It's what it's about!

It's been a long time since I've visited Ryton with the sole purpose of bagging a Carp in mind, I've chased a few of the toothy ones in the lake over the winter always with one eye on what the Carp were up to and I'd made note of a few spots where fish had shown themselves, it was nice to be able to apply this knowledge. The last weekend in February has always been good for me and seen a Carp on the bank, after having a year off the place catching a Carp would be nice.

An angler was occupying the swim next to the peg I had planned to fish and one of  his line cut across where I wanted to cast one of the rods to so the session had to start on the point. The sun was lovely and warm as I sat there organising tackle, baiting extra hooklinks and tying PVA sticks whilst waiting for a take, if it wasn't for the lack of leaves on the trees you'd have thought we'd jumped forward a season. A good couple of hours passed and I'd just re-cast one of the rods and sunk the line, I was waiting for the line to fully settle on the bottom before attaching my bobbin and was having a chat with one of the parks rangers at the same time but I didn't miss the whir of the reel as it went into meltdown, something was off with the bait and I'd not even switched on the alarm yet. The bait was dropped and when I reeled in the small PVA stick was still on the end, although chewed up and the hooklink was covered in slime, Tench!. The rod was back on the spot as quick as I could get it there but nothing else happened.

The original swim I'd wanted to fish was free by early afternoon so I made a quick move and not long after I did Barry arrived for a mooch around, he wasn't fishing.

Guess what happened a few minutes after he arrived?

I got a run!

My first thought was 'Tench' and it took a fair while to convince myself that I had a Carp on the end of the line but it was. I really took my time bringing this fish to the waiting net as I didn't want to lose it and Barry did an excellent job of landing it.

Ryton Carp, it's what it's about!

My first Ryton Carp for ages and in lovely condition at a chunky eleven and a half pounds.

I carried on fishing for a while but with 'bite time' being so short at this time of year, I didn't get any more takes, I was happy.