Started off from sunny Cornwall. The A30 was clear, foot to the floor – as I hit Bristol the heavens opened and down came the rain. As the traffic slowed down to 40 miles an hour, there was a slow drive ahead of me towards the M4. The pace picked up, I turned off juntion15 edging towards Lansdale and after a while I turned up at the Carp Society’s Horse Shoe Lake.

I was greeted by David, one of the Managers at the lake. We started to chat about what had been coming out that week and he advised me to look at Winters Bay as some fish were holding up in there.  As I slowly drove around the lake, winter bay was looking the best option for me as there was nobody in there. I finally opted for peg 20, this was a double swim with a fair amount of water to go at. I started to set up and once again down came the rain; it must have followed me from the M5! Up went the bivvy and out went two kilo of Smokey fish Boilies all over my swim with the throwing sick, closely followed by two rods loaded up with PVA bags into the edge of the weeds. Within two hours of waiting off went my first rod, a good 10 minute fight and my first Horse Shoe carp on the bank.

I have heard that these carp are one of the best looking strains of fish in the country, and I wasn’t disappointed when faced with a lovely scaled mirror on the bank. Later that day I was feeding fish from under my rod tips with crumbed up Smokey fish boilies; these fish weren’t shy, they would have stayed there all afternoon eating all the bait I put in front of them.

This was good time to test out my new camo rig, as can be seen it’s camouflaged with a gravel affect but all the straight lines still stand out; as Shaun Harrison once said to me there are no straight lines in nature. So the next stage on my quest for the ultimate camouflaged rig is to disguise the lines even further.  But as far as Horse Shoe Lake goes, you’re not allowed to use any leaders of any kind and can only use tubing, so this is the best camo I’m probably going to get at the moment.

As the sun went down and the moon came out I sat down and watched the water in the moon light over a glass of red wine, Horse Shoe is a very peaceful and tranquil place to fish, next month I plan to return for some more action!