Around the venues

I've been fishing all over the place since my last post at a number of different venues at home and abroad and have been having some great fun! For the last week or so I've been concentrating on a local venue which is literally a stones throw from where I live. It's all been short session stuff either mornings or afternoons and I've had fish every time I've been. As much of my fishing involves long sessions away it's been good to scale the tackle down and travel light, but one of the important things is to get fishing asap with the minimum of fuss and the Worldwide Pod has been the business in that respect. I'm used to using it on the big waters abroad but the adaptability means it can be used on literally any venue and scaling it down in size it's perfect for quiuck assembly for the short sessions! Yesterday it was fishing well so I stayed on for the day and ended up with nine fish up to 27lb+ with one lost

Apart from that I fished with my old mate Crowy down at the Church Lake in Essex and we both got amongst the fish. I got the ball rolling with a cracking 30lb+ mirror before Crowy got in to gear and he landed a few up to 32lb although he did lose a proper lump right at the net which we both had a good look at and it had to be a mid -40 at least!! - unlucky mate!!

A couple of weeks back I went over to Gran Canaria for the first time. It was one of the places I'd always wanted to visit so it was good to finally get there. I met up with Dave Beecham who runs a guiding service over there. He was brought up on the same waters as me in the Darenth Valley all those years ago so we had plenty in common and he is sponsored by Solar so he has all the right gear out there! The fishing isn't difficult as hardly anyone fishes there these days. The important thing is to use strong reliable gear, so I went with the Easy Strip 25lb hook links, size 4 StrongHold long shank hooks and Solar lead clips and we never lost a fish! All the action came at night - which wasn't surprising as it was over 40 degrees most days in the blazing August sun, but we had some stunning, heavily-scaled mirrors up to mid - 30's which all fought like demons! 

Lastly, I fished one other session over in France at Bob Davis' Lac Serreire which has always been one of my favourite commercial venues. We shared the Big Lake with Tim Paisley for the week and I fished up in the shallows where I'd enjoyed some success the previous October. It's a fantastic lake with stacks of carp and the action started from day one with some chunky mirrors up to 41lb. They were quick to move in on the baited areas but would then move off after a few fish had been banked so I had to keep moving the rods around, but the Club Mix was as good as ever and invariably action would come quite soon after a new area had been baited. The best of the week was a long mirror of 48lb 8oz that picked up a double Club Mix bottom bait in about 1.5 metres of water next to bed of lilies.

So there's been plenty of variety in my fishing but as always the Solar gear has been well up to the job and I feel confident whatever the situation. I've got plenty more fishing to do over the coming weeks so I just hope the results keep coming!!

Cheers Briggsy