True to form, the weather was predicted to be grim with a cold start and drizzly rain all day... Far out spring, what happened?!

Amazingly there were two other anglers on the lake so by usual standards, it was rammed! I decided to hedge my bets and set up at the far bowl end and fish the died back lily pads with a feeder rod. My first bite came pretty quickly and turned out to be one of the biggest fish I've caught from the lake - result!

Over the next couple of hours I had another three fish but as the rain settled in the bites completely dried up.

In the end I packed down around 2pm as it was freezing cold, chucking it down with rain and with nothing to show for a swim move I was just plain fed up!

Looking at the weather forecast shows that there's no change on the far side of the Easter break...

After much googling, I did find some contenders, not easy as the waters needed to be close by - the Devon roads were stuffed with traffic and the kids wanted (quite rightly!) to head to the beach! In the end though, it was the Anglers Haven tackle shop in Bideford that put me onto the excellent Tarka Swims.

There's mixed info out there re the day tickets: as the lake is run by the 'Bideford & District Angling & Social Club', most websites report that you need to pay a joining fee of £40, then £20 a year to fish! Not so, the chap in the tackle shop sold me a ticket for the grand total of £5! Just goes to show, you can't believe everything you read online...

Another word of warning: the lake is NOT where Google maps says it is! It's quite a bit further along Gammaton Road...

By the time I'd got the permit sorted, picked up some maggots and groundbait and headed out to the water it was around 11am. First impressions were really good! Good car park with toilets and a really well landscaped and maintained looking lake. I took a wander round and settled on a swim near the two islands at the top end which 'bumped' out into the water. It looked perfect for a bite, excellent near and far margins, an expanse of open water and not a lot of angling pressure (love fishing during the week - everybody else is at work!).

There was a very stiff breeze coming across the water and although it was sunny and warm, the fish definitely weren't showing themselves... So I opted for a bottom bait set up, the right hand rod going out to the island margins with a method feeder baited with fake corn and a standard bolt rig set up into open water with double corn on the hair and a PVA bag.

It took around 30 mins and 3 or so casts on the method to get my 1st bite! A nice little common. Then the bolt rig rod went off, a nice little mirror. Good start! After that, I had pretty much constant action for a couple of hours. Interestingly, the bolt rig rod in open water produced more than the feeder (I've a feeling these fish see a lot of method feeders...). I had a handful of small carp to around the 8lb mark and a couple of really good bream.

After lunch, a chap appeared in a swim to the left of me further round the lake (maybe there's a 2nd entrance 'cos I didn't see him come in?!) and hooked into what appeared to be a much bigger stamp of fish within minutes off casting out! As my swim had gone a little quiet, I decided to reel in and have a wander round to see what was what.

He'd pulled in good size common of around 16lb. After a bit of a chat, he suggested I switch from corn to big (and he meant big, think fishing for catfish size!) chunks of Spam on the hair and to fish literally just round the corner of my swim in the margins, as close in as I could get. Although this'd mean fishing literally under my feet, he swore blind that that'd be the best place to get the bigger fish!

So I decided to give it a go, the right hand rod dropping in close to the margin (literally inches from my bankside) with a huge cube of luncheon meat...

At 40 mins on the nail, the rod tip whipped round to the left and the bait runner started peeling off line! Annoyingly, the hook length snapped... Really frustrating! I've been using these Guru speed stop hair rigs (size 10 hooks to 8lb mono) and I've had so many give on me, usually just bellow the loop not (the rest have gone in the bin!).

A bit of a swear, a new rig tied (this time a 10 brait hooklink with a Korum bait screw) and another cube of luncheon meat went out. I only had to wait 20 mins for the next bite though... Again, the rod tip went round but I was ready for it this time! I got on the rod and off it went - a good fight later and a decent common of around 15lb came in.

Another 15lb mirror fell to the margin rod with 4 more smaller fish to the method feeder over the next couple of hours. What a brilliant session?! I packed up at 6ish and headed for home.

If you're ever in the Bideford area and looking for somewhere to fish, give Tarka Swims a go - you wont be disappointed!

If you've been following this blog or my YouTube channel you'll have noticed I've been fishing up at The Holiday Inn Lake (otherwise known as 'The Crest Lake') quite a bit recently and it's yet to let me down in terms of bagging up (a rare thing in winter!). So after dropping my daughter off I headed to the lake, pulling into the car park at 3pm on the nose and then ran round to the 1st swim to get set up.

As it was late in the day I decided to fish a swim at the top end of the lake where the sun would've been on the water for the most amount of time. It's also shallower at the top end and my thinking was the fish may have moved into the warmer water as the day wore on.

The proven tactics so far have been a feeder rod with liquidized bread and sweetcorn hookbaits and today was no different as I had my 1st bite within 10 minutes of casting out! And amazingly, the bites kept on coming with 6 fish in the net and two lost. Baring in mind I've had this number of fish to show for a whole day session in the past, it wasn't a bad result. Just goes to show that reading a lake to figure out where the fish might be and getting on them can result in bites even in the coldest of conditions.

The weather is set to get mind bogglingly cold over the next couple of weeks and with chilly winds, heavy frosts and snow predicted so this might be the last lake session for a while... I'm really glad I braved the elements today even if I couldn't feel my face or fingers by the time I packed down! The heater in the car never felt so good...

Conditions looked bang on for some action with the day starting warm and drizzly and then turning overcast. But for some reason I just couldn't get amongst the fish...

The day started well with a carp falling to the feeder rod within ten minutes of the first cast but with nothing else to show for the first couple of hours it was beginning to get tough...

I persevered though, casting every twenty minutes or so and moving swims six times but nothing I did triggered a bite. Things got so dire that I wrote this blog post during the session!

Luckily the final move to the thinner end of the lake (pegs 20 and 21) produced some fast action with 4 bites and a couple of lost fish in less than an hour. If that doesn't prove that location in winter is key I don't know what does ;)

It's half term week which has meant I'm on kid duty for 99% of the time but when a two hour window presented itself I couldn't resist the opportunity to wet a line. The Holiday Inn Lake was the obvious choice as I was dropping people off at Bristol Parkway station and then picking up from UWE and with a good winter form, I was really hopeful it would produce a fish on two.

The weather was all over the place, sunny one minute followed by heavy rain the next and I was greeted at the lake by two soggy looking match anglers who were in the process of leaving. They were shaking their heads and saying it was fishing hard... But I wasn't to be put off! Prior knowledge is so useful and I put mine to good use, dropping in on peg 25 and quickly getting both rods out using the tactics that have done me so well on previous sessions: a yellow dumbbell wafter on a helicopter rig and a feeder filled with liquidised bread and a double sweetcorn hookbait. Both rods were fished as close as I dared to the died back lily pads and I sat back to see what would happen.

It didn't take long before I started to get liners and after 20 minutes the helicopter rod ripped off with a plump common of around 6lb. The feeder rod took a couple of more casts but finally the tip swung round and another smaller common graced the bank. As an extra bonus, I also snagged up on a cage feeder rig that'd snapped off during a session a couple of weeks back and managed to get it back in! Great to have it back in the tackle bag rather than in the lake.

The swim went dead after that and despite a couple of further moves to other productive swims I couldn't raise another bite. But I was pretty chuffed to have caught so quickly on such a short session!