Frank’s Spring Blog

Hi everyone I hope you all had a decent winter I certainly did but I have to say I really love winter fishing as there is always plenty of choice on swims and I relish the peace and quiet often hard to find in Spring and summer. In November I went on a road trip to Italy with my son Guy for 2 weeks, I tend to fly out normally when I run my trips to Parco de la Brenta but being two weeks on two different venues I needed to take the van to make sure we had got all of the equipment needed. I have to say it was a ball breaking drive 21 hours in constant driving torrential rain (now I know why I normally fly there).

The first carp I caught on Parco was an absolute stunner of a common at 65lbs scale perfect and looked like a freshly minted sovereign gold coin. It fell for a 16ml wafter tipped with my favourite Pineapple and N butyric plastic corn, no surprises there then as I have yet to find a venue where it doesn’t work. Interestingly I came out of the draw 3rd but chose a fairly unflavoured swim 13 as my friend and family member Christian Hoyle sadly passed away at an untimely young age and it was the swim Christian had last fished when we were together, I wanted to catch a big fish from it in his memory and I think it worked.

The week was steady for me with some gorgeous looking mirrors to over 50lbs to back up the big common. Then I was 48 hours in a hotel in the amazing moated medieval town called the Citadela before we moved onto Ghost Park for our second weeks fishing. That was not an easy start as we came out of the draw last and knew we were stuffed in the swims we ended up in as we had very little access to decent water where the fish had been held up.I did start well however with a ridiculously long 55lb common in the first 25 minutes. Highlight of that week was my mate Gavin Hewitt having a fish of a lifetime at 81.2 a right battle scarred old mirror.

We then started our winter campaign in December and Guy and I decided we would try to do 48 hour sessions every week regardless of the weather.
January the 3rd will stick in my mind for a while as it was to be a bit special for my lad Guy, he went on instinct into a swim that can be a bit all or nothing and started getting liners quite quickly.
After no carp the first night Guy had two bites the following morning and had two of the lakes A team Blackspot at 38. 12 and Marj the stunning common at 36lbs what a fantastic brace particularly from Cheshire our home county and in January.

I’m very much into moon phases and when I get the opportunity I love to choose the time to fish based on what I think is the best moon phase. The 31st of January coincidences with a waning moon and I said to Guy I have to be there in that window of time as the previous 2 years on that exact day I had caught a 40 pounder, surely I couldn’t do it 3 years running? It sounds mad but I had 4 carp and lost one and was 100% certain I was going to catch another 40 which I did  Jimbo at 42.2 how crazy is that. My knowledge of the lake  and its inhabitants has grown over the 3 years I have fished there to such an extent I can predict if its on or not within 10 minutes of arriving at the lake.

While its in my mind I recently chatted with my old mate Shaun Harrison and he reminded me that well over 20 years ago I gave him some prototype glow in the dark plastic Enterprise boilies in blue and green Shaun preferred the green ones and caught his first UK 40 on one of those green boilies which reminded me about a few years ago in Italy on impulse I tried a green glow in the dark 14 ml boilie on top of a fishmeal food bait snow man style just on one of my 3 rods.

There was the most intense storm I’ve ever experienced that night and I caught two very big commons on that one rod the other two rods were fish-less. Coincidence I don’t think so
So with that in mind I’ve just ordered some more of those very neglected glow in the dark boilies.

Tight lines

Frank Warwick