About Lee Collings

I have been fishing for 29 years but Carp fishing for 24. I got into fishing through my Dad who took me while we were on holiday. I started off general coarse fishing on the lakes on the holiday complex catching whatever came along including Roach, perch etc which I was happy with as I was learning all the time. I like to think of this time as doing my apprenticeship in fishing and I think all anglers should do this instead of just jumping straight in the Carp world.

I started to get my own tackle instead of borrowing my Dad’s all the time and started going fishing every weekend to different lakes learning all the time and catching consistently. Slowly I progressed onto catching the odd small Carp around 2-3 lb in between the Roach and Perch which certainly put up more of a fight than the other smaller species at this stage there was only one way I was going to go.

The next thing I knew I had one rod out solely for the Carp and still float fishing with the other on the lake I was fishing. At the time there were a few specimen Carp anglers and I was always curious to know what they were up to and what they had caught, as ever always eager to learn as much as I could (In other words a punisher) things progressed with my dad buying me a 2 rod set up a bivvy bedchair etc for Christmas and birthdays presents.

I was totally converted and was living, breathing and sleeping Carp fishing. Things slowly progress onto catching my first double figured fish then waited a while to catch my first 20lber as the lake I fished only contained about 4 fish over 20lb with a stock of about 70 to 80 fish so it was a numbers game. I caught my first 20lb on 16 June first day of the season of the surface on a dog biscuit then 2 days later on an evening session after school I caught the same fish again.

This was when I first started using the Grange after seeing the success everybody was having down south. The bait was in limited supply as hardly any shops supplied it up in the Midlands area at first so it was nice knowing not everybody was using it on the lakes I was fishing. The bait was a instant hit and improved my catch rate tenfold up until this point I had been chopping and changing around trying different baits from various other companies without much success so having total confidence in a bait is something less to worry about and stop the gremlins creeping in all the time doubting if it was effective or not.

I fished a fair few waters around the Midlands area but there was always an urge for me to travel further down south the Oxfordshire area as these contained bigger fish and in the midlands there was very few water that held fish over 30lb.

So as soon as I had past my driving test and got my car at 17 I started travelling all over the country fishing different waters – as they say the world was my oyster and I would say fishing different waters around the country made me an even better angler with all the different challenges.