The end of that first session gave me a taste of what was to come over the following weeks, when just before packing up, the swinger on my right rod dropped sharply. It was only once the rod was in my hand with the familiar ‘nodding’ of bream on the other end, that I realised every beep on this lake was going to give me a small heart attack.

This is the kind of fishing I love, and reminds of my early years on a large, low stocked and difficult gravel pit, where each night I used to will the buzzers to go, knowing that those few seconds between hearing a bite and picking up the rod held the most exquisite anticipation. The barrage held that same mystique, and where any resitance stronger than a bream would mean I had realised my goal.

Over the following two weeks I visited the lakes a further 7 times; three times armed only with a spod rod and a bait bucket, and four times with full gear to fish. Of these four sessions two were early morning visits, starting 30 minutes before sunrise as dictated by the local rules. To see the lake at sunrise is a real treat, and something I’m sure I will one day stop to photograph but thus far I’ve been too keen to get into my swim and get the rods out! On these sessions I found the bream much more active, especially if I had baited the night before. This told me that at least my bait was being eaten, and to look at the positives, there would be considerable activity there to draw in any carp in the area.

On my three rods, each of which was positioned along the baited shelf, I experimented a little with bait. One was baited with a single tiger nut, one with a single grain of maize (after finding sweetcorn too easily stripped by the bream) and one with a small 12mm fusion pop-up. All three rods were kept very simple in terms of rigs: a simple helicopter set up with around 3ft of leadcore, a 2.5oz lead coupled with a 8 inch ‘Stripteaze’ hooklength with the last centimetre stripped. Over the course of the first couple of sessions I added a tiny piece of silicone tubing to the hook in order to align the hair with the hookpoint, I found with this addition I was hooking a lot more of the bream that went for my baits.

After one early morning session I spoke to my Dad who asked me how I was getting on down there. ” I haven’t even seen a carp yet, but it’s brilliant fishing - every time you get a beep you shit yourself!”. For me, this just about summed it up perfectly; I didn’t know when that first carp was going to come along - after all in 150 acres they might not have even visited my swim yet - but when it did I was going to be just about the happiest angler you could imagine.

My next opportunity to fish came on a hot and muggy sunday, the sort of day where I find myself restless, uncomfortable and generally quite irritable. With this in mind I didn’t fancy battling it out with the weekend trout and zander anglers, two of whom had thwarted my baiting-up plans the night before (150 acres, one car in the car park, and guess where they were fishing?). Eventually I hauled myself away from the computer and, having given myself a mental pep-talk, headed down towards the lake with a bucket of vitalin to spod out and semi-fixed intentions of actually fishing.

As I turned into the car park, I noticed a horrible noise coming from underneath the bonnet, and on closer inspection found my timing belt in tatters - serious trouble. This didn’t help improve my mood, and after some swearing and some ‘helpful’ input from the couple parked alongside me, I walked up to the lake to take my mind off it. The car park had been full of cars, and I could see lots of dog walkers making their way round the lake, but only one fisherman in sight. With the light fading and some moody clouds on the horizon I didn’t think it would be long before I had the lake to myself.

I sat on the dam wall and watched the water for a few minutes, trying to convince myself that the car trouble wasn’t too serious, and watching a small trout darting between the rocks below me. It was then that I realised I had forgotten to put the camera back in the car after the previous night’s aborted baiting up trip - the signs were not looking good and I was beginning to regret having left the house at all. However, the angler in view landed a large trout whilst I was watching and that finally gave me the motivation to get the gear out of the car and haul it round to do some fishing. ‘The car will still be knackered in 4 hours time, so you might as well spend those four hours on the bank instead of sulking at home’ I reasoned.

I set off on the long walk, having chucked my old 35mm ‘back up’ camera into my bag; a Yashica T4 I bought specially for the car, because so often I see wonderful sunsets and sunrises and curse the lack of a way to photograph it. Not ideal for fishing, but to be honest I wasn’t expecting to use it much that night, my foul temper had just about evaporated all optimism and excitment for the session. However, once the bait was spodded out (how I hate spodding), and the rods set, I did chuckle to myself and start to relax a bit, glad I had forced myself out the door after all.

A couple of bream knocks were all I had, beforer the sky darkened and the rain blew in. Due to the slog involved in getting to the swim I had slimmed down every piece of gear possible, and so I only had the same leaky nylon umbrella to shelter me, and a set of waterproofs. Between the two measures, I just about kept dry and sat wondering why the bream were not more active. I would have expected them to be straight on the vitalin, corn and baked bean mix that I had thrown together out of the leftovers from last weeks anglers at our Papillons lakes.

Around 9.30 the rod baited with the fusion pop-up gave a single beep, and my mind pondered that perhaps it was unusually quiet for a reason. 15 minutes later the same rod let out a short series of beeps and the hanger drew up tight to the blank. I was out from beneath the brolly and onto the rod with my heart in my mouth. The rod hooped over and immediately I knew this was no bream. However, the pull on the other end was light, and in the half-light drizzle I was slow to notice that whatever was attached was kiting hard to my left. Adjusting the angle of the rod I got a more direct pressure on the line and realised this was definitely a bigger fish: a carp!

The fight barely began until hearing a splashing that sounded as if it was almost coming from behind me - the fish was in the margins of the next swim along and between me and it was several metres of impassable undergrowth. My adrenaline was really flowing at this stage, and it took only a split second to decide that I was going in after it. I hopped into the shallow margin and barely noticed the water flowing over my boots and reaching up to my shins. Slowly, slowly the fishes head began to turn and after an age, and a perilous amount of splashing in shallow water I felt it turn towards open water and make a break for it. Thankfully I was quick on the clutch as the fish tore off 20 yards of line before slowing and eventually turning towards me once more.

All the while it fought nauseatingly close to surface, my mind was racing ahead ‘No real camera…no phone… holy crap I’ver got a carp on at last!’. It was that last though that prevailed and I refocused on getting it into the net. Once I had gained back some line on it, it made another dash for the margins to my left just as I was reaching for the landing net. This fish was certainly not happy at being hooked, and appeared not to know the rules of a fair fight! My first glimpse came shortly afterwards and I could make out a thick, long fish in the fading light. Eventually it wallowed in tired fashion and allowed itself to be drawn over the waiting net, which I lifted awkwardly at full stretch - a shower of spray and a terrifying lunge on the rod tip and the clutch had once again saved my bacon. The fish was tired, but still screeched another 10 yards of line off the reel before slowly surfacing and turning back towards me. This time there was no mistake with the net and I lifted it triumphantly up around my first barrage carp!

I could barely contain myself, when on drawing the fish carefully back towards me, I found a gorgeous long and solid carp within the folds of the net. I allowed a moment to raise my head back into the drizzly evening sky and let out a small whoop, before getting down to the serious business of dealing with the fish. I lifted her carefully out of the water and onto the waiting mat, it wasn’t huge, but I thought it might do 20lb and the scales confirmed that with a weight of 22lbs 10oz. Inside its huge mouth there wasn’t a single mark other that my own hookhold, which had been thankfully strong, about a centimetre back in the corner of the mouth.

I rigged up the old camera on my tripod and snapped off a few pictures, desperately hoping that one of them would come out - to not have a record of such a personally significant capture would be a disaster (albeit one of my own making). After a few attempts at the ‘10 second timer dash’ I felt I had a couple of reasonable shots and took her back to the clear margins. Once again, a huge grin spread across my face as she swam off into this massive lake - ‘Yes!’

The euphoria that followed meant the trek back to the broken down car with squelching wet boots and kit that weighed twice as much, yet felt half as heavy, passed in abit of a blur. I managed to nurse the car the necessary three quarters of a kilometer home and popped my head into my landlord’s house - ‘I’ve done it’ I said ‘22lb carp from the barrage!’. Looking back, I must have appeared in quite a state, soaked, flushed and wearing a smile 3 inches wider than my face on either side…brilliant.

Stumble it!