When news hit home of my match participation it wasn’t too long before I had some encouraging feedback and support to the extent that I planned to come back to England from Spain to attend a few meetings and catch up with some friends and family. I had secured both bait and tackle sponsorships for the match within weeks and was chomping at the bit to get some practice in with some new and familiar products.

I left mainland Spain for a week in search of the first big Marlin of the season from the waters around the island of Grand Canarias returning to England with a smile and news of a new found love. I had just a couple of days before I was on the banks before the closed season with a Danish angler who wished to sample the delights of fishing in England. With the car crammed full of tackle and a pit stop at London Heathrow airport we soon arrived at the Richworth Linear Complex of lakes in Oxford.

England’s spring was just poking from winters depths when we arrived in the car park, the previous week’s weather gave much enthusiasm to fishing in the first real low pressure conditions of the year. The last time I was at Oxford was for the fish with the stars event and the peg that we drew that weekend was already occupied, so I chose swim based on wind direction and set up in a reed lined corner with the wind pumping into our left hand margin.

Our time was limited to just two nights in Oxford as I had wanted to get a session in on a river in Surrey for barbel before the seasons end with the remainder of the stay at a familiar haunt of mine being the lakes at Send. The evening drew in cold and clear and as the sun set an endless bank of black cloud could be seen in the distance. This bank of cloud was soon directly overhead and the moon phase was very quickly obscured, the wind was still coming from right to left and strong, as we bedded down we knew it should not be too long before our first trap was sprung.

Morning broke and I awoke early, 20 minutes before first light, I found myself on the opposite bank and looking up the lake in the teeth of a switching wind. The conditions were good, although the noise from the calming wind obscured the sound of carp hitting the surface, I could just see the flat spots from rolling fish,  the carp  looked as if they had woken up and moving down towards our swim.  As the cloud started to break above me the morning light soon enabled me to see across to where we had camped for the night. With the wind still in our corner I had the thinking that the fish would slowly pull into its margin if not already there and was a bit miffed as to the uninterrupted night’s sleep.

http://www.carpandcatbussters.com/