stevetheangler

Tuesday, 16th July 2013, after dropping Liz off at work at around 0700 I headed off for some carp action on one of our club pools (GH) arriving at around probably 0715 and being pleased on arrival that the gate was still locked indicating I was going to get my choice of swim for the day.

Weatherwise, the day was a continuation of the very hot, sunny weather we’d had for the past few weeks with temps well into the upper 20’s.

Unpacked the car and wandered to the swim – and the pool was looking wonderful – and a decent sized carp was already plucking morsels off the water’s surface about 2o’ away from. This led to my floating bait rod (10′, 1.75lb TC fitted with reel containing greased 30lb braid terminated by about 3′ of 10lb mono to size 2 barbless hook – but needless to say by the time I was ready to fish the target fish had moved on :)

So I carried on as planned by spombing out about 1Kg of mixed particles in front of me, off the end of an island directly in front, and then setting up my pod and alarms and my 2 11′ 1.75lb TC rods, both with 8lb Krystonite line straight through to their hooks. One rod was fitted with a sliding 1/2oz bomb on a feeder boom terminated with a size 6 barbless hook, the other a small maggot feeder, again on a feeder boom, terminated with a size 12 barbless hook.

Both rods were baited (bread on the leger rod, maggot on the feeder) and cast out…. but after half an hour or so with no action on the maggot rod and a few tugs on the bread rod, the increasing numbers of  surface feeding carp gained my attention and so the maggot rod was wound in (and never cast out again all day) and the floating bait rod replaced it… and I switched bait on the other rod to luncheon meat…

• 0825   6oz Roach – floating bread
• 0845   3lb 14oz Common Carp – floating bread
• 1035   3lb 1oz Common Carp – legered luncheon meat
• 1105   4lb 2oz Mirror Carp – legered luncheon meat
• 1115   3lb 4oz Common Carp – floating bread
• 1135   4lb 8oz Common Carp – floating bread
• 1150   1lb 13oz Bream – slowly sinking bread (was floating but sodden)
• 1205   5lb 7oz Mirror Carp – floating bread
• 1220   4lb 2oz Common Carp – floating bread
• 1240   2lb 0oz Common Carp – floating bread
• 1255   2lb 11oz Common Carp – floating crust
• 1315   3lb 0oz Common Carp – floating crust
• 1410   1lb 12oz Bream – floating crust
• 1450   3lb 5oz Common Carp – floating bread
• 1455   8oz Roach – floating bread
• 1640   6oz Roach – floating bread

Finally, started to pack up at 1815.

I did have one further bite on the legered luncheon meat rod at around 1800, which was to the bait cast out after the last capture on that rod at 1105!

AND… at the end of the day, my back was in two! Had been continually standing holding the floating bait rod for virtually 10 hours by then with perhaps only 10 sit-downs of less than 2 minutes each time during that time!! But it WAS great fun! :)

Pics of the day … no ‘fishy’ ones but thanks to the 40x zoom on my ‘new’ (to me – bought off eBay) camera, I did get some reasonable ones of the resident heron on his favourite willow on the island….