Gotta be in it to win it!!!

Im recently back from a week off Fishing for Catfish in depest darkest Dorset! we had a whole lake booked for me and my Mate Steve Blackmore who is a Catfish nut and one of the UK's most forward thing carp anglers, he prides himself in wild venues! no puddle pigs for steve! we ventured of to a tiny venue in dorset which is stacked with Catfish, with 5 cats in the lake to just over 40lb!!! and numerous high twentys. . . . its was gorgeous here and was idyllic venues iv visited in years, just what the docter ordered! now iv never ever bivvied up on a venue before and certainly never sat behind bite alarms but i can honestly say i really enjoyed myself! it was a proper adventure and i loved it! apart from some rather frosty mornings which killed the catfishing dead the carp certainly made a good diversion from the slow catfishing! I had 12 Carp all in the mid teens to late teens the biggest being a pair caught almost one after each other at 16lb and 18lb 4oz. the carp came thick and thin to stalking tactics which brings me back to my school days where id sneak up to the lillie pad bays on my local canal and plop a lump of bread on the nose of sun bathing carp! Great fun!

the week went soooo fast and with 4-5 dropped runs on the live bait rods we started to cross our fingers for the cats to come out and play! as you can see in the photo above i am a bit of a forward angler and never let a good chance slip by i pinned a live bait off under the tree on the right of the photo, the laughter from anglers around who came to see some crazy 26 year old devon lad neck deep in a freezing cold lake was great! guys just couldnt believe what i was prepared to do! but as i always say...... you gotta be in it to win it!! :-) well the week finally passed and not a single cat was landed but between the two of us we landed god knows how many Carp and we had some steaming runs from the live baits but to no avail! i really enjoyed the week doing a completely different style of fishing and i cannot say how much fun it was getting that sheer paniced feeling when the alarms screamed on the live bait rods knowing there could be a 5ft long monster which is very angry on the other end! we had sorted some dates for hitting some other venues later this year around the south of england to finally nail the cat! i cannot wait!!