Well my visit to Yateley was an enjoyable one albeit slightly exhausting!
I left home at 6am to go and pick Aaron ''Lead Shed'' up from Colchester, the trip was an easy one and I arrived at Aaron's front door at 8am, after a "posh coffee" as Aaron called it, we hit the road to do battle with the M25 and M3.
After only a few delays we arrived at Yateley Angling Centre at about 11:30am, we picked up our pre-booked tickets and headed straight to the South Lake.
On our arrival we were greeted by a very busy lake and with only a handful of swims available we certainly had our work cut out, we did manage to find the fish, although as soon as the weather changed they soon drifted off and with no swims free to move to we just had to sit tight.
I set up in the "Ladders" and Aaron next door in the "Channel", we had a good number of fish in front of us so felt confident of a take, the rods were soon sorted and we sat back to enjoy a long awaited social and some fine cuisine not to mention some very heavy rain, Aaron cooked up an animal of a Curry......we both regretted it after though as we crawled to our bed chairs to rest our now stretched stomachs!
It didn't take long for me to get into the land of nod and before I knew it the alarm on my phone was going off, that will be 5:30am then! I put the kettle on and rolled a smoke, it was still raining!
I received a few big liners at 7am, I was hovering over the rods expecting a take at anytime but unfortunately it never came. It was great to finally fulfil my lifelong ambition to fish The Yateley Complex after reading about it for so many years, I shall definitely be back to fish one of the other ''special'' waters.
By 8:30am the heavy rain had now turned to light drizzle and we took this opportunity to pack up before we hit the road again this time to drive to Kent to pick up some bait fromActive Bait Solutions.
After being greeted by Paul and having a well deserved coffee and a catch up we got back on the road Colchester bound to drop Aaron off although we did have a slight detour to get some grub as we were both starving!
After dropping Aaron off, I got straight back on the road and headed home and walked through my front door a little after 8pm.
Whilst on the way home I noticed a lake situated right next to the A428, now I've always known about it but never really took any notice, but with the sun setting over its banks it looked very idyllic and once home I did a bit more research and found the info I wanted, definitely one to keep an eye on this one.
I intend on doing an overnighter on "Heron" tomorrow,that's if it isn't too busy we will see maybe its time to head back to the Beds Pit......I was going to leave that until the Autumn but may well have to get back on sooner.
Time to get the gear sorted again, if you're on the banks this weekend be lucky and I hope you have a fish that makes your dreams come true.
Until next time,
Smithy