A lot of people reflect on the past 12 months and set their angling targets for the next twelve at the turn of the year, or at the end of traditional fishing season. It never seems an appropriate time for me to do so. May to the end of August is the window where I do the least fishing because of cricket commitments, and so the end of the cricket season is the time I've decided to take stock and look at what I want to achieve. I made some rather loose targets at the end of 2012, but the problem with that is that I get grand thoughts of big tench because they are my favourite species, only to forget how interrupted the best months for targeting them are. So really, I've failed to follow through on anything I might have mentioned then.
The big preparation I've done for the start of the next year is to buy my first SLR camera, so hopefully followers of this blog will notice an increase in the quality of photography when I'm not fishing in the company Dom Garnett, who has provided the better images so far. Thus, some of my targets are based really on what I would like to get photographs of. I want a big carp still, but it has to be from a natural water, I really don't think I can stick the commercials except for predators and ornamentals. We'll see.