This is one from around the early 80's, there was a day ticket complex a few miles from me that had just created and stocked a new lake with lots of double figure mirrors, this was exciting to a friend and i who i'll refer to as 'S' and i 'so went the privalige info that he got' ,as most of the places we normally fished held mainly commons and the only mirror lake was full of small ones.
Niether of us could drive or had a car at this time, i rode the 8 or so miles there on my pushbike after work one evening, just to check the place out,on the way onto the property there was a chestnut wood just over a ditch and behind a barbed wire fence, plans were forming! On my way back after getting to the top of a large hill on my bike i stopped for a breather in the drivway entrance of a fairlyposh house, an older lady that looked upset at having some guy on a bike in her drive and came straight at me, i got out of the way in time and she clipped my handle bars as she went by without batting an eye lid, after she parked on the drive and went into the house oblivious to my presence i got going thinking it could have been worse!
Why the plans- we wanted to get there just before first light as at the time there was no night fishing on this lake.Without a car and all our gear represented a problem, we had too much gear for bikes LOL. So it all came together, S and i met at the train station around a mile from my place and got the last train around midnight out to the nearest small town to this lake that was going to be so easy, we were going to catch loads of doubles on mere sweetcorn with no one elses baiting campaign to worry about.
The train pulled into the station and then we had a good 2 mile hike with ruck sacks and rod holdalls along a country lane that is used a back road cut through between a couple of towns with no sidewalk. We truged along the road getting blinded by headlights and cars going by anything up to a good 70 MPH on the straight sections around the weaving bends was another matter.
S and i got to the property without getting squashed on route, after making sure no one was around we quietly went down the track towards the lakes where there was an owner/managers house on the site.This was where the woods came in, after getiing us and our gear over the ditch in just far enough into the trees to be out of sight we stopped.I had bought a sleeping bag S just had a very thick oversized "donkey jacket"
he propped himself against a tree and i lay out on the leafy floor in my bag.After we'd quitly talked for a while we were to sleep with S having a small wind up alarm clock set for about 4 am.The excitment of the day to come made it hard to sleep and as i lay there a rather large amount of bird crap came from the tree above and landed on the ground right in front of my face! "OMG 'S' i said a load of bird s**** just landed in front of me" to which the tent like form of the donkey jacket leaning on the tree replied "no it wasn't, it was me having a w**k" after a couple more choice words were exchanged we fell asleep.
Drrrrrrrrrzzzzzdrrrr S's alarm clock went off, and he turned it off as quick as he could,there was allready a dog barking down at the house,after a bit it went quite and we got out to the track unseen, crept down th rest of the way and picked our spot on the 'Lake' which couldn't be much more than a whole acre, we couldn't miss. Those of you going to the UK with an idea of fishing some dayticket waters be aware they are not as big as they look in adverts.
Corn was catapulted and baits were carfully placed the anticipation was incredible, as it got light the the newly carved yellow clay banks and mirky water didn't look so appealing but were were going to load up so to speak so we could ignore that for a day.
Sun up came and went the bailiff came around to collect our money the day got into full swing but we hadnt had a bite there was no sign of any fish or bubblers! S got a very short run which he didn't connect with,
That was it the whole day went by fishless so much for best laid plans, perhaps the info 'S' had got on the grapevine was not quite right or perhaps the fish just werent interested and were still settling in, i'll never know. Luckily i had my dad coming out to pick us up and take us home in the early evening. Whilst fish wise it was a dissapointment i feel lucky to have had times like this and even if we had caught it wouldn't be the biggest part of the memory, unfortunatley 'S' is no longer with us, miss fishing with him.