A first time for everything.

With the weather not looking suitable for my preferred choice of a session targeting pollock last Sunday I headed instead to Orchill coarse fishery with a couple of mates. Nick and Stewart had never fished a commercial fishery before so it was something new to them but they were both looking forward to trying a new style of fishing. After paying for our day tickets we headed up to Alex's pond. As I set up a float rod for Nick and a feeder rod for Stewart I talked them through the end tackle, quickly explained the fairly simple principles involved and before too long they were both fishing.

Before I had finished setting myself up a float rod Nick was getting bites and after missing some and losing a fish he caught a roach, his first ever. When I started fishing I also caught a few roach. Nick then caught a gudgeon, again his first ever. Stewart's rod tip was soon pulled around by a small carp which he played for a few minutes but sadly it came off as it came near the net. Things were pretty slow after that though but we heard a fair amount of splashing over the other side of the middle island so we moved around to the area where the activity was. Most of the surface activity was fairly tight to the centre island so we started fishing as close to it as we could. It didn't take long for us all to start catching chub and then Nick started landing a few F1 and common carp, another couple of new species for him. I soon caught a few too.

This chub was Stewart's first ever coarse fish.

I really like F1 carp. They are chunky fish and put up a spirited fight for their size.

Stewart wasn't getting as many bites as Nick and I so I switched him over from a black cap swim feeder to a method feeder and made up some halibut and hemp feeder mix with a few pieces of sweetcorn added. On the hair rig went double sweetcorn and this produced three carp on three consecutive casts proving how effective a tactic the method feeder is.

Stewart caught this rather nice mirror carp. You've guessed it, his first.

We had the pond to ourselves so when we weren't chatting away it was fairly quiet apart from the squawking of flocks of geese flying south overhead in formation. As the day progressed several helicopters also passed above us. It was the final day of the Ryder Cup so we surmised these were taking players to and from the golf. As Nick was using my seatbox I had taken his small fold down canvas stool. The next noise to break the relative silence was this suddenly breaking, giving way beneath me and me ending up on my back on the ground. Stewart found this quite hilarious. My accident and Stewart laughing away didn't seem to distract Nick who was by now into a bit of a rhythm and found that firing in a few casters around his waggler was attracting plenty of fish into his swim.

Nick's biggest carp of the session and his first mirror carp.

Stewart and I had a few more carp and chub too before it was time to pack up and head home. It had been a nice relaxing day, we had a good laugh and both Nick and Stewart are keen to do it again so whilst it may have been their first time it certainly won't be their last.

Tight lines, Scott.