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How you doing? This session was a rather decent one, despite managing to leave my hookbait bucket at home with my medium Spomb in it. I spent an hour cursing and swearing as I used the small Spomb to put a bucket of maize and birdfood in. The first night produced a tench of around 6lb on a straight out of the bag bottom bait, which somehow managed to go across the middle rod. The 2nd night was quiet. Last night around 11pm I had a strange occurrence on the middle rod, it pulled to the right, with what appeared to be a run, but there was nothing there, so I recast with a fresh stringer. At 3am I had the same thing happen again. I think that it was a goose or swan swimming through the line just in front of my rod tips, or a swan picking the hookbait up. A couple of miscasts with stringers, but 3rd time lucky. I was sat drinking coffee and eating breakfast when the rod went with a 22lb mirror, one of last years stocking, and a 10lb weight gain. Caught on a 360 rig with a meshed 15mm Nutty Bait pop-up with a stringer of 6x 18mm Nutty Bait boilies. This morning I was starting to tidy up ready to pack up when the right hand rod went, which was the rod over the maize, and managed a rather nice 26lb mirror on the 'sliver' of Monster Crab pop-up on a reverse combi rig. This fish was from the 2021 stocking and went in at 11lb.

Wychwood do a similar mat that's decent, they do a walled one and inside it has a removable oval mat, I actually just have the oval mat and that's decent, it has a slightly concaved middle recessed bit and also a mesh that can go over the fish if it flaps to hold it down. I guess it's similar to the thinking anglers one https://www.wychwoodcarp.co.uk/products/fish-care/unhooking-mats

another evening, another few hours spent by the lake side

If your after a well made,super light walled on the floor mat that's well padded ,folds up quick and is a realistic pack down look at the Carper tackle speedflex mat I like it...

Thinking anglers new one looks pretty good maybe the walls could do with being slightly higher but still 100mm https://fb.watch/A9qijnzvSU/?

I would then fill it in with spombs,marker floats, deeper etc when I was leaving let them know exactly what it’s like… that’ll learn em

Brand new alarms and pod left in swim when packing van up and having to go back jag compact pod set up (in grey when they first came out) and ace i3 alarms total of about a grand lol about the worst

Cant say i really make mistakes other than fishing this ruddy club lake that i used to fish and thought i new how to get a few out, but not really got a lot of choice so have to stick with endless blanks and dont help doing days only rather than sessions but night tickets are a long wait and i dont have bivvy and stuff no more

I don't know families are over rated 🤣

That's brilliant - bro's ended up attacking each others swims 🤣 It's one thing moaning about others and getting on with it, plotting their downfall all week is likely to lead to mental health probs! You should write a book, I bet you've got some great memories 👍

I'd say my first 3 or 4 years on there were my best, it then became a circus and at times unpleasant. Sad really , as Yonny rightly says, " it's just fishing".

They were savage. They were in fact brother's and had fished dinton for years . They hated the fact that it had become "known" about and that several "names" were joining the syndicate etc. Bearing in mind this was early 2000's and the likes of terry hearn, bernie Loftus and others had dabbled with the days in previous years. I'd heard about these two brother's prior to my arrival and I met one on my second trip there. He introduced himself in the car park and we pushed our barrows out of the car park to the lake and I thought to myself what a sound bloke for him then to say in no uncertain terms that a particular swim was his and God help me if I jumped in it 🤣. The brother's ultimately fell out and ended up weedkilling and soaping each other's swims. Proper nut jobs/green eyed monsters.

First thing this morning on a Nutty Bait pop-up: 29lb @crusian 40metres, towards Scotty dog I've just been through my pics and our Facebook group. I have caught it before at the same weight last year. It was one of the 2020 stocking