A Change of Scenery

I figured that those that have looked in on me of late will welcome a change of scenery, me too but more of that later.

I love this time of year, the new life bursting out of the ground. I had a walk around my new syndicate lake the other day - shhhhhhh! Secret squirrel. The sun was out and basking under the overhanging trees I found a few carp, nothing big, maybe upper doubles but it was really good to get a first look at my targets for the year. Then, out of nowhere appeared a lump. A big, pale mirror that was a pound or two either side of the thirty mark. Now I'm not that worried about size, a double stalked from the margins is always a worthy fish, but seeing things like this can really get the juices flowing. Roll on May 1st.

Alas, Neil can't get a ticket on my water so he's opted for the Cotswold Water Park. If you've never been there, its a vast series of gorgeous looking gravel pits and Neil's ticket enables him access to half a dozen of them with massive carp, tench, bream etc available. We had a wander around a couple of them last week and on one of them we witnessed three carp caught in ten minutes! Now that got the boy's enthusiasm on overload. The best of the three was this heavily spawn bound (on April 1st!) twenty two pounder.

As I type, Neil is setting up his bivvy for a three or four day stint - I hope he has a flyer.

I see that Fish N' Bits fell at the first, an event that makes me feel that there is still some common sense in angling. The idea that there is an 'all new readership' out there is such a flawed business plan it beggars belief that it ever got beyond the planning stage. The other failure was in the 18 to 30 demographic. They should have aimed at years of age rather than IQ but hey, someone's last a bob of two so let's not go on about it.

I saw this above a doorway on the Cob at Lyme Regis the other day........

Looks like I could be around for a while yet then :-)

My change of scenery comes on Wednesday when Nicky and I visit the country mansion of the infamous Tony Rocca. Nestling in the Spanish heartland it will be a welcome change from the UK after such a long and, at times, tedious winter.

I'm really looking forward to showing Nicky the Estremadura region, it has some magnificent scenery and the bird life has to be seen to be believed - can't wait. Our only trepidation involves the welcoming committee. When Tony and Hobby were there a few weeks back there was something of a mass escape from the detained maggot fraternity. Apparently 'Hobby' did some ninja stalking and wrestled many of the itinerants back into their box but, and it is a big but, how many did he miss?

I'll let you know in a week or so.