Mr F's 1st blog

Fishing has always been my first love (apart from the wife obviously) and has captivated my thoughts since as way back as I can remember, from boyhood trips to sparkling streams fishing for dace and chub with my uncle Derrick to my first encounter with a pike aged 12. I started specimen fishing after a chance encounter with two floppy hatted anglers on the banks of river Trent who wanted to use my net of roach for live bait .Almost every weekend of my early teenage years I would take a bus trip on friday night to my aunt Norma's at Newark stay there so I could be on the trent at first light, it turned out that the two floppy hatted guys Dave Shepherd and Ivan Stennett lived only a few miles away from my parents house in Nottinghamshire and more importantly they had transport, pretty soon I found myself crammed into the back of their mini van along with all of our tackle and off to far away places and targeting all manner of species .Barbel on the severn, tench on nearby gravel pits, big roach and bream too, pike on the fens and then loch lomond in the spring, then there was carp fishing on the few secret pools where we knew they existed.... what a fantastic adventure and what fun it was too, nearly always rounded off with a few beers in a local pub... in those days  we made our own rods , alarms and baits in fact almost everything we owned  as it wasn't commercially available, all vastly different to today's scene. I fished club matches on saturdays and often an open on sunday I even managed to win a few. I moved to Kent in 1985 and from there on in have mainly fished for carp , to be honest i've just approached it the same as i would as fishing for chub on a stream ....by first finding them , then keeping quiet and then by fishing simple methods that I knew worked I caught plenty of carp everywhere I went . My first twenty pounder  was from the tricky Lydd lakes and my first thirty too an awesome zip linear of 32 lbs. From there to School pool where I met Jacko, Rod and Mowglie as well as many other top blokes,then  Savay which I absolutely loved, Harrow too my first forty coming from there in1994, more big fish followed much like like trains and buses . At one stage I was doing almost a 1000 miles some weeks some weeks for day only fishing but what a buzz it was, during the winter of 97 I had mirrors of 41 and 53lb 4oz in the same week and in my time there managed to tempt forties in each winter month.My time on Conningbrook too was amazing and to be one of the first on there and be able to reveal its intimate secrets was indeed a privilege. Milton too, fickle and tricky but what stunning fish, swan and tonford too as they were were excellent for midweek overnighters.  I've been on Dinton blackswan nearly 2 years now and normally fish there with my old mate Laney..... the place is simply awesome and a credit to Simon who runs it....... that's a brief history of my fishing life , I've loved every minute of it and firmly believe that you only get out of anything what you put in so I always try to work hard at my fishing, but  more importantly at the same time I always try to enjoy it ,I don't want it to be easy either as I know that the more difficult the task then the greater the sense of achievement will be when you finally reach your goal ….if you get my drift. I choose to fish for genuine English carp and haven't a lot of time for either overstocked garden ponds or imported jumbo carp. I'll be blogging about everything concerning our sport and letting you know feelings and views on all things carpy. I've had an excellent start to the new year where  in four trips to Paddlesworth the deep 30 acre Kent pit that i've been fishing this winter i've landed 11 fish already up to 35lb 12oz .I'm off for my first trip of the year to Dinton with Laney very early monday morning and don't mind admitting i'm feeling the buzz already..