Friday 25th

Will just copy this email in as I got it, completely unedited.

Mike,

It was a pity (for others) that I was the sole angler on Thursday afternoon. When I arrived at about1:30, the water was flat calm with no sign of fish showing, so I followed your guidance that the fish were likely to be deep and used a sinking line. I first tried Pontoon 2 for an hour, with no luck so tried Pontoon 5 instead. I quickly caught 2 nice bows of about 2lb each on a cats whisker that I ‘twitched’ along the bottom (I also caught a few leaves which  told me where I was fishing). I caught them casting parallel to the bank, so they were not far out.  I had to take one of them because it had completely wolfed the lure and was bleeding from the gills. I know that you suggested white lures, but having caught a couple on white,  I decided to experiment with other colours. In the end I caught a total of 7 bows; I caught on black, orange and olive, so colour did not seem to matter. What did matter was whether I was hard on the bottom and whether I did little (2”) twitches. Nothing else seemed to work. As a final treat, I hooked into an obviously larger fish on an orange dancer. After a protracted fight, I finally netted a pike of about 5lb, fortunately hooked right in the ‘scissors’. I finished at about 16:00 because the rings on my rod were icing up. But all in all, a very productive and fun day.

Phil Rees

Don't forget the permit discount for Saturday buy a 4 hour 2 fish ticket and fish all day plus you can buy 10 flies for only £5 normally £6.50