increased in strength slightly. Fishing Peg 5 would have been very tough inde...

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 f...

The following are my field notes made at the time of our return trip to our french water. It turned out to be a very tough week indeed, in more ways than one! Sunday,17th.September 15.00 Arrived after a very long and tedious journey; it should have taken us only three and a half hours but due to stops etc. took nearly five! We just got the bivvies up in peg 7 before the heavens opened - rain, hail, and goodness knows what else! People still arriving so it’s hard to anticipate how busy the lake will be. Cannot even pop out to fill the kettle it’s raining so hard! 18.00 Rain stopped and the sun has come out. All three rods are in play: the LH is a Cell wafter on a 12inch hooklength, the CENTRE rod is a Ronnie Rig with ‘Scent from Heaven’ pop up on a four inch Korda Boom, and the RH rod, a Monster Ice boilie with a pink Cell topper. All but the centre rod are just shy of 22 wraps aimed at the Out of Bounds swim. [At this point, I stopped and did a swim sur...