stevetheangler

I set off at around 0815 – a little later than the originally planned 0800 due to earlier  heavy rain that had to be waited upon to ease and stop – BBC forecast reckoned it would stop and there was no point in getting soaked for the sake of 15 minutes in my view – especially as that time would have been taken up by putting up the brolly in my view plus the hassle of a wet brolly to be dried afterwards…

I arrived, tackled up my 11’ Des Taylor System 3 Avon rod with the quivertip section and used 6lb main line to a 4” hooklength of 6lb braid terminated with a size 12 Kamasan Animal eyed hook. And a 7g Arlesey bomb attached as a running lead completed the setup. A small quantity of red groundbait with a few added dead maggots and tiny pieces of luncheon meat was mixed up and fed over to the far bank, followed by the baiting of the hook with a brandling worm and the first cast of the day at 0850.

Choice of the rod was quite fitting really – given that the area I was fishing appears in Des’ “Fishing In The Midlands” book… :D

I fished this swim, and tried just off the far bank and various positions around that area but with no joy and at 1115 I moved about 20 yards along the bank to try in the area of an overhanging tree there. A few dead maggots and meat pieces were fed again over towards the far bank followed by the baited with worm hook. After 30 minutes of inaction I decided to try the deeper middle area – the boat channel – and within 5 minutes had a pluck at the worm. Alas, the bite was missed so I continued lightly feeding the channel with a dozen or so maggots and pieces of meat and up to the time I packed in at 1300 I had another 4 tentative plucks but again no fish were hooked.

So, the blank spell continues… but this session I’ve had more ‘bites’ than the last three months in total!!  And, looking back, today made 10 blank sessions in a row!! As Fred J Taylor once famously said of fishing…‘I’ll be glad when I get fed up of this!’…

However, there were signs of fish action as well as my twitches – one seemingly  decent sized fish topped about 30 yards up from me… and a couple of times there were fry-sprays (scattering fry) around that area too. But two things prevented me moving up there – (1) there are power  lines over the water and consequently ‘No Fishing’ signs – and the action was the wrong side of the markers and (2) I’d no lures or lure rod with me… and perch (possibly pike) would, whilst hitting fry shoals, take very little interest in a legered worm/meat/maggot bait anyway I think.

TEMPS

Air 7.5C rising to 10+C at times. Water 6.3C at start rising to 6.7C over the session.

PLANS

Possibly a pike session on Friday, possibly at Himley, or maybe sometime over the weekend at one of the club pools.