Hello and welcome to my blog, where I'll be keeping you updated with all the goings on with my fishing. As it is the end of the year I will give you a little insight into what I have been upto throughout the last 12 months, I will then endeavour to keep you all updated with monthly blogs next year.

In January of this year, myself and a good friend of mine, Phil Sainty, were lucky enough to take control of a lake, local to our homes in East Yorkshire. An exciting adventure but at the same time it really does put a dent in your own fishing time! The lake was dug around 20 years ago and then left to mature, an ideal venue as it had never been used as a fishery before, the only problem, there was plenty of work to do! We had to build all of the swims and pathways and then lay the carp park area. All of this on top of finding a quality strain of carp as the lake had never been stocked before.

All of this was very hard work, but was a pleasure at the same time, making it all worthwhile. After stocking the fish I thought I would then be able to get onto some lakes myself, little did I know that Otters would have other ideas. Luckily we got in early and with a little help from other Carp anglers we soon had the whole site fenced, at some 10 acres to cover the whole site this was no easy task. Finally everything was safe and secure and we were able to open the lake up to day ticket anglers, Majestic Lake was born, happy days indeed and time to fish again.

Back to my actual angling, I am lucky that my work takes me to the west side of London a couple of days a week, this enables me to fit 2 overnigther's in most weeks. At the start of the year I had secured a ticket for a syndicate in Oxfordshire, this meant me leaving Swan Valley where I had fished and had great success the previous year. Still having a month or two to wait before the ticket actually started, I decided a visit to Swan was in order to try and leave the place on a high and with some happy memories. My last night saw me bank a 34lb mirror, caught on a 5ft Zig, with a brightly coloured Aviator Pop Up doing the damage. A great result and happy days as I left the venue just how I wanted to.

Next time away with work I was Oxford bound, my first trip to the new syndicate and I was hoping I would carry on where I left off at Swan. I had walked these lakes quite a lot through the colder months but wasn't prepared for how busy they were now that we were well into Spring!! Struggling to get a swim on Monday and Tuesday evenings wasn't what I wanted but it didn't deter me. Luckily on my first night I found a few fish in the only quiet corner of the lake. As they were obviously feeding, it was a case of not disturbing them so PVA bags of pellets with the bright Aviator Pop Ups were flicked near to where the fish were showing. I balanced them so they just settled on top of the pellets, falling asleep I was happy that the traps were set. Middle of my first night and one of the rods pulled up and I was in, a spirited fight ended with me bundling a doulbe figure common into the net, not the biggest of fish but I was more than happy to get off the mark on my first night at the new syndi.

As I said the lakes were extremely busy, even midweek when my overnighters took place, a change from my usual tactics were needed. As I said I used to fish Swan Valley where heavy baiting was my normal approach, I could normally guarantee getting back in the same swim but this wasn't the case in Oxford, so I decided to fish for a bite at a time. Small bags of Bloodworm pellets coated in matching glug were fished with a bright wafter as a hookbait, I also glugged the hookbait with matching Hi-Attract glug for maximum attraction. This method has seen me bank some stunning fish throughout the year, another thing which I think helped was to leave them a nice spread of bait evertime I left the lake, this left them with a nice free meal to build their confidence and increase my chances of a pick up on the overnighter's. The ever popular Bloodworm Boilies being my favoured choice.

Probably the main hi-light of my year was our successful qualification into the Semi-final of the BCAC, myself and Adam Snowden fished for the Carp Talk team both using Sticky Baits, during the qualifier the Aviator Pop Ups played there part again as zigs were the going method. Everything seemed to go perfectly and by Saturday morning we were well ahead of the rest and still catching. Qualifying in 1st place by quite a margin we went into the semi-final full of confidence, this though was a different ball game, only 8 or 9 teams catching and unfortunately we were not one of them, I did lose what we thought was a carp but at extreme range it was hard to tell and we went home contemplating what could have been!

As I said at the beginning I will be doing monthly updates on my blog in the new year, this will also include some more info in the baiting techniques I use and hopefully some lumps to show you along the way. If anyone has any questions on how to get the best out of Sticky Baits or any rig questions then send them through to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it marked Danny Fletcher and they will forward them on to me, I am happy to help in anyway I can.     
Tight Lines
Danny Fletcher