August and everything ...

It was a warm, cloudy morning and Swakestone Lock was like Piccadilly Circus. There were several narrow boats either side of the lock, waiting to continue on their journey.

I set up a float on the Billy Lane rod and Mitchell 300 reel, with sweetcorn and bread for bait. It was a short session made shorter by people magnet fishing which didn't help, and I only caught a few Perch and Roach before packing up.

After putting my fishing tackle in the car I thought I'd go for a 'scoot' up the toe-path to look for quieter places to fish in the future. I found some lovely, quiet spots with plenty of room for fishing next to the toe-path, with tress overhanging the canal on both banks and features for fish to hold up.

A week later I was back at Swakestone Lock, but this time instead of fishing below the lock, I went upstream to one of the places I found the week before. I found a good spot to fish in the sunshine and made a short video of the day.

The following week I went to Allestree Lake to try and catch a Tench. I fished all afternoon, which wasn't really the best time of day for a Tench, but I know Tench have been caught during the day there and even red maggots and sweetcorn didn't temp them.

I didn't entirely blank, although this wasn't my target species. "Sometimes you eat the bear and sometimes the bear eats you."

The view from my swim was very peaceful, even in the rain.

My next fishing adventure was at Robinwood Lakes. There's four lakes and I fished Lake 4, which is out of the way and quiet. Plus there's a good variety of fish from Gudgeon to Carp.

Today I used my Mitchell 324 reel, a 12' fiberglass rod, and float fished leftover bait from the previous week. Defrosted red maggots, sweetcorn and hemp were used to bait up in the margins with a few dead reds on a size 16 hook.

After a short while catching good size Gudgeon, something much bigger took the float under and my reel screamed and nearly fell off the rod rest. After a good fight on quite a soft tipped rod and 3lb line I landed a nice bright, bronze coloured Carp.

I alternated between maggots and sweetcorn on the hook, but after a few hook-pulls from good sized Carp I changed to a size 14 hook and changed the spool to a stronger line. Soon after, the breeze dropped and several Carp started to feed on the surface right in front of me, even touching my rod tip a few times. I moved my float to bring the bait nearer the surface and after carefully throwing in some loose feed, my float dipped under and the reel screamed off again. A good sized fish moved out towards the middle of the lake, suddenly jumped right out of the water to its tail, twisted and managed to come unhooked!

After staring at the water in disbelief for a while, I reeled in my line. Frustrated at loosing what looked like a good double figure fish, I looked at my watch and it was time to dismantle my rod. I stared at the lake for a while longer and thought of a plan to come back and continue the quest.