stevetheangler

Friday, 21st February 2014, found me on the banks of Himley Hall, Great Pool.

This is a council run pool on the ex-estate of the Earl Of Dudley and provides good local and inexpensive fishing. An adult ticket from April to November inclusive costs currently £5.20 (although I suspect that in the new financial year this will rise to £6 – but still great value) – concessionary tickets (senior citizen, juniors, unwaged) are half that price. AND for the months of December to March inclusive EVERYBODY is half price… and due to good results from the experimental no-close-season of last year the pool will no longer close mid-March to mid-June as it did prior to 2013/2014 season and will be open all year round (except possibly when all of the Hall’s facilities are closed eg Christmas Day? Not sure on that but imagine so). Many species of fish exist in the waters – tench, bream, carp, crucian carp, perch and pike probably being the most abundant.

I also learnt today that another pool on the park, Rock Pool, has opened to coarse fishing on the same day ticket. This pool used to be a trout fishery until it was closed to fishing altogether in 1984, only just re-opening although there was an episode of one of the Matt Hayes/Mick Brown ’24 Hour Rod Race’ series filmed on there in the 2000’s with Matt and Mick fishing for grass carp… however, this was a one off, I believe, as the grass carp had been introduced as an experiment to control the excess weed that this pool is liable too and were now being removed from the water – and the fish caught on the episode were not returned but retained to be transported to another water… so I think it was a case of Matt and Mick got a TV episode and the Himley Rangers got fish removed for free… scratching each other’s backs as it were. Anyway, this pool is known to contain a good head of roach and perch but other species may be unquantifiable currently – will be discovered as people use the pool – but there is at least one pike in there as a 10lb’er was caught from there today on mackerel.

Anyway, to my day….

I was at the water’s edge, peg 16, tackled up and ready to fish by 0845. I’d cast out my echo sounder around the area to determine the depths around and it seemed that I’d a constant 11’ of depth beyond 2 rod lengths out and then rising up to the bank. Given this I decided to fish initially with my baits just off and just on the rising bottom.

Two rods, one baited and legered with a head end half trout, the other with a full sardine popped-up by use of a foam stick, 18” from the bottom were used over the day. The legered trout rod was switched to floatfishing a ‘Sprat Christmas Tree’ with the baits suspended about 2’-3’ from the bottom and allowed to drift for the last hour or so of the session (1315-1430).

Anyway, to cut a long story short – and from the title of this posting you already know the result – I blanked again! My 11th consecutive blank L However, I did have another ‘moment’ as per session 8 when the bite alarm gave a single bleep, followed five seconds later by another plus a one inch lift and drop of the bobbin…. But again nothing became of it.

Water temp was a constant 6.2C, air from 3.7C up to 9.0C