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I would like to think that we don’t get worse, but we can become complacent at times. After Monday, we can all dust off the bivvies and get nights in! Hopefully we can get back to normal and start getting some fish on the bank. besides, if I look back, I seem to remember catching a lot more fish than I do now, but there are various factors for this, with rose tinted specs on and the benefit of hindsight, you remember the good times and the blanks don’t seem so bad or numerous. I hark back to my first carp water where the sun was always shining, the reeds were thick and vibrant, the carp were dark mahogany commons and you caught every trip, I still fish this water occasionally, the reeds don’t look as vibrant as they do in my nostalgic minds eye, the carp are pale and it’s usually raining! The water has changed in 20yrs, it’s silted up, the stock is lower and the reeds have been cut back. I fish different waters then back then, my waters now are harder, lower stocked and this affects my catch rate, I may not catch the same numbers, but as the waters are a lot harder, I’m a better angler now then back then as I’ve had to learn and evolve as an angler to be be successful on difficult waters.

Whereas I haven’t used Abu reels since I replaced my (new version) cardinal 55 reels for baitrunners in 1999, I did have a set of 3 Abu 6500 open cage multipliers for beach casting. One bent the spindle trying to land a bass in the tide race in Poole harbour, it was its first outing so I wasn’t too impressed! I went to Afghan a few weeks later for 7 months then didn’t get to sorting it for over a year after getting home from Afghan. I sent it to Abu with a letter explaining the circumstances and asked for a repair, they sent me a brand new reel, free of charge, nearly 2yrs after I broke it! Excellent customer service, the reels were good as gold afterward. My first “proper” carp rods were Abu Delta carp rods, 11ft 2lb tc (loved them!) with Abu cardinal 55 reels, (my tackle dealer was an Abu dealer) but that was back in the mid 90s. They have a good reputation on the sea fishing scene, but for carp fishing, they seem to have slipped from view somewhat.