The highly eventfull life of a carp website owner

[Tom]

Well, as you know my name's Tom, im 25 from Benfleet in Essex and reguarly go fishing at least twice a week.

I'm just hoping at the minute that this site works as i'm not very good with website things but i do try my best but sometimes even thats still not good enough, im better at fishing however but even then we all have bad days.

This season I signed up to BDAC (Billericay District Angling Club) as they have a few good carp waters and around 20 venues, many of which have more than one lake and for an annual fee of around £55 its not bad value for money, next season i'm also looking to join up with Cemex but i'll see how BDAC is going first. I suppose one of the things that helps me is i'm a bit of a perfectionist so my rigs 'must' be perfect as must my bait as i make my own, I dont mean to sound bigheaded I just mean that i'm never satisfied that anything is good enough so i'll constantly work on improving it.

I work permanent nights as an engineering teamleader and the hours can sometimes be long but working permanent nights does give me one advantage especially in the summer as I can go fishing and take just a bedchair, have a kip on the bank and spend the entire day over there before going straight back to work again.

Well, that's me.....why not start a blog of your own you can always add to it at any time.

[Tom]

Well, a good xmas was had by myself, was treated to an Xbox 360 with hard drive, 4 wireless controllers, 12 month xbox live subscription and 3 games (gears of war, call of duty 3, sonic the hedgehog). The other half managed to get me the box set dvd of Bill Bailey as i'd taped his stand-up off the telly and the tape got lost during moving house.

Feeling pretty ropey at the minute, had a big lump come up under my jaw, saw the doc and he reckons i've got some kind of virus also a sinus infection.....great way to spend my time off work.

[Tom]

I hate winter months,

Went over to BDAC Laundry Lake, only had 5 hours but it was a doomed trip from the beginning, didnt get a chance to go fishing over xmas and went to get the gear out at 6am only to find it buried behind a ton of junk, so that made me nearly an hour late and I was supposed to be meeting someone over the lake at 7am and its an hour drive to get there so i knew it would be around 8 when I arrive. Then I couldnt find the gas canisters for the stove, then the drinking water bottles. Arrrghhh. Finally got on the road at 8 and thought oh what the hell so a Maccy D's breakfast at the drivethrough was first order of the day then managed to drive halfway there before realising i'd fogotten the gate keys

I eventually got there at 9 and found that I was wading through a bog all the way around the lake. Decided to fish one rod close in to a reed bed (one of the very few visible features) and the other about three rod lengths out as that was close to a large open patch in the weed. Had a few liners on the reedbed rod but the other showed no activity whatsoever and that was the way it stayed all day, well, only ended up doing 5 hours as had to work a 6-6 night. I was using a snowman presentation on both rods with trigger ice as the bottom bait and a trimmed down solar pineapple popup glugged with solar pineapple pot-shot on a fixed bolt rig.

So yet another blank for the winter, this is seriously starting to knock my confidence, but as ever i've been analysing what i've been doing and trying to learn from it. So lets see what next time holds.

[Tom]

Oh no, things have definately taken a turn for the worse, went to the doctors the other day to have a lump in my neck looked at and just had a shedload of blood tests, they're not sure what it is so i may be having to go to have it cut out in a few weeks time and then i'll know for sure. Just got over some heart trouble which all turned out to be stress-related and now i get this dropped on me, just how bad can my luck get?

Well, close season is rapidly approaching and my angling time is running out fast with only a few weeks left and you can bet that most of the BDAC lakes will be getting rammed with anglers so might have to get a few mid-week sessions in. As an alternative my mate Pete is a member at Crouch Valley and they do not have a close-season so maybe i can get a bit of time in over there and the fishing by all accounts is very easy, its hard to fish 2 rods over there as its normally a bite a chuck and any bait works (with the exception of Maple Squid) so probably loosefeeding small amounts of pellets and then a 14mm strawberry boilie will be order of the day.

Lets hope things improve.

[Tom]

Well, thought i'd add another bit to this since its the early hours of the morning and im having difficulty sleeping.

Closed season has been and gone, didnt get the chance to get on one of the lake work parties as i intended as i could have (at the fishery officer discression) got a few hours carp fishing in and they'd have been well up for it, most of the carp lakes get massively fed out during the year and they dont seem to get any feed officially other than the bait and groundbait that goes in so the carp were gagging for some food and couldnt get enough of the bread i was lobbing out at armigers the other day.

Was in hospital on monday to have a camera somewhere very unplesant and boy did i make a mistake by refusing the sedation, it was the most painful experience ive ever had. Thankfully the Nash Daddy Longlegs chair is quite well padded haha.

[Tom]

Had an interview on Friday with London Underground for a tube drivers job, passed the 1st stage no problems, going for a day of assessments on Tuesday 18th March and im absolutely bricking it, really quite worrying as it looks like i'll be doing a SCAAT test which basically involved marking a target shape i.e an inverted L in a random array of shapes, 3 minutes with 3 sheets then changing to marking say an interted L and and ^ for 3 mins over 3 sheets, then moving on to marking say > and the first shape in the row for the rest of that row so it gets progressively harder as you go along and im finding it highly likely that i'll stuff this up a treat.

[Tom]

Forget london underground

I've passed all the assessments, interview and medical and I start as a trainee train driver on the 18th August on normal overground trains rather than being stuffed down a tunnel

[Tom]

Things are on the up at the minute, unfortunately it means im getting even less free time but its for good reson. The baby is due in 3 weeks time now and im really looking forward to it

Oh and I passed my motorbike test too