The big fish just keep on coming to Tightlines-Portugal anglers with a catch made up of carp to 25lb and 22lbs on New Years trip.

On New Years Eve my mate Keith Russell phones me up asking if I could join him and a top Portuguese match angler fishing on a secret private water that the top anglers from the national team are using to practice on, I did not need much arm twisting to agree. Keith was at the top end of English match fishing years ago, fishing in the same team as the late great Ivan Marks and keeps in contact with Portuguese match anglers.

We arrived at 9am to find a very nice water of around 30-acres surrounded by a vineyard, fish topping all over the place so I knew from my past experiences of fishing Portuguese bag up waters that this looked good. Keith set up his normal pole gear fishing maggot, I set up match rod and fished the waggler as I had been told that there were bigger fish in the water as well as the normal 3lb match fish. After around 1 hour I started to get indications of fish in the swim and started to pick up the odd fish on sweetcorn, not big fish, but great fighters more like barbel, Keith had started catching on the pole.

At 2pm my grandson phoned me up excited he had been back to fish a water with his mate where we had a 30lb fish Christmas Day , he had just landed a 25lb fish, great. 5 minutes later Rob phones me again this time his mate had a fish of 22lbs, what a great start to the year. I ended the session with 9 fish and missed a few bites and had one double role over under my rod, so this looks like a good place for the summer, our Portuguese friend said you need around 100lbs in a 3 hour match to get in the frame. Not bad for a 5 euro day ticket.

John