I was fortunate enough to be invited by my good friend Chris Blunt from Linear Fisheries to a lovely fishery in Oxfordshire for a weekends fishing. All he had told me about the water was it was nice and weedy!

After fighting with the traffic I managed to get there at around 7pm on Friday evening finding the lake exactly as Chris had described “nice and weedy”, after a lead around found a small clear spot in the weed at about 20 yards. Clipping up my spod rod to this range I put around 5kg of spod mix consisting of Sonubaits Hemp, Tutti and Pineapple corn, Tutti Frutti Boilie Pellets, a mixture of boosted wraps and some Hemp & Hali Crush on the clear spot.

My rods were baited with an 11mm S-Pellet and 10mm Pineapple Boosted Wraps and on the other rod S-Pellet and 10mm Tutti Frutti Boosted Wraps. These were walked out to the same distance as the spod rod and marked with pole elastic so I could cast accurately to the small baited clear spot. I also used a small bag of Hemp & Hali Crush to mask the hook from any weed as it dropped through the water.

After a few liners I knew fish were in the area and so topped up with a few more spods to keep the fish feeding in the area and eventually had one at around 3am. Again I walked out my rod to the same length as the spod clipped up and recast so I was sure I would be in the clear spot.

An early morning start with a few more spods to top the bait up proceeded to get a few more liners but no more takes.

Although Chris didn’t catch anything during the night he had lots of action in the morning as his swim turned on catching fish in regular succession including some large Bream and Tench.

Mid morning I decided to move swims as I had seen some fish moving in the area, after finding a small clear spot in the weed, this time a little further out at 40 yards, I put a couple of kilos of the same spod mix over the area and put the rods on the spot. Jackie Blunt moved into the swim which I had vacated earlier that morning and put the rods on the clear spot, the resting of the swim obviously did it good as she started catching fish towards the evening.

I lost a couple of fish in the heavy weed before landing a lovely ghost carp of 15lbs on the Tutti Frutti Boosted Wraps with an S-Pellet in between the boilie and the hook. Spodding out some more mix over the top resulted in a bream of about 6lbs and another lost fish in the weed.

Through the night one more Carp was landed from my swim, but the swim I had left switched on and Jackie landed 5 Carp up to low 20’s.

Again the next morning Chris’s swim kicked off landing a few good carp, tench and bream in quick succession, whilst all I could do was sit and watch as the fish had moved off my baited area.

With packing up I could not help thinking what a stunning lake it was with a fantastic array of specimen fish. Challenging but very rewarding.