Last week I took a week off and visited the New Forest with my other half Mandy and her brother Jonny and his wife Lisa.
We stayed in a great chalet complete with hot tub overlooking the woods.
The highlight of the week for Jonny was taking me night fishing to Hordle Lakes, a beautiful spot he had visited a few years before.
Jonny had brought all the fishing gear and I had a two man bivvy and plenty of layers of clothing particularly as the weather forecast didn't look great.
We were all set up next to Bob's Lake by about 1pm on Monday and the girls left to go shopping.
Jonny caught 3 Bream virtually straight away but it was carp that he was really after. He valiantly tried to introduce me to fishing but I was more interested in all the wildlife happening in front of me and taking photos of it. I don't know anything really about fish or birds but was fascinated watching the mallard ducks and black-headed gulls wheeling around the lakes trying to pick up food.
There were several families of very small duckings following their Mothers around and I sadly managed to just catch a photo of a Magpie stealing one of the ducklings without its Mother noticing. However I'm pleased to say that looking at successive photos I took of that bit of action the duckling seemed to have got away!
As the day wore on a big bird flew over and landed by the next lake and we realised that it was a Heron.
We had taken down the phone number of a local Indian takeaway and at 6pm rang them and ordered 2 Madras curries to be delivered to the lake gates. I walked down to pick them up and just as I got back found Jonny fighting something a lot bigger on his line - he had found his first carp of the day.
No sooner had he put that back when he caught another on his second rod. I was beginning to worry that the curry would go cold before we could eat it, but it was fine.
Jonny tried different types of bait during the day and the gulls and ducks were more than happy to collect any bits that were surplus and sitting on the surface.
We finally got to bed at about 12pm not longer after Jonny caught his biggest fish ever, just after the sun went down.
The sun came out just after a rain shower passed by
I took this on my iPhone when it was quite dark - hence the noise in the photo
I really enjoyed my introduction to night fishing although next time I would go in Summer when the risk of a frosty night is much reduced!
