Stewart Bloor

Field Tester

3

Due to work-related commitments I've been very busy over the last few months. For most people that work at a football club, the end of the season signals a quieter period ahead. However, when you're involved with a team that plays in the Champions League Qualifying Rounds, it's anything but slow.

No sooner has the last whistle blown - in our (The New Saints FC) case in the Welsh Cup final - then you're preparing for European fixtures. I'm not complaining though, far from it, and I've still fed the angling desire with lots of very short lure sessions for perch.

It's nice though to get out and do some 'proper' fishing, if I can use that word. I'm sure you know what I mean though, a bit more gear and spending more than twenty minutes at the water's edge. It was actually quite nice to be loading the car and setting off into the county of Shropshire for an afternoon session after carp.

My rods are already made up and ready to go, I have a designated bag in my tackle room with all the gear in, so it was just a case of choosing the bait. I have a wardrobe in the aforementioned room and in the compartment that was originally designed for folded clothes, it's now my bait storage section.

I went for cranberry on one rod and M2 on the other. Both pop-ups and matching loose boilies as an attractor, as well as pellets. The M2 was fully co-ordinated while the cranberry spot was fed with Multimix Proactive pellets. The cranberry boilies were from the Eurostars range, while the M2 bear the Premium label.

All bait from SBS, of course, that's been my company of choice for a number of years now. From the days of the industrial unit in Kidderminster, when I visited in person, to the mail order from Hungary, the familiar yellow and black logo has been a permanent personal feature.

The lake I fished doesn't hold big carp, in fact a double is decent and a '20' is a monster indeed. However, I enjoy fishing there and it is very kind to me. I think angling has to be more than just a big-fish-on-the-bank approach. There's nothing wrong with catching specimens, of course not, but you have to be enjoying it.

I certainly did, with fish on the bank, all falling to the M2 incidentally, That's why I often fish with two different baits as I find, without knowing why, that one bait will produce and the other doesn't, even though the baited areas are very close to each other and everything is identical.