Fox-sponsored fish farmer, James Anderson, checks in with an update on the goings on his his fishing world...

I ended my last blog with a stack of work on my fish farm ahead of me and I’m pleased to say I’m beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel. I started the month sat on a dumper truck for a week of de-silting ponds which isn’t the most interesting of jobs but needs to be done to increase productivity and get our fish growing well.

Following that I spent a few days erecting a new otter fence at one of our sites to stop the pesky critters eating our carp. Otters aren’t going anywhere and there’s no point in moaning about it so a fence is a must to keep our carp safe.

I finished the Easter period with a trip to Munich over the bank holiday weekend on a stag do which was obviously a very civilised trip taking in the local culture. Or maybe just drinking plenty of beer and eating good German food! All that meant not a huge amount of time for fishing but I did manage to get out for an afternoon with the pellet waggler at the Suffolk Water Park which was very enjoyable and is a nice change to normal carp fishing.Through the summer months I do some angling coaching which is something I have been doing for over 10 years now long before there were so many people doing it. It’s something I really enjoy doing and something I feel many anglers would benefit from. Anglers spend a lot of money of tackle and bait and very often would be much better off spending some of that money on a tutorial. You wouldn’t think of taking up golf without having lessons so I don’t know why more anglers don’t take advantage of the many angling coaches there are around these days.

A lot of my clients read magazines and watch online videos but get confused about all the different rigs and baits out there which is very easy to do. Carp fishing in my eyes is very simple and I try to emphasise this with my clients and get them doing the basic things well.

So the end of April saw me heading out for my first tutorial of the year. I took a trip to the Carp Lake and Manor Farm to meet Dave who had already been out on a tutorial with me last spring. We covered the basics then but he wanted to move on a step and get to grips with using a marker float and spod rod as well as brush up on rig tying.

Arriving at the lake for 8:00am on Friday it was a lot busier than I thought it would be so we had a quick walk around and dropped a bucket in one of the only remaining swims. It was a decent swim on a point area we were happy with so we set about finding a spot and put the impact spod to good use.

We’d got the rods sorted and were chatting rigs but all was pretty quiet in our swim. However, a few carp had started showing in front of the swim next door after someone had vacated the area opposite. It was an area that was around the corner of the point we were on and Dave kept looking over my shoulder as another one lumped out behind me. It all got a little too much to resists so we had to go and try to nab one!We wound the rods in and took a single rod around to where the fish had been showing. I just happened to have some Rapide Load solid PVA bags tied up on 30lb Illusion leaders ready for such an eventuality. We tied one on loop to loop, waited for a fish to show and dropped the solid bag in the rings it had left on the surface. As the bag fell to the lake bed it hit a fish on the way down and I said to Dave, this is looking very good!Two minutes had passed when a hungry Manor Farm carp had snuffled our solid bag and the rod hooped round. It was a nice high single common which we took some snaps of and put back. The fish were still showing, so we looped another solid bag on and got it back out into the area. 10 minutes passed and the rod was away again this time with a slightly bigger 16lb common and Dave was over the moon! A very valuable lesson on staying mobile and moving onto the fish.

As the day came to an end we got the rods back onto the spot we had baited earlier and I said my goodbyes to Dave as he was staying until the following afternoon. The next day my phone went off and I was delighted to see he had text me photos of two more fish he had that day the biggest being a 21lb common. Job done!