For what seems like months ago, the extremely hot weather had a diverse affect on our rivers here in south Wales. Many of the rivers dropped to lower than average summer levels and the fishing become very tough. A weird sort of scum formed on the surface which was a bugger to get your leader through, making dry fly fishing in slow water almost impossible, but the fast sections of river came to life as the fish looked for oxygenated water.

Through this dire weather a friend invited me down to fish one of his local carp ponds – an offer I couldn’t refuse with the rivers being in such a state for the time being. Straight from work, I drove towards Swansea and followed the sat nav to white springs fishery.

Armed with a 9ft 6inch 6 weight Enigma fly rod and one of the new Airflo Super-Dri fly lines, the Lake Pro of the Super-Dri range. My leader setup was simply a 8 foot length of 6lb Grand max with a dog biscuit pattern tied to the end. I’ve never done this sort of fishing apart from one trip back when I was around 12! So, as you can imagine, it was nice to get out and do something different for a change.

As we arrived Christian was already there feeding ’em up with a bag of biccies from Aldi! He’d been fishing for these carp throughout the summer and I, unfortunately, had missed the best of it. Christian was saying back a few weeks ago the carp were straight onto the free offerings, gorging themselves until they couldn’t take no more, and eating almost anything in their path. Now, however, the carp had wised up and took a lot longer to get onto the bait, it was as if they knew we’d arrived with rods!

First cast, I ‘plopped’ my foam dog biscuit in the middle of two feeding fish, hoping there would be some competition between the two to eat it. The pattern hadn’t been on the water more than 10 seconds and the bigger of the two engulfed the free offering. I knew the fish were strong but after setting the hook, all hell broke loose and it took some time to master the carps speed and agility! But, it came gently over the net and an estimated weight of around 5lbs. (if it’s wrong, I’m sure a carp experts will let me know?)