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!