Swan Lake

After a heavy Saturday night at my rugby club end of season awards evening my head to longer to clear than I had anticipated.
I arrived at the pool at about 4pm to find it very busy with people on Morris', the log, in the woods , on the point and in the sandbanks! So this left me "one" choice! I put my left hand rod into the middle of the lake with a zig set up and my right hand rod aimed towards the right hand feature.
After about an hour nothing had shown an interest in either rod so my approach changed. I decided to put bottom baits out straight an sit it out for a while.
After a short while, whilst chatting with Thad, my left had rod roared away into open water. At this point I thought I have hooked into a carp but the rod tip banged numerous times to give me the tell tail tinca signs, a fish of about 4lbs was landed shortly afterwards and returned quickly to the pool.
It was now time to put a bait into my favourite area in an evening session with a change of bait and an accurate cast my traps were set in anticipation.
Barry (the poacher) who had fished the bottom bay for the session stopped in for a chin wag and a chat about fishing some of the other Leamington waters etc, when my right hand rod let out a howl with both myself and Barry commenting that this was something big.....I ran to the rod which was screaming and hit the run!..........It was something big in fact I think the biggest thing that lives at the pool.....the cob swan!
With both myself and Barry wondering how it how picked up my bait and indeed how I was going to deal with it!,the swan shook his head violently and to my great relief spat my hook within seconds of picking it up....was I glad that we fish barbless!
I retrieved my rig complete and intact!
This I feel was lucky situation for the swan as Barry had rolled up his sleeves ready for a full on fight!....I was more concerned about how to pull in a swan from 100 metres in the air!
Very pleased to say that no damage to any party concerned happened.
After Barry had stopped laughing at me and cracking "Swan lake and Swan song" jokes I re-rigged and hoped for more luck.
I had one more run at about 8.45 but lost the fish on the strike .
Once more Ryton wins.......

Will hopefully get out sometime later this week for another evening session...might try the method as it seems to be taking some fish at the moment.

Andy