As the new year starts, I look back at 2022 and believe I accomplished what I set out to achieve in my angling last year. Each year I set myself a target, and this year was no different. The targets I wanted to achieve was to bank one more of the A team from my main target water (Northey Park), as well as open my account on the other two waters that I had joined. It did and didn’t quite go to plan in exactly the way that I wanted the year to unfold, but that matters not.
Early spring saw me concentrate my efforts on Northey, with eight fish coming my way which included one of its smaller sisters to the big girl, a fish known as ‘Nuggets’. The lake shuts for the month of May, so on I went to another one of the lakes I had joined. A very special venue, that I felt very privileged to be invited to fish. Well I actually only did one night on said venue, which in one respect wasn’t quite how I wanted things to pan out, as I hoping to enjoy my time on there, catching many of its residents and seeing all four seasons on that particular lake. The day I arrived at the lake, it was very quiet, in fact to my amazement there was only one other person on. I found four very large residents feeding in a corner, absolutely ripping the silty bottom apart. With no chance of getting a rod on them, I had to set a rod just off them and hope that when they circled the area, they would come across my heavily baited patch. Well they did exactly that, as I watched up a tree, the carp vanished from site, only for me to wander back to my rod back round the corner. Not two minutes since standing back at my rods, it was away and I did battle with the king the pond, the mighty ‘One Eye’. A fish that could well be over forty even touching fifty years of age and tipped the scales at just over 41lbs, certainly the best carp I have ever caught, and I feel blessed to have that fish in my album!
With the main water ‘Northey Park’ back open, I headed down the A1 for a couple of sessions with not much to show. Then work got busy, and I mean busy, it just took over my life, and with my other half Sarah being pregnant with our first child, I wanted to try and make the most of this time, but I had to concentrate my efforts in the factory. To add to my work load, we bought a house that needed renovating and with time ticking and the baby due mid November, the chance of getting the rods out was a far cry away.
The full moon in September, I always book Tom our media guy in to do a video, and this year having achieve plenty down south in the spring, I thought it would be fantastic to try and open account on yet another new venue back up north. Absolutely chucking myself right in the deep end trying to make a film from a venue that I had done no time on, but would I want it any other way. Well what can we say, we dropped on and fished very hard for three days and what unfolded was beyond expectations. With the first chapter of the video in the can. Im not going to go into too much detail how that particular session went, but we had three fish to 39.8lbs, mind blowing!
Well efforts were back on the house, in order to get it done just in time for us to get moved in and settled ready for the little one arrived. That trip in September was my last trip of the year, and although I haven’t done half as much fishing this year to what I usually do, I am still overjoyed with how it went!
So on reflection, what a year it has been on a personal note, catching what I class as the best carp I have ever caught, renovated and moved into our family home and having baby Millie to top it off. I think this year will take some topping, but lets have a crack in 2023!
Greg
