Barston Lakes (West Mids)

[mattgroves]

Fished Barston for the first time over the long weekend, did Sunday night and Monday daytime, had a cracking night (several fish overnight, to 19lb) and then a disappointing day...

Fished peg 3 overnight, then moved to the island mid morning (peg 30-something), didn't get a wink of sleep until gone 1am as there was a function on at the Golf club that had a live band, then Disco, thumping out! The band weren't bad, esp when they got towards the end of their set and did a few Clash/Jam/Stones tunes, could have done without 'Dancing Queen' etc from the disco, but the fish didn't seem to mind one bit

 

Haven't quite mastered self takes (but will still refuse to take my 7D that do it perfectly!) so this is all I could manage of the 19:

(loving my bed hair in this one!!)

 

Then had a few more that I photographed in the net, only these are worthy of note:

 

These were 15 and 13 respectively...

 

Then got woken up at 3am by a screaming run that at first I thought I'd missed, but then something really fast started running all over my swim, result was a 2-3lb carp, no idea how it managed to get 2 Cell 15mm boilies in it's mouth:

 

Highlight of the day session was a 15lb ghostie:

 

Had a play with Marks bait boat and got this fish from under the trees on the island, still doubt I'll bring myself to get one, just 'feels' like cheating...

[not wanting to start the debate here on this thread, I'm just stating my opinion!]

 

Mark's best was a 14lb:

 

We both struggled all day, annoyingly some lads 2 or 3 pegs down did much better, with tactics that were crude at best, and sharing a net between them, they didn't have a mat either...

Reported it to the golf club and they said they'd get the bailiff on it...

 

The other highlight was watching Mark try to collapse his pop-up bivvy, video here

Warning: video contains some swearing.[/img]

[arl]

great video mat .Did that fish ever return

[mattgroves]

nope... Never came back... he got rather exciting over a liner IMO

 

Thanks for the feedback on the vid, I couldn't help myself, was too funny to not film him!