Lee Swords Fishing

Sometimes I fancy a blow out on a commercial lake, they have their uses as in they are good places for bait testing and they are good to blow the cobwebs away and give you a bit of a boost when things have been a bit tough.

My good mate Dan Stewart Smith has been fishing West End Fishery off of Boiley Lane at Killamarsh of late and getting some good fish…Today I was supposed to be picked up by him for a predawn arrival unfortunately my arse had other ideas, my arse being very busy trying to drop the whole world out of it from just after 5.30 am so i made “the call” and called off and retired back to the toilet. Luckily for me things picked up in the lower intestinal section and I decided that I would go fishing or regret wasting a day off nursing an arse that wasn’t actually poorly but rather acting like a mardy bastard.

I arrived at the venue for 11 am and was fishing for 11.15 am ( that is the beauty of Korum holdalls and made up rods) by 11.25 I was into my first fish, a rampant little chub of around a pound, Dan in the meantime had landed his third chub twice that size on worm fished up in the water…The place has a lot of chub!!

My next cast gave me a decent carp of about 5lb,  Dan however was busy with something a little bigger!

His fish went to just under doubles, which is what he says the average is in West End.

Whatever the size the fish were in very good nick!

It was about this time when the baillif arrived and took my £7.00 which allowed me to fish with two rods, it was also about this time that the clouds began to gather and a couple of other anglers came over to check out how we were doing.

Its always nice to come across decent young anglers and even nicer when one of them is a girl and a very pretty one at that, there are nowhere near enough girls fishing and so when my left hand rod went I asked if “fish girl” would like to have a go at landing it, commercial fishing is a relaxed affair for me, I don’t care who is catching so long as the fish are coming out…It turns out “fish girl” has only caught small fish up to this point and what was on the end of the rod was a little bigger than she was used to but she gave it a good shot and eventually came out on top of her battle with a very nice looking leather/mirror.

Soon it was time for “Fish Girl” and her Boyfriend to leave and that was the moment to thunder decided to arrive!!

The sky began to boil and those unmistakable thunder cells started to generate, very soon lightening was flashing across the sky at regular intervals and me an Dan settled under our brollies!

I hoped that the fish wouldn’t feed during the storm but a scamp tench of about a pound held on to the Fakey a little bit too hard and had to be hoicked out with the greatest alacrity and the lowest possible tip height!

I did not fancy getting electrocuted for the sake of a fish!

And neither did I fancy testing out my theory on the insulating properties of my Dunlop Wellies!

Anyways the storms did not last long and very soon the lake was looking like a mirror.

It was at thios point Dan hatched a plan to see if he could bag himself a carp on the fly using Fakey as his bait!

putting the bait out to a few feeding fish Dan soon had his answer!

a big pair of lips came up out of the depths and engulfed the Fakey in one go!

 

This started one of the best battles I have seen in many a long year!

Fly rods are soft and the exaggerate a fishes speed and strength…all that baloney about trout being hard fighting is just tosh when you compare them to  carp of the same size…There is no comparison, the carp has far more stamina!

Anyway that’s all by the by, what counts is that Dan caught a carp off to top using fly gear in October…

Bang tidy!

Anyway lets have some scores on the doors!

 

Toilets 0/5 Could do with a porta-loo so that anglers like “Fish Girl” came poop in peace

Venue 4/5 The venue is very attractive and very clean and the platforms are ok

Stock 4/5 All the fish we caught were in very good nick, we had tench, rudd carp and chub

Value 4/5  £7.00 for two rods…not bad