Location School Lake

Hours – 7

After swapping around some gardening jobs today, only to find the weather not so bad as predicted, I was all set up on the school for a few hours today. This was after getting the only job of the day done without getting wet.


I didn’t really intend to come back in this swim, but with the direction of the wind and still a good chance of a few heavy showers today. Also, there were 6 other anglers here but they are all well spaced out. This swim simply felt the best option. There’s an area opposite, but this would involve looking across the lake at a man in a bivvy all day, this is something I avoid for them as much as me these days.


The right hand rod was fished on the spot that had previously produced carp and the other was put on a hard gravelly spot along the margins to my left. Both rods had 12mm pink Catalyst pop ups on, which is the preferred colour of choice for these fish, despite my efforts to find some other colour, they just loved the pink.

As I was probably going to end up staying here all day, I put a few handfuls of chopped Smokey Jack boilies, some small balls of ground bait and attached a small pva bag filled with Catalyst pellets soaked in Catalyst syrup. I tucked the brolly and the other kit back away from the edge of the lake behind a tree as much as possible.

Then scattered a few boilies about for the wildlife and had a brew.

After a few moments where I nearly moved, I decided to stay where I was. The chances of getting a good soaking by moving were pretty high. Heavy showers had started just after noon, there was going to be mixed in with thunderstorms by 3 pm.

I was starting to wonder if I should have moved and was starting to look at my opinions. As no one had gone home yet, I was limited to moving opposite and as I had moved a rod over there about 1 pm. It wasn’t worth the effort and I’m glad I didn’t, as just after 3 30 pm the right rod was away with a very hard fighting Common. It was having no choice but to come out from over the overhanging trees. It wasn’t a quick process, it just wouldn’t give them up, every time I gained ground, it would soon take it back from me. This two-ing and frow-ing continued for over 10 minutes until it had had enough and slipped into the net.

Not the biggest 15lb ish, but hard fighting and that’s the bit I love the most.

My friendly robin photo boomed my video as I was setting it up, it had been feeding a fledgling all day. At times was funny to watch as it must have been pretty fresh from the nest, it wasn’t very good on its feet and would wobble about a lot, it even fell over a couple of times.

The rod was back on the spot and hopefully I was in with a chance of another bite before home time.

That was in the only bite of the day,  it was a welcome fish.

Until next time

Stay safe

Richard