Hi all, I am Amy Buchan, a 17-year-old carp angler. I am also a full-time student at college and have a part-time job, so trying to find the right balance between fishing, studying and work can sometimes prove to be a difficult task.

Fishing has always been my main hobby. My dad and one of my older brothers were keen fishermen and it just escalated from there. I went on my first fishing trip when I was five and I loved it that much I just wanted to keep going. After that, I remember asking my dad for a whole year if he could take me to marshal the British Young Carp Angling Championship (BYCAC) with him in Oxford.

He finally gave in and when I was seven took me to Linear when he was marshalling – I have been every year since. That week was when I caught my first carp, with some help from my dad and Simon Crow. I remember the feeling of being a seven-year-old and seeing this 15lb carp that I had caught and there isn’t a lot in my life that has compared to that.

Following on from that week I just wanted to keep catching carp for the buzz that I get every time the alarm screams, or even better when I get the fish into the net. That is how my story as a young female carp angler began.

My most memorable fishing story is the session that I caught my current PB. In August 2011, my dad and I were again getting ready to go and marshal the BYCAC and we decided that before the event we would go and do a quick overnight session on Brasenose 1 on the Linear Fisheries complex because we hadn’t been fishing for nearly a year. We arrived around 3pm on the Saturday and met up with some of our good friends and went and set up on the lake.

The first take came within five minutes of us casting the rods out; only fishing around 70 yards. To have a take so quickly came as a shock to me. After recasting, I had another after 20 minutes and this continued for the rest of the afternoon, takes coming very quickly, one after another.

We eventually decided to sit down and have some food in the evening on a small social and as soon as I sat down to eat, my alarm screamed off again. I landed a mirror of 24lb 14oz, beating my previous PB. I was over the moon. I didn’t think anything could have beaten the feeling that I had at that moment... I couldn’t have been more wrong.

After deciding that I wasn’t going to recast that rod until after I had eaten, I sat down again. As soon as I did, my dad’s rod ripped off. He also beat his PB and landed a 28lb mirror. Well the feeling of pure happiness that I had earlier grew even more because the only thing that is on a par with beating your PB is watching someone else beat theirs, especially my dad, who has always been my fishing partner and taught me most of what I know.

Thirty minutes later I had a very odd take on my second rod. I hit it and realised that once again I was into another fish. I beat my PB again, landing a 25lb 6oz mirror! I couldn’t quite believe it as I watched the scales keep turning, then the realisation hit me that I had beaten my previous PB twice in 40 minutes.

That night I wound my rods in because I decided that I was going to get a good night’s sleep before the true hard work of marshalling the BYCAC for a week began.

I woke up at 6am to my dad into another fish. I recast my rods for the last three hours and the run of the previous day continued.

Over the 11 or 12 hours that I actually fished, I landed 15 fish and my dad 16. On a lake like Brasenose, especially when you have had a big hit of fish, there tends to be as many fish lost as there are landed. This was most definitely the case for us because I had lost 12! Normally, losing fish gives me a completely sickening feeling. However because of the success I had on that session, it didn’t. I have never walked away from a lake feeling any happier than I did on that Sunday.

I hope you have enjoyed reading this and hopefully you’ll see how my fishing develops through my future blogs.