My latest trip found me carping with the new Shellfish and Plum session boilies. Fishing nice simple rigs I’d landed a couple of double figure commons and a lovely linear mirror of 21-3 when I hooked a good fish close to a snag.

Initially it just held in the water and tried to get into the snag. I held it off and thought I’d gained sufficient line to clear another snag to my left. All the other carp had kited to the right but this one went left and suddenly everything went solid and I realised I’d miscalculated. After trying a slack line to no avail the inevitable happened when I tried to bully the fish out and the line parted.

I was still angry with myself about 30 minutes later when I saw a carp just below the surface that appeared to be nosing a twig. It suddenly dawned on me the twig had fresh leaves and I realised the carp was trailing the twig. I guessed it was the fish I’d just lost and tried casting a rig over the twig but failed to hook it at first. It appeared the lead was sinking the rig too quickly. The carp began to move off as I removed the lead and cast the rig with tubing over the twig and hooked it first time. I then very gently played the carp and what turned out to be a quite large branch to the net and with a bit of a struggle managed to get the carp into the landing net. Sure enough my other rig was in the bottom lip and fell out as I picked up the hooklength. The barbless hook would have almost certainly been shed very quickly had I not banked the carp. The weight was 26lb 10oz, though given the circumstances I’m not sure it counts!

I have to say I was very impressed by the Shellfish Plum boilies and would be happy to use them anywhere. Even the big roach and rudd in the lake got in on the act and I had about half a dozen over the 2lb mark.