What a way to learn that you should have spent £5!

[peakoverload]

Last weekend I went to my local club lake to get a few hours of relaxation and hopefully a few fish too.

The fish in this particular lake seem to have two modes. Timid As Hell & Too Hungry To Care. Today was the turn of Timid As Hell.

Every cast resulted in bites but they were spitting it out quicker than I could possibly strike but over time I netted a few Tench and a couple of quite nice Crucians. Then at one point I cast out and nothing happened for quite a while which usually means that either a bigger fish has moved in or I've over fed the swim. Fortunately for me it was the former and as my float slowly pulled under I struke into, what for me, was a good Carp.

Now I should point out that I'm not much of a Carp fisherman. I don't go in for complicated rigs in fact I rarely ledger preferring to use a waggler and probably as a result my biggest ever Carp is only 11.5lb and I've only caught around 5 Carp over 5lb.

So when this fish broke the surface and I could see that it was comfortably 8lb, to me this was a good fish. So there I am playing this fish as it makes a couple of runs which I manage to control and then reach for the net. Just as I get the net into the water the fish makes a final run and I have to drop the net to adjust the clutch. A few moments later I've turned the fish back and it's head is up but now the net has sunk to the bottom of the lake. Reaching for the handle I start to lift the net back up in the water but the drag of 42" of net in a few feet of water means that I can't lift the net quickly enough and now the carp is right in front of me but the net is still too low. Desperately trying to lift the net up and secure my catch I change my position slightly and I must have put just a little more pressure on the line because all in the same nano second the hook pulls from the fishes lip, the net breaks the surface and the fish brushes off the front of the net and swims off

For several minutes I sit there feeling utterly gutted especially as just the day before I had considered buying one of those floats to stick on the landing net to stop it from sinking. It was only a fiver!

Well I know what the next bit of tackle I'll be buying is!

[asp383]

bad luck mate! would've been a good catch.
i have same problem with my carp net, & keep thinking of investing in 1 of those floats. my smaller net seems to float on it's own, which is a help lol

[pingu]

unlucky there

dave

[mithrandir]

if you want to be a cheapskate like me, I use the foam pipe lagging that you get in DIY stores, about £2 for a metre of it, and that does 4 nets with ease.