Puddle piggin

 As much as I hate the places today saw me fishing an over stocked snake type lake dug out in a field and filled with puddle pigs( fish farmed pellet fed carp in case you're wandering), and the reason? Well for the last two years I have been teaching my son how to fish (or rather he keeps showing me already), he's started to get a little bored of catching ide and roach almost every put in on the pole at our local pond so as it was his 8th birthday last week I promised him a trip to somewhere that had plenty of puddle pigs in so this morning we headed to Birkin Fishery. I have not fished here my self before but decided to try it as it seemed to fit the bill as I was told plenty of carp were caught close in meaning Kyle didn't have to fish with too much pole out. It's also very close to a stretch of the River Aire I have had my eye on but not yet checked out so this would give me as good a chance as any.

 We had a quick walk around and decided to fish a swim close to the car simply because they all looked the same! I got kyle sorted and fishing down the edge and he was into a small roach before I had even got my own rig in the water, a few missed bites and small fish before the elastic was whizzing out of the end of his pole. He had hooked a carp in no time and did a great job of playing it to the net by himself for me to net. It wasn't huge, 3lbs at most but did give him a good scrap. I thought we were onto a shed full but it turned out I was wrong. No more carp followed and we started to hook into a mixture of roach, ide and the odd skimmer as well as missing loads of bites due to fishing heavy gear and bumping fish after fish. I'm sure if I had set up a lighter rig we would have emptied it but sods law the carp would have turned up.

 After a few hours I rigged a method feeder up and chucked it out to the island, or should I say the mound of earth that was made when they dug the puddle out. Again small fish were a pest so I let Kyle have a go only for the tip to slam round. He picked up but before he could do anything the carp was in the reeds and smashed the hook link, we gave it half an hour but no more came so we both stuck to fishing short on the pole and kept picking up silvers on anything we put on the hook including double corn and half inch cubes of meat. We gave it a couple more hours before calling it a day and went to look at a proper venue, THE RIVER!

 I can see why people like these kind of places and Kyle enjoyed it too so for his sake I think we will return soon but for me, my own time will be spent on more natural waters.