stevetheangler

Well, we set off at 7:30am to the intended pool, arriving at about 8:10am. Walked the pool to decide on the swims to fish – and finally decided upon a double swim with our backs to the westerly breeze. We tackled up and a few large spods of bait mix were sent out into the swims before settling down with our baits in the water.

Whilst walking the water we spotted a dead (and well decaying) carp that would have been close to double figures near the dam wall.

On setting up, I discovered that my bite alarms had a bit of a problem – probably due to the Welsh rain a couple of weeks back – neither of my buzzer heads responded to line movement but that was resolved easily by battery replacement, seems the dampness had effectively shorted the batteries and drained their power (although no actual sign of dampness was apparent inside the battery compartment, or indeed, anywhere inside the heads when completely stripped down back at home)… and the wireless receiver did not function at all either but changing batteries did not resolve this problem, so now that is also stripped down and sitting on radiator although, again, no actual signs of water/dampness could be seen anywhere inside. Anyway, as the heads worked OK after the battery change I was dependant upon their inbuilt sounders for indication, so a good job there was only Liz and I on the pool (as I’ve said before – I have very dickey hearing!).

The day itself wasn’t the best – most of the time there was a very stiff breeze which really only abated/moderated infrequently and although white cloud and blue sky did occasionally show itself, the main weather feature of the day was rain intermingled with hail at times.

Anyway, back to the actual fishing… Liz fished her usual maggot and meat baits coupled with open-ended feeders, whilst I myself fished chili meat, sweetcorn and bread. However, there were no bites to either of us on those baits.  And then I tried a lob worm, and lo and behold, almost immediate results with my bobbin twitching away. Eventually, I managed to catch a perch of about 6oz and a little later another nice one of 13oz. At this point, Liz also put on worm and had a bite to which she connected, and said she thought it was a nettable size, but unfortunately the hook was thrown just short of shore. That then signalled a lull in action for quite a time for both of us, and the bites, when they restarted quite a while later, were very jittery – just quick small jumps of the bobbin – and things remained the same until around 3pm when, a heavy shower just having passed over, we decided to call it a day and packed up and headed home.

As you can see, by my being here still and writing this, that my planned trip to the canal today has been postponed – but a small possibility of going tomorrow instead – due to (a) tiredness after an early day yesterday and (b) need to look at the problems with my alarms. In all likeliness now the next trip will be back to the club’s tench pool on Friday.