Its been a while

So, after a seriously long break from any blogging and website works I have decided to jump back on the band wagon and start again....

A lot has happened since the last blog, a new job including a recent promotion and a whole lot of fishing.

Last year I spent most of my time fishing a complex of lakes in Kent called Orchard place Farm fishery, this was mainly as it was over the road from my then office meaning over-nighters where common and sometimes even twice a week. It made sense on a couple of levels, my office was roughly 2hrs from home without traffic, and sometimes 4hrs with. Rather than travelling home sitting in hours of traffic I would rather just sit next to a lake. And as it was saving a fair amount of money on the company car fuel, my boss at the time would pay for the night ticket plus 1kg of Boilies to fish with, win win really.
These lakes were great for getting your string pulled, many people just go there and cram around one of the waters which contain the bigger 50lb+ Carp, those people are in my opinion are nuts. This is not my type of fishing, I like to be secluded and have peace and quiet whilst I fish, so I always opted for lake 1 or 2, smaller in size and fish size, but with Cats over 50lb and Carp over 40lb in the lakes that was good enough for me.
I must have done around 10 - 15 nights on the water with much success, Carp to nearly 20lb, not huge I know but size is irrelevant to me these days, I just enjoy getting bites and being on the bank. I also had Cats to over 32lb, which in the dark on lakes with islands is awesome fun.
But my time with that company ended and I started a new job for a company where my office is based in Andover, 20 minutes from home, IDEAL..
So I rejoined Godalming Angling Club this year and have mostly been fishing their waters, after work a fair amount and at weekends.
Godalming is a perfect fit for my type of fishing, Massive Crucians and Tench in the main along with Carp waters and plenty of Rivers.
This year so far I have had a fair amount of Crucians pushing closer to my goal of 3lb and Tench over 6lb, and now with the cold weather setting in I am dusting off the Lure kit and getting after the Perch and Pike, which is what I will be doing on my day off this coming Friday.

So what will be coming up...  I have the annual jaunt down to Anglers Paradise for the Lure Weekend in November, Something I look forward to every year, and i'm currently looking into starting up a new website, unsure if it will carry the old Reel Day Ticket staple yet but will see, but will incorporate another passion of mine which is Photography, watch this space..

SO Whats Next.................... 

Both myself and Steve had a break for the past year from running our website Reel Day Ticket, which it turns out was quite popular. We knew many people used it as the figures where reaching over 5k visits per month, but it was starting to cause us a few issues. We have always been very honest in our fishery opinions, if there was something we didn't like, we told it, and why not we thought, and was thanked by many fisheries for this, but when one fishery threatened to sue us unless we removed the truth. Couple this with fisheries going private and a lack of time we decided to take a year off the site, join a club and fish for ourselves.
So, its been a year since we put the website on standby, we enjoyed catching some great fish on the Godalming ticket, but what to do next...
I'm looking forward to some Day Ticket type fishing again, starting with probably the Canal for some Tench, Bream and maybe Perch, or as can happen with the Basingstoke Canal....nothing.
We will be having a meeting shortly to discuss what our plans are for the future of the site, one thing I do know is we plan to do a lot more videos, YouTube is the way forward, and use the Blogs more and more importantly get some more fishing in.
I have added a few pics from a few sessions on the Godaming Angling ticket.

 

Fishing with Ben Humber from Fox Rage.

Last year I met Ben from Fox at the Anglers Paradise Lure Weekend and was a great bloke, never laughed so much in my life.
Then a month or so later he ran a competition on his Facebook page "The journey of an all round angler" to have a day out fishing with him, and luckily I won the comp.
Due to my time restrictions it took a month or so to get out on the bank but I couldn't wait. 

So, Saturday 23rd January I left home at around 5:30am to meet Ben in stunning Somerset at 7:15am.
We met in a pub car park in the middle of nowhere and headed to the first stretch of River. 
Part of the competition was I could use all the Fox gear Ben uses, which was nice, saved bringing all my kit, although I use the same Fox Rage rod but Ben's reels are loaded with braid, which was all new for me.

Sadly due to some recent rain we did struggle on the first couple of venues but was really good fun, and getting used to Lure fishing as I don't do it a lot.
We moved onto another River after blanking, this one called the Huntspill River and looked incredible, just after arriving Ben landed a small Jack Pike and after continuing up a short while he had a call from a friend, a friend who just happened to have a Lake in his garden, and although Ben was allowed to fish it there was next to no access for anyone else so felt very privileged to be allowed on.
After a short drive we pulled up at house, and couldn't help but get very excited as the large wooden automatic gates parted and we drove along side the ultra modern house.
The lake was quite large, a fair few acres I would say, and absolutely stunning, tree lined on the far side and plenty of reeds in the near margin.

The lake was mainly stocked with hard fighting Rainbow Trout to over double figures along with a few Pike. We started by leap frogging each other casting 5g soft jigs across as far as they could go and sink and draw quite quickly. The bites started quite quickly with small Trout around a 1lb or so but soon slowed right up. We moved down onto the lawn swim and continued, we seem to have stumbled upon a pod of Trout as we couldn't stop catching and the odd Pike, some of the Trout were going 4-5lb and unbelievably good fun on these light setups. The bites started to slow right up so I burrowed a different lure from Ben and continued, soon I hooked something serious, a HUGE Trout came up then with a flick of the tail was off, gutted.

Shortly after I hooked another biggie, not quite as big but once landed went 8lb 8oz, easily a PB for me so over the moon.
With the time getting on we called it day, no idea how many Trout we caught and a few Pike each too, a truly amazing day and an amazing lake. The drive back to the car park where I left my van was spent remembering the incredible day we had just had and all things fishy.
After we said our goodbyes I started my journey home and was on such a high it seemed to sail by, an epic red letter day and one I will never forget.

End of 2015.

Wow, well 2015 was a shocker fishing wise. Literally only a few memorable sessions, and I know its not all about catching fish and don't get me wrong I enjoy every time I go out fishing but with limited time I do like to get a bend in the rod. 

One such memorable session was a day ticket to Bishops Green with good friend James, we had set up at the far end of the lake as most people had set up near the carpark. As always I baited quite heavy to start with pellet in the margins and continued to fish throughout the day using small solid bags of pellet with a 12mm pallet on the hair, and landed well in excess of 20 Carp to mid doubles, where down the other end there was only a handful of fish between them. 

I think the best sessions of the year were the three times I went to Angler Paradise, First in February for the Lure Weekend, Steve had won the weekend for naming the lake and was allowed a plus one, which was nice.
The long weekend flew by and was brilliant, fishing alongside experts such as Julian Chidgey and Nathen Edgell, was incredible. 

The second trip was a family one, me, the wife and kids, my sister and my and a family friend. Although a very different trip to AP as we had to entertain more than just me, we had to do family things like visit Bude and go to the Zoo but life's not all about fishing......sadly.
Still loads of fish were caught as usual and the weather was not overly bad, obviously it didn't rain, it never rains in Devon must us not forget.

Then the third trip to Anglers Paradise was the second Lure weekend, which if possible was even better than the last. Slight change of format as you didn't get to fish with all the pro's on different lakes, your team captain was a pro and you fished all the lakes with them.
Mine and Steve's Pro angler was Ben Humber from Fox Rage, which as someone who uses a lot of Fox gear this was great.

Ben was good fun on all the lakes and a very talented angler and I managed a few Fish.
Another brilliant addition to this Lure Weekend was that Matt Hayes was there, and I know many people say hes not approachable and a bit of a grump, but on this occasion they were wrong. Me and Steve sat down in the bar with Matt having dinner and literally chatted for hours, it was truly amazing.
So that wraps up my 2015, hopefully a few more fishing session next year with any luck.

A great Wey to Fish.

This trip we decided to try some of the vast River network we have on our Godalming ticket, both me and Steve love our river fishing but prefer it to be a bit colder after a couple of good frosts.

I had just finished my first week in my new job which involves commuting to Kent so I've been doing some long hours, and to be honest as much as I love my early morning fishing sessions I was knackered so decided to pick up Steve up just past 7am, which for us is late.

First stop of the morning was to the Apollo tackle shop to grab some maggots, and a brew.

Apollo is situated on the Marsh Farm grounds and is an award winning tackle shop stocking all you need and the staff are great and very helpful. But enough shopping its time to get fishing.

We headed for Eshing near the start of our Wey section, the original plan was to Barbel fish the morning, static using feeder tactics, but due to heavy rain over the last couple of days we decided against it and opted for fishing the slacker water with trotting tactics, starting on the small backwater next to the car park.

I was using my trusty all-rounder rod, centrepin loaded with 4lb line straight through to a 14 Hook, Dave Harrell Stick float with maggot as bait.

I really rate the Dave Harrell floats as they are very well made and have the brightest tips which makes it easier to see at distance, perfect for trotting.

I fed the back channel briefly before casting in, then second trot through I had my first bite which resulted in a lovely little Chub, fin perfect.

After a few more trots through I moved on, casting a line here and there in likely spots but to no avail, it was like the life had dropped clean out the river,  but then on a trot through on a nice bend I had a bite which was a very substantial fish, very heavy, moved out into the current, kicked a couple of times then came off, I was gutted, I'm pretty sure it was a Barbel.

We walked for quite a while but there was nothing much happening, Steve had a Gudgeon and a Minnow, but that was it.

Although the fishing was poor it was still a great and stunning place to spend a few hours, we decided to move on and see if we could catch a few Perch at Broadwater, the great thing about being a club member is you can just drop onto different waters throughout the day without the worry of multiple day tickets.

We had a good lap of lake and watched some Huge Carp in the out of bounds area feeding on bread thrown in for the Ducks, a spectacular site to see Carp on a busy lake feeding so confidently, they knew they were safe.

We set up near the Car park and decided to share a swim so it could be a bit social. The only reason we chose this swim was a couple of months ago I had a load of Perch and Rudd recently from this area and just hoped they would still be about, only difference is it was now bloody cold, and we had no other signs to go on.

We fished for a couple of hours with only a couple of bobs on the float, although a nice bit of time to have lunch and chill. 

We decided it just wasn't going to happen, so we decided to pop to Bramley Lake up the road. Bramley in a lush looking estate type lake which is edged with lilies. There was one angler on so we had a chat, he had nothing to show for his efforts, which was encouraging. We setup in what I call the lawn swim, Steve was on the float, I was on the feeder. I tried in close, out far and under some trees to my left, but nothing, except a Signal Crayfish. We gave it our best shot but failed.

Next we decided on Busbridge for a bit of lure fishing, but sadly it was just too busy to fling plastic so we gave up and left for home.

One of the great things about being a fisherman is the diverse locations you get to fish, this morning we was fishing a beautiful river where we didn't see another sole for miles, then we fished a very busy open lake where there is dog walkers, runners and cyclists whizzing around, but if I'm near a lake I'm happy, no matter the outcome on the fish front. A brilliant day.

The wait for Paradise is over...........

I had been looking forward to going to Anglers Paradise since February when I was last there for the Lure weekend, which was awesome, but this time I was returning with family and friends, which could go either way.
Travel plans where changed slightly due to a change of circumstances for Steve meaning he and his daughter Jess had lost their ride up, so we scoured the internet for a minibus come crew cab van we could hire so we could all get there, my car was well big enough for who and what it was going to be taking but with 2 extra people plus fishing kit there was no option.
Abacus hire in Andover came through in style with a 9 seat Renault Traffic with loads of space in the back, result.

Saturday
We all met up Saturday morning, and by all I mean in the minibus there was me driving, Steve and daughter Jess and my daughter Ellie, in my sister Kim's Mini there was Kim driving, my wife Emma, son Liam and family friend Vicky, let the road trip commence.
The journey should take about 3 1/2 hours on average but due to the sheer weight of traffic stopped and starring at some bloody old rocks on the A303 it was pushed towards 5hrs.
My side of the crew was staying in one of the top villas on the complex called Excellence, which had 2 double rooms and a four poster room all with on-suits, and even a Jacuzzi bath in our four poster en-suit. Steve was staying round the corner in another high end villa sharing the same view.
We parked the vehicles and walked round to the reception to collect the keys and meet in the bar to have a glass (or 2) of Zygs famous wine and have a chat with Zygs daughter Zenia and book our food nights for the week.

Then it was time to have a look around the villa and move all the stuff in, everyone was amazed how stunning it was and the views out the back where to die for, as with all villas I have stayed in they are fish themed all over the place, rods on the roof, pictures on the walls just brilliant.
We decided to get straight out fishing and went down to Pixie lake with Liam, Pixie has an incredible head of small ornamental fish with the odd donkey thrown in.
It didn't take long for Liam to have his first Golden Rudd and Goldfish, I got fixated trying to catch a big Koi that kept popping up, but I ended catching a small Carp of about 4lb, which in a lake this small was quite hard. After a few more we headed back to the villa to get ready for a few drinks up the bar, a great way to top off any day, which became a regular occurrence during our stay.

Sunday
Obviously with having the family with me on this trip to Anglers Paradise meant I was going to have to do some non fishing activities, which was fine with me, just being at this fantastic place was enough, but today, me Steve and the kids were going fishing for the morning on the float lake.

Float fishing in the edge we had many many fish including Goldfish, Golden Rudd, Golden Tench and Koi, was great fun and the kids were hooked. After a couple of hours my daughter went back to the villa whilst Liam and I went to fish mystery lake, because not even I know whats in there. Liam fished the edges and caught plenty of Rudd and as usual for Liam plenty of Gudgeon, I stalked a few Carp off the top using free lined bread, but sadly all good things have to come to an end and as we was at the Wine and Dine night later we headed back to get ready.

The Wine and Dine night is always good fun, Zenia and Zyg head up the evening which includes some beautiful chicken and sausages plus as much salad, garlic bread and wine as you like.
Once the food is consumed and your suitably drunk Zyg and Zenia will crack out the merchandise for you to buy, a brilliant tactic. After we headed into the bar to continue the fun.

Monday
Today was a family day, we was heading to the town of Bude, set right on the sea front, with some stunning eateries, there's a famous fudge shop which was amazing and the best pasties I have ever had, well worth the trip.

When we got back we had a bit off chill until Liam begged me to go fishing, so I couldn't say no.
We went down to the Beginners Carp lake as I have never fished it before and thought it would be good for a bite, and it was. I pitched up opposite a nice bushy island with a hole dead ahead, and using my 12m baiting spoon I was shipping my flatbed feeder under the bush then using a quiver tip waiting for the bite, which was normally whilst shipping back he spoon.
I had a load of Carp around the 5-6lb mark. I let Liam have a go too and have a few as the float fishing was not producing the goods on this occasion.
After packing up the rest of the day was spent chilling with the family and eating fudge.

Tuesday
This year I had made it my mission to try and catch my first Catfish, so this morning I was starting the campaign on Octopussy lake, home to some truly monster Cats and Carp.
I was using a solid bag of pellet with Luncheon meat on my R/H rod bait spooned out to the right of the island, the left rod had was positioned round a bit with a mesh bag of pellet with a large Halibut pellet. I had arrived quite early to try and get a good chance as I only had a few hours. 

After about half an hour I had a short screaming run which sadly amounted to nothing, then shortly after another dropped run, I was starting to get a bit frustrated then whilst spooning out my rig I obviously undone the spool on one of my Diawa big pits a bit to loose and it rolled off into the deep margins. After 15 minutes of dredging the lake bed with my net I finally pulled up a very silty spool, I was not happy.
I decided to pack up that rod and start packing the rest o the kit when fishery manager Joe turned up with Marty one of the fishery guys and after a good chat I decided there was a few things I could change on my rig to make it more Catfish efficient, for next time as it was time to get back for a little trip out.
We decided to visit a local little village called Okehampton, to have a little look about the local shops and stock up on a bit of grub for the villa, it was a lovely little village and well worth a trip.

Wednesday 
Today I was up at the crack of dawn to meet Steve out the back of the villas to go down to Easy Access lake which has a good quantity of Cats so it was time for another go, time to try the newly thought out rigs for less resistance. We fished the far side of the lake, with an island in front I was fishing about a rod length or so off, lightly baiting with Carp pellet for an hour or so before casting in. It was a really nice day, but maybe not the best for fishing as the air pressure was very high (getting the excuses in early).

There was a lot of bubbling fish in front of me and I did eventually get a run from a small but perfectly formed Carp. As the day creeped on we stopped for a break and to witness a truly magical moment, an Anglers Paradise blessing with a couple who very recently got married, and as with a lot of things here it has to be a little different.

The were brought down to the Koi lake on the back of a little buggy then walked around next to the pagoda where Zyg performed the ceremony, after then blessing the lake with port it was time for both Bride and groom to jump through a beautifully designed floating flower arrangement (made by Joe and Marty) in full wedding gear, as you do. A really memorable event, finished with a cup of Zygs famous wine.

As the family disappeared back to Bude for yet more fudge and a day at the beach I returned to Easy Access lake to carry on trying for a Cat.
After some more bait was deployed and some more Carp were banked it was not looking like a Cat was coming to the bank for me, I was feeling a bit like Mick Brown.

My wife and kids brought me dinner and desert down to the bank, which was amazing, but as the sun dropped I admitted defeat, packed up and left.
Even though the Cats evaded me again it was a hugely enjoyable day, as they all are here in Paradise.

Thursday
Today was mine and Emma's 10 year wedding anniversary, and we awoke to the villa decorated by my sister and Vicky, and looked amazing, and to show how in tune we are we ended up buying each other watches, mine a stunning Fossil watch which was engraved also, my wife's was a Micheal Kors watch, she was over the moon.

Our original plan was to spend the day at Paighton Zoo, and although it never rains in Devon, it was definitely moist so we decided to go tomorrow, and me and Liam decided on a couple of hours in the rain on Float lake. We had a few Golden Tench, Rudd and a few stunning Koi off the top.

With the fishing done for the day, and the week sadly we headed back to get ready to go out for a meal down the local pub. The food at the Junction inn was amazing, not a bad word to say about it and highly recommended and all payed for by Steve which was a great surprise.  

After we headed back to the bar at AP to carry on the celebrations with 2 bottles of Procceto, which was far too bubbly for me, but went down well all the same.

Friday  
Today we all decided on a day trip to Paighton Zoo, as the weather was too bad yesterday.
We arrived just before opening and queued for a short while before going in, I was really excited as I haven't been to a Zoo for a long time and as an animal lover there's a lot to do and see, but sadly the weather was pretty bad, as usual the weather app that stated it should stop raining by about 10am was way off, but we tried not to let it bother us. I think a highlight was the Lions and the Gorillas, fantastic to watch.

After a fantastic day at the Zoo we went round the corner to Morrisons to get a load of pizzas, garlic bread, salads etc and have a mass feast at our villa for us plus Steve and Jess.
The last evening was brilliant yet sad as it was the last night here, drinks flowed and way too much food was cooked and ate.
We went over to the bar for a couple of drinks and for the presentation evening which sadly I hadn't won any but then I didn't spend as long fishing as I usually would, but was a good evening.
I made sure I brought a few bottles of wine off Zyg as all the money goes to charity and I love the stuff.
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We said our goodbyes to the other anglers of which we made good friends as usual and to Zyg, Zenia, Joe and all who work at Anglers Paradise for making the whole family so welcome and headed back to the villa.  
We packed most of the stuff up that night so there was less to do in the morning and headed of to bed.

Saturday 
It's always hard leaving a place you love so much but it was time, we loaded the van and car, popped the key back to reception and headed off for the 3 1/2 hour journey home.
I really cant speak highly enough about Anglers Paradise, it really does have it all, yes there are other holiday fishing venues around the country but I would bet all I own that you wouldn't catch the fish you could catch here and everyone is so friendly you really do feel like part of the family.
A HUGE thank you to Zenia, Joe, Zyg, Rose and all who work at Anglers Paradise. See you all soon.