August 16th, 2008 The Unknown
Today I headed fishing, it was only my second time but I enjoyed the first time so thought I’d go again. Last time I caught one fish and I wanted to build on this tally. We got to the lake at about 8:15am, so plenty of time to set up and have a good day’s fishing.
The last time we went fishing we went to the pub afterwards and some guy was telling us a load of BS about how he had the record for the biggest carp caught in our county or some crap like that. Anyway, he was also telling us about how he caught this supposedly legendary fish called the unknown, so called because no one had ever managed to catch it (apart from this guy obviously). So we made it our mission today to catch…the unknown!
Things started pretty slow, there didn’t seem to be much activity in the water, perhaps the fish were having a lie in for the weekend or something. Stu was using some carp fishing setup and after a while reeled in a big fish. It was a bit of an effort to land it and I was messing about with probably the world’s worst landing net trying to get it in, but eventually we got it. Well done Stu! As soon as Stu had caught that, my line went and I reeled in a baby carp. It must’ve only been a couple of pounds max but they all count!
The rest of the day went pretty slowly for a time. I had been fishing with maggots when I decided to switch to sweetcorn and fish down by the reeds. All of a sudden I saw the float go under and the line start to run…it was the unknown! I battled with all my might to reel him in but he broke my line and got away. Dammit! I was gutted that I didn’t land him but nevermind, there was always next time.
Then Stu’s electric bite sensor went off and his line shot off into the reeds, the unknown had come back! Stu battled against the unknown for what seemed like an eternity but alas he couldn’t pull it from the reeds, his line broke and once again the unknown had got away, again
A while later my line went again, and I pulled in a pretty big fish. I wasn’t going to let this one get away like the unknown had. It’s the biggest fish I’ve caught so far, and I think it’s pretty impressive for only a second time fishing.
We fished for a while longer and Stu managed to catch a small roach, but otherwise there were no more bites. We packed up around 16:30 happy with a good day’s fishing. It’s a shame we didn’t catch the unknown today, but we know he’s frightened, and we’ll be back…
