Winter Ramblings Part One
Leigh Hemsley's UKCA Diary

Hi and welcome to the first of my UKCA short diary peces. I’ve called it a diary piece mainly because sometimes I might only have a small snippet of news to pass on to you of what I’ve been up to and some weeks I could have been here, there and everywhere doing all things fish related.
My aim with these ongoing pieces is to pass on to you what I’ve been up to in my life as an angler, where I’ve been fishing, what I’ve caught etc and hopefully I will pass on my thoughts on baits and rigs, what I do In certain fishing situations.

Also as those of you who know me or have read any of my other article’s on the web site, you’ll know that I’m lucky enough to be sponsored by a couple of tackle firms, Nash tackle and Nashbait who I’ve been with as a fieldtester for 18 years and have just been made a bait and tackle consultant, and Fishing Wizard who supply me with top quality particles and P.V.A products, so I will be able to pass on the inside info about new products and how they fair In my angling life.

So as the cold weather starts to encroach on my fishing, this last week I’ve just begun a campaign on a large unfished lake close to my home. Its a lake I used to fish 20 years ago and It didn’t have a lot of fish in it then, and now 20 years on we think it’s home to between 25 and 50 fish, and test fishing has seen fish to low 30’s but a few of the members have seen at least 2 fish over 40lb with 1 of them looking like mid or maybe even upper 40’s so the thought of an uncaught monster will certainly keep me warm on these cold nights to come.
Talking of keeping warm this winter I’ve just received my thermal under cover for my Nash indulgence sleep system. I’ve never had any problems with any drafts but thought I would have one of these as I intend to fish at least 3 nights a week right though this winter after these uncaught monsters.

So here goes for my week to week fishing blog, the other Friday saw me fishing a day session on a small 2 acre day ticket lake near to my home, it has some good fish in and there’s always a good chance of a couple of bites the lake wasn’t fishing very well as the air pressure had gone up so no bites were coming to the bottom rods so on the 3rd rod I was playing about with a zig rig, bait was a homemade small barrel pop up made from Nashbait ingredients and flavours.

Once I found the right depth (which was 6ft 4inch) the 1st fish actually took the bait on the drop and after a good fight a cracking 14lb 8oz mirror lay on the mat, so all the rods were quickly changed over to zigs and the next hour saw 3 more fish between 8lb and 14lb landed. Tackle wise my reels are loaded with 14lb Ultima power carp, for my zig fishing I use the Nash weed safe lead clip which ensures the lead is ejected on the take every time and hook links were 12lb Ultima power zig connected to a size 10 Nash fang gaper.
Just before packing up the Nash siren alarm sounded so another carp had made a mistake and after another good fight the biggest of the day layed in the bottom of my net and at 15lb 7oz made a good end to session.

Then last week a very good friend of my Pete rang me to say he had just got a ticket on a lake we used to fish 20 years ago and would I like to go as a guest for a few days, I jumped at the chance as I had been keeping an eye on this lake over the last few months as i had heard rumours of a very big uncaught fish in the lake.
I spent the next few days on the phone to a couple of close friends and what they told me has made me want to spend 3 days a week on there for the foreseeable future.

So there you have it the first of many blogs, I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed fishing and writing it and I hope I can pass on some useful information and an insight to some of the new tackle and bits coming out of some of one of the top tackle and bait companies.

Right I’m off to sort my gear out for my first session on the new lake, I’ll let you know how it goes.

Till then, HOOK A HIPPO!!!

Leigh Hemsley