I was pleased to take my friend Rick fishing at Horwood Lakes taking advantage of the Angling Trust & Environment Agencies joint Take a Friend Fishing Campaign.

Rick had not cast a line since 1985 and had been inspired to return to the water’s edge after reading my book “ I Caught A Glimpse”. We started off taking a walk around the the venue with fishery manager Neilsen Jeffery who has transformed the lakes in over a decade of hard work. Trees and rushes have been planted around the lakes perimeter where we observed several large hawk moth caterpillars feasting upon the willow leaves. These were collected from the juvenile willows and moved to the more mature willows on the upper Lake.

Swallows and martins swooped over the water as the summer sun beat down upon the reed fringed waters.

We set up in adjacent swims and selected a float from a float box that contained a pleasing array of balsa floats that had not seen the light of day for close to forty years.

The depth was set so that a grain of sweetcorn rested lightly upon the lakes bottom. A handful of corn was sprinkled around the float. Moments later the float bobbed and disappeared, a tiny tench was swung ashore for a smiling angler reconnected immediately to the joys of angling.

After an hour catching tiddler’s we spotted a few larger carp slurping down offerings of floating crust. Repositioning the weights to sit beneath the float we cast out segments of crust.

The carp toyed with the offerings often rejecting our hook-bait whilst devouring the free offerings. Persistence paid off though and throughout the day we caught half a dozen carp each the biggest an immaculate common carp its flanks glowing bronze and gold in the late summer sunshine.

It was a perfect day’s fishing using simple tactics that should be savoured by all anglers from time to time.

As we left the fishery we paused for a moment to reflect upon the memorial to young lives lost when a Wellington Bomber crashed nearby during the Second World War.