On Monday l travelled up to Maple Durham for an overnight session on a known carp and bream area to compile a bream article for TCF, however l arrived late and found the complete stretch un-fishable due to moored boats. Although l could have set up in-between l didn’t want to push my luck knowing that the bream would keep the alarms going all night so reluctantly moved downstream to an area of unknown. The night passed without any signs so at first light returned to the known swims, set up quietly and hoped that the normally nocturnal bream might just still be feeding, unfortunately they weren’t.
Wednesday came and with the hottest day of the year forecasted with highs touching thirty degrees my father and l headed east towards Alresford, the recently opened Cemex complex to complete an article for Coarse Fisherman. I always look forward to these sessions and this one was to be equally rewarding, as spending time with my father is always time well spent. A quick walk around the complex revealed four lakes, three obviously very new and one that seem to have been their forever. This lake is only around an acre and holds good tench and crucians so it was here that we set up. The lake was extremely weedy so out came the rake. After around half an hour two swims were fishable, all that was left to do was to bait up, have a curry plus a glass or two of wine then proceed to catch some fish. As darkness fell our rods were positioned, however as the light illuminated the lake at 5am neither of us had received so much as a bleep. Luckily thou a few patches of bubbles revealed that fish were feeding and after trying all the tricks in the book l decided to quickly move away from my rods so that l could catch the early morning mist across the lake on film. It worked as in the distance l could hear the sound of an alarm and returned to find dad with a good tench in my net along with both my rods in the biggest tangle imaginable. That fish signalled the start of a frantic few hours, just as if a switch had been turned on and we both proceeded to catch the odd tench to just over six-pounds plus plenty of immaculate small crucians.
