Tuesday 15th and Wednesday 16th July

Two trips to Brooms with Malcolm, first on North side of Queensberry, second on SE corner of F1 pond.

Tuesday 15th: Malcolm v happy with three commons, bream, good perch of 2.5 lb plus 3 lb barbel (which was what I hoped he might catch).  Most fish on ledgered prawn and barbel on bacon in the margin.  I had a lot of small stuff in margin plus a couple of carp - can't remember exactly how many as proceedings were dominated by a long, large mirror which fought strongly for over five minutes and at first estimated at over 10 lb.  The photo doesn't appear to justify this claim but is not taken from a good angle.  My carp came to meat.

There was a lot of movement between pegs 15 and 16 and I clearly saw barbel passing beneath my feet.  Bigger fish were taken in about 2' of water inches from the bankside weeds.  This seems to be something of a big fish area.  Malcolm lost a couple of good fish through heavy handed tactics.

Wednesday 16th: Wind was strong today and swim choice dubious as this once productive area has

been heavily cleared out.  Malcolm could not get bites nearer to corner but I eventually contacted another big mirror, shorter but fatter, just off the remaining reed bed towards centre on meat.  This one fought in a similar manner to the one yesterday - no real long runs but constant resistance under the pole tip and took ages to come up in the water.  I reckoned it at about 8lb - 9lb.  Then got another mirror of 5 - 6lb from the same spot.  Changing to pellet, got a streaming run and a very angry fight but the result was a common of about 4lb that was foul hooked just below the dorsal fin.

I then let Malcolm try the swim and he caught a couple of nice commons on worm - the first time in the two days we managed to fish worm without attracting small perch - before losing a bigger fish.