november-2026-free-line-part-2 - Flipbook - Page 115
FREE LINE / FIELD JOURNAL
KEVIN BEAUMONT
FIELD NOTES
Nevertheless, I began to bank a few fish while also making mental notes
of key areas of the reservoirs that fish would visit at certain times when
the dog walkers and general public would quieten down, which eventually
led to me targeting certain fish I witnessed having routes and feeding
behaviours. I would sit for hours, laid on my front behind reeds or up trees
watching how the fish would approach a bed of bait and how they formed a
hierarchy in feeding behaviour in certain groups of fish, often just feeding
them to build confidence for the following day. As the years passed, I
started to build my carping arsenal from birthdays, Christmas and items
I was given by some of the great anglers I would look up to around the
reservoirs (surprisingly how long you can keep and reuse pop-ups!).
During my childhood, I must have spent literally thousands of hours and
hundreds of days and nights over there, constantly learning from my
own mistakes with my only real guidance from a Julian Cundiff and Kev
Maddocks book (Beekay guide) I had picked up from car boot sale.
My whole angling approach had changed full circle from match style
fishing to now sitting behind several rods targeting carp only and the
anticipation of the sound of that bite alarm when it springs to life has had
me hooked ever since.
In 2002, I had left school, and like so many others of that age had a lot
of distractions, and fishing became secondary, as my focus switched to
tracking down another species (women). Angling took a little bit of a step
back for me, and later that year my parents split up, so I thought, I m
getting away from all of this and joined the MOD. I was lucky if I hit the
bank four or five times a year for the next five years, and it wasn t until I
met my now wife in 2006 and moved back to the village and settled down
with my own family that the fire for carp fishing burned brightly again.
But wow this style of angling has really taken off from what I had last
remembered, and there seem to be so many instant carp anglers with so
many heavily stocked commercials, which require very little watercraft,
technique or knowledge to crack the code and put fish on the bank.
FREE LINE
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