There’s openness and camaraderie that you sadly rarely see these days and it make a pleasant change to be fishing with this group of friends.

My first session started a dawn on a frosty morning, with promised sunshine later that day. It was the first stable warm period we had had this year and I thought that it may just prove to be the switch we had all eagerly awaited.

Having no previous experience of the water I just put on a comfy pair of walking boots and started my first of many circuits of the lake. You will quickly find how much big water shrinks, the more time you walk around it and with a little patience you will soon start to build a picture of the fish’s behaviour.

I did find some fish sunning themselves in a sheltered bay and opted to spend the night fishing the entrance, hoping to pick one off as it left for the open water later in the day as the temperature dropped.

It was at this point that I had a very important lesson bestowed on me. Swans, like driving sane anglers insane. It was something I thought I could get around by not introducing any bait at all but they still found huge pleasure in wiping me out around dark, and probably for the twentieth time that evening!!!

Needless to say, I caught nothing, and so at first light I was walking around again. Whilst on my second lap a plan started to fall into place in my head. The lake is shallow and the bird life is prolific to say the least and so I thought that a lot of the fish’s natural food sources would be easily picked off by our feathered friends. It would then follow that any deeper, maybe siltier areas would harbour a more substantial food supply and I was sure that these old fish would know exactly where to head for the first big spring feed.

I had found one such area and literally within moments of walking into the swim I had ear-marked, a big black mirror popped its head out to confirm my thoughts. Although I placed a couple of rods near the showing fish nothing happened, but at least things were beginning to make sense.

That night I gambled on putting in around 3kilos of a new prototype bait that I am developing, which may seem a lot but I was sure the fish would be getting their heads down soon and wanted there to be enough baits to keep them in the area.

After settling down for the night I sat back to soak up the atmosphere. At around 1 am my middle rod took off and I slowly played my first fish from the lake all the way in without any undue stress or drama. It turned out to be a character called the Parrot, at a little under 23lbs I was very pleased indeed. The fish clearly wanted the new bait and it was my first from a new venue and so was doubly special, and it felt like the start of a new wonderful relationship. Fingers crossed. Til next time, tight lines.