The Airfield Lake is back open, and I’m here on the first day for a quick overnighter. I arrived at about 8 am on Friday morning and was the second person there, another syndicate member was just finishing setting up. The weather is a bit all over the place over the next 24 weeks as well as the following week, which is when I’m planning on getting out here as much as possible, due to finally having my broken tooth removed next Friday. I’m not sure how I will be feeling the following week, then the week after this is the Easter holidays, and the kids are off for two weeks. The second week, the wife is off work and my dad is due to stay.  Hopefully, the weather will have improved somewhat, and we can get out and visit a few places.

I’ve spent so long waiting for March to arrive, and now I’m writing about May nearly!  The wife is away for work for a week in Corsica.

When I arrived, I had a good drive about the tracks, being very mindful of getting stuck. The water levels were extremely high, much the same all over the Avon Valley, with the river season ending last night. Those poor members hardly got to fish over the past few months.

With the 30+ mph winds forecast, some swims were just not going to be possible to fish, along with the flooded ones, reducing my options. I popped by for a chat with James, the other member, who had looked all around the bottom lake, plus the middle, and had settled for the double gravel swim. After looking around a bit more, it became obvious that a couple of swims away were my best options and the chance of a carp. It certainly wasn’t a given and will probably be a blank, simply because they haven’t seen anything other than natural food since last October.

I pitched up in a swim with no name, other than ‘The One Below The Tower Swim’. One rod was fished on an area I’d caught from before, and the other was going to be a single hook bait roving about if I spotted anything close by.

But by 15:30, nothing close by had stuck its head out. However, Gate Island looked interesting for my next trip, as I’d seen a few near there.

One of my approaches this season was to fish closer in more than in previous years, and there’s a lovely overhanging tree/bush to my right that has produced carp in the past for me, there may have been movement there this morning. I really wasn’t sure at the time, but it had been playing on my mind and drawing me in over the day, as generally, open water doesn’t work out very productively for the first few weeks.

I decided that I would put a large PVA bag out with 75% pellet and a few halves of 20mm Classic Corn Boilies.

The other rod would stay where it was. That was a small bag, with 4 spombs put over the top. One rod was on a 12mm Catalyst pop-up, and the other a Masala dumbell, and hopefully, one of these would rattle off at some point.

The afternoon and evening were spent chatting to various people coming for a walkabout on opening day. The clouds vanished, and the stars came out. With no light pollution over the New Forest, they were fantastic last night. The chances of a bite faded; the lake was flat and calm. I woke to the birds in full spring song, a stunning misty, flat carp lake, with no signs of carp. By 8 am, the sun was on my bivvy, and it was lovely looking out across the lake again, watching for any carpy signs.

I want to be packed up by 10 am and go for a good warm-up, plus start scattering boilies about in no particular place, just get them spread around the lake so the carp find them and start feeding on them as soon as possible.

With only a couple of hours before I’m off, I can only hope that something comes my way.

Fingers crossed.

Packing-up time arrived all too soon, but I had planned to scatter a bit of bait on the way out, so I need to get a shift on.

Until next time,

Richard