It’s about time, the weather is getting warmer and spending time on the bank is getting a little bit more bearable.  The sighting of a few fish is more than enough to get me booking some time off work.
 
I am fishing a lake in the Lee Valley due to the close season in place on my other two venues, and thankfully for some reason that baffles me, it doesn’t get very busy (just the way we like it).  The reason I say this is because the lake holds not only some very pretty fish but also some big ones as well, including a 40lb common, 40lb mirror and a 40lb leather.  On arrival I find only two other anglers having a go so I have a good choice of swims available and after a look around the venue I find a few fish in a little snaggy bay sunning themselves.  You can’t fish in the bay itself, you have to fish to the mouth of the bay from a close by swim.  As the fish come in and out of the bay throughout the day you have a chance of picking one off as they pass through.  The water is only about three feet deep, crystal clear and the lake bed is very silty.

Day one passes without so much as a sniff unless swans and coots count, and anyone who uses maggots on a regular basis will know that birds are a pain as it takes about five minutes to thread on fifteen maggots and five seconds for a coot to take them off again!  But, the following morning starts sunny and the temperature soon warms up.  Right on cue about an hour before midday the fish turn up in the shallow water making there way to the snags in the bay.

Four o’clock comes and goes and although watching plenty of fish cruising over the hookbait all day nothing has happened, until I receive two bleeps on the Neville.  I look up just in time to see the rod hoop round and hear the line snap from the clip.  I pull in to the fish and all hell breaks loose as it does all it can to make it in to the snags, but I manage to keep it out and edge it back towards me. The fish was going mad and was charging up and down the margins.  As it finally surfaced I saw a small dark common, but the size didn’t matter, as it was my first fish for what seemed like a very long time.  The net lifted up around the fish and there she lay safe and sound in the bottom while I got things sorted.  On the mat lay a stunning little common of 22lb, but more importantly the fish had at last started to get their heads down and feed.