Olds Kool Part Three (I'm Back)

I moved back home on New Years day 1993. Bearing in mind that although I had been out of town for a couple of years I had stayed in touch with Keith so I semi knew what had been going on with the pit and its captures and I had also kept buying the weekly and monthly magazines just to keep up with the trends (for that week/month at least!!). I had missed my family and friends so spent the next few weeks catching up with them and their tales, I also managed to get my welding job back on the chairs. The same old faces were still there including the few that were anglers so tea breaks more often than not were spent talking fish and the urge to get angling again soon rushed through me, but I had the problem of  lack of kit! My plan was to get fishing again in June at the start of the new season so the next few months were spent begging,stealing and borrowing kit from where ever I could.

Evenings after work and odd days over the weekends were spent walking round the waters that were local to me and all the the time the urge to fish kept increasing.

 

I was missing the days like this brace of Nineteen pounders for me and Keith.

 

 

L.B.A.C and W.M.C tickets were obtained and the decision to fish Tiddy for the start of the season had been made after bumping into Coxy, an old school friend that was mad about his carp and cat fishing. The week leading up to the new season saw us building a new point swim that could be doubled up in with the added bonus of controlling a fair bit of water including the back of the shallows and nice bay swim to our left. Spots were chosen, raked and baited with our home made Pukka Salmon boilies during that week leading up to the kick off and to say I was looking forward to angling again was an understatement!

 

Its belly felt like a bag of marbles

Now, I'm not ashamed to say this but that summer was spent solidly beneath my wavelock brolly complete with a Nashy canvas overwrap between the months of June right through to early September with me going to work for the days and popping home for a shower in the afternoons then returning to the lake each evening for the nights. Every few days or so I would move swims depending on what was happening and who was there so that I could leave my tackle with them while I attended work, but in all it was four months of solid fresh air and a nice tan to boot!
Some evenings after the rods had been cast I would just sit there and roll more bait while enjoying the summer evenings, boilies were mainly being used on one rod while the other would be baited with little livebaits like Rudd,Roach and occasionally Perch for the cats. Back then the cats were just scraping over the thirty pound mark not like today's standards with the fish being nearly seventy pounds!! The carp were also a lot,lot smaller back then, with the biggest somewhere in the region of twenty six pounds or so and being of the common variety. Every now and then there would be a mirror that would scrape over the so called magical twenty pounds but in reality an upper double was a good one. As I look back at my diary that I started that season and that I still write to this day, of all captures and findings while bankside it shows the fish count from June16th to September 2nd was thirty eight with twenty of them being Cats to 26lbs and the rest being Carp up to 19lb 12oz( caught twice, once off the top and once off the bottom), occasionally I caught the odd Tench with some of them going a very respectable five pounds or so to which I didn't sniff at and still wouldn't today.

A couple of diary pieces from back then.

 

 

14th Sept 1993

  After moving on from Tiddy I spent a week in a proper bed before booking a weeks holiday off work to have a five day session on a very large and windswept water that goes by the name of Brogborough pit. At just over a hundred acres she looked very daunting, but after the stories we had been told by a couple of lads it was well worth a punt.

Myself and Coxy along with a dingy and a shed load of bait were soon pitched at the more attractive end of the lake, in more attractive I mean it had two very small islands up one end that were a good 200yds from the bank which was a roosting spot for the ever increasing cormorant population.

 

We knew sod all about this lake really

 

As far as we were aware there were only really two regulars that fished Broggy and they both went by the name of Dave! A secretive pair by all accounts and fair play to them because to be honest the last thing they would have wanted was two young upstarts from Leighton Buzzard turning up on their patch and spoiling the party.

As daunting as it seemed at first we soon settled in and decided that the four rods between us would all be placed in the vicinity of the nearest island with one rod each on the face and one each on the outside edges. To be able to do this would mean a row out to the island to place the baits via the inflatable dingy (yes we had life jackets) and this itself was a major ball ache especially when there was a good chop on the water! One rod each on the pukka salmon's and one rod each on peanuts was the fare on offer and complimented with a sloppy/hempy groundbait mix that had been fermenting in a bucket within the old mans greenhouse and had managed to blow the lid off on at least a couple of occasions!

The first couple of days were quiet but at midday on the third my left hand rod burst into life and soon I was playing my first Broggy carp, and after what seemed like forever before we got her back to the net she was soon being weighed, cuddled and kissed. A common just over twenty pounds was the culprit and just as I was holding her up for a couple of pics my right hand rod bounced and danced its merry jig. Quickly I placed the fish back on the mat and left Paul to look after her while I attended take two. 'This feels different' I remember saying and soon I was to be proved right when a dirty great slab skimmed across the waters surface. 

 

Brace of Broggy kippers

 

At the time it was certainly the biggest Bream I had set my eyes on and after a quick weigh that revealed 10lb 8oz it was only right to have a trophy shot of the pair, after all we might not have caught another bugger!

After returning my prize's, both rods were re baited and taken back out in captain pugwash style and once I had returned to the bank we celebrated with a 'good ol brew up'.

This turned out to be the start of a good few days for us and what we had noticed was that it had all kicked off once the windsurfers had taken to the water, it was as if the fish were moving to our end of the lake for a bit of peace and quiet? Over the next few days we went on to land eleven Carp and two Bream with four of the Carp being over twenty and the biggest being a mirror of 27lb 2oz that fell to one of Coxy's peanut rods while my best for the week turned out to be a long common of 24.04.

 

Long lean and pug faced 

 

I decided to have a couple of weeks at home after this particular session as I was feeling a little weathered and worn out from being waterside for near on four months plus working.

But fear not, I was soon to be back out and on land that was sand........................