The weather for the last couple of weeks had been brilliant; in fact it was too hot, with my garden pond suffering the effects of the heat with a rapidly falling level. Lee and I decided that we hadn't done any coarse fishing, so we decided to walk up the lane to Darracott and try for coarse fish before he returned to Scotland.
The evening was again bright, but with a brisk sou'wester which put a fair ripple of the water as the reservoir is elevated. We tried the roach swim initially where Lee caught a skimmer, but I was struggling for float control and visibilty, and after an hour decided to move nearer to the dam wall. I changed my rig slightly and was quickly into another skimmer, then had a carp surge off before the hook pulled free. I was using light tackle (12 hook and 4lb line) and was quickly into another carp.
The rod I was using was a B James Kennet Perfection; this is a good knock about rod, but the action is so soft that you can tell a good fish when the cane bends within the handle, and this makes the control with a centre pin a perfect compliment. This was a nice fish, very hardfighting, suggesting is was a lean fish just below the double figure mark, and it was necessary to drop the rod slightly to use the middle section for extra power, and after a few minutes, the fish reached the net.
The sport continued spasmodically with several bream, rudd and roach coming to the net as the wind reduced as evening approached. Lee returned to the previous swim which he finds more picturesque catching larger bream to a couple of pound before we called it a day. I had my revenge from the previous trip, so the beers were on him as we went out for the evening listening to the live music in Appledore, a regular Friday night haunt.