With all the work I’ve been doing down at the lakes, it’s necessary to keep a fire burning to dispose of all the small branches and unusable wood. Of course, as we all know it’s dangerous to leave a fire unattended so when I hauled my aching legs from the silt on Thursday afternoon I reasoned that it would be unsafe for me to leave the substantial fire burning and go home. The only possible solution that would adhere to the stringent safety regulations we apply, was for me to break out the brolly and fish Papillon Vert for the night … for safety reasons.

I fished the same swim as my last session on the lake, this time opting to use some of my recently home-made boilies on one rod, and their readymade flavour equivalent on the other. Both were cast out with a few freebies, and i applied my usual tactic of one slack-lined and one fished tight to snags.

Given my inexperience with bait making, i felt more confident that i would get takes on the Dynamite tiger nut readymades than on my own 50/50 basemix tiger nut flavoured concoction. However, after an unusually slow evening, it was the home-made boillie that produced first. After a great scrap, I slipped the net under a fabulous Common that may well have pushed the scales round to double figures - however numbers were irrelevant here and she was slipped back after a quick snap. I can’t tell you how good it felt to catch a fish on home-made bait. I owe a debt of gratutude to the good people at Carp-forums.com for their help and generosity.

The night produced two more Carp, both perfect Commons and with the biggest weighing in at around 14lbs. A very worthwhile session especially given the time of year.

The other thing that happened during the session sums up exactly why I love fishing these 3 lakes. As darkness fell, hearing the chirrup of the Kingfisher i looked up from my indicators and watched the master angler at work catching a small silver fish within a matter of minutes of settling on a branch no more than 10 metres from my rods. At the same moment, the sun briefly darkened as it’s equally evolution-optimised, but drastically different, counterpart the Heron flew impossibly slowly overhead. Smiling to myself at the completeness of this 3-angled scene, my heart skipped a beat as two small deer rounded the corner on the opposite bank, strolled to the water’s edge for a quick drink and then ambled back into the rich forest.

It would have been hard to imagine such a delightful scene…

Stumble it!