A mission with my Dad

One aim for this year was to fish with my father much more, so arranging a day off with him was set.  Talking to my mates we all agreed that a small day ticket water near Tonbridge was the perfect place to catch multiple carp to over 10lb. My dad’s P.B was 9lb 8oz and for years has never been able to break that 10lb barrier!
 

Arriving at the lake we were delighted to see we were going to be the only ones on the water and have a choice of swims. The weather could not have been more perfect and the high temperature during the day was going to get the fish moving around much more than they have been in this cold weather.

The rods and bait went out with the clock still only reading 7.10am so we had plenty time to catch us some carp. With the kettle on the go, my left rod screamed off and a small, but scale perfect common, rolled into the net. This was a great start and increased our expectations of a good day.

That was the only fish of the morning and as the temperature increased, the fish were milling around the shallows and just under the surface. Nothing could tempt these fish and as much as we tried, we could not get a bite. 

Taking a walk around the lake armed with a pocketful of boilies and my glasses, I could see a large number of carp just sitting in the shallow water and some of them were actually sending up small bubbles indicating some feeding. I baited up two sides of a patch of lilies and went back to get all my gear and persuaded my dad to follow me up there as well.
 

Now sitting in our new swims – we were certain that there were many more carp in front of us and that there would be much more chance of getting a bite. By 3pm, I was starting to think that this may be one of those days that the fish were there but just going to play ball when my rod lurched forward and nearly went into the lake. The fish gave a very scrappy account of itself and still only pulled the scales round to 8lb – not the size we are after.
 

As soon as I put this fish back, my dad’s alarms gave a few bleeps and he had his first fish of the day on. While he was playing this my left rod went off again and it was certain that this was the carp feeding time.
His carp came in very easily but at 9lb 9oz – it was a new PB – even if it was only 1oz bigger. So even with a smile on his face it wasn’t the 10lber that we came for!
 

Even as we were laughing that he was not going to get that much closer to the 10lb mark – his rod ripped off and we were rewarded with a much bigger bulge in the bottom on the net. This was defiantly going to be his biggest and one that was going to be treasured. Pushing the scales round to 14lb 4oz his smile said it all!

Still reeling from that capture he was in again and this time a quality mirror came in at a slip just under 14lb. Not a bad brace really from someone who had just broken his PB 3 times in the same day hour after all these years of fishing.

I managed to wangle out two fish at 16lb 10oz and 17lb 10oz all caught on the same pop up within a few minutes of each other.

With the sun going down we called it a day but with each of us having 10 fish a piece and a new PB for him – I think that it was a mission accomplished!

Tight Lines and be Lucky!