stevetheangler

Today, I visited the club’s non-carp pool – which seems to contain everything except common (in all forms) carp, pike, and zander and exotic fish like catfish, sturgeon and alligator gar :D – and does hold gudgeon, eels, barbel, perch, roach, rudd, bream, crucian carp, chub, tench, golden tench,….

I started fishing at 0845, finishing at 1515. Weather was dry and for the main part warm and still – although the occasional cool breeze did appear from time to time.

On arrival I baited up two swims with particle mix and maggots and to the right hand swim I added a few prawns.

The left hand swim was floatfished, laying on method, using maggot, worm and worm&maggot cocktail as bait on a size 12 hook (Kamasan Animal eyed), and the right hand swim was fished leger fashion with prawn and mussel baits on a size 6 hook (Kamasan B981 eyed). Both main lines were 6lb BS virtually straight through – I say ‘virtually’ as I do use short hooklengths of the main line strength that are around 4” long – these I attach with size 14 swivels with snaplinks to the main line – basically it makes threading baits down on to the hook easier…

Over the day I had a number of bites on the float rod, all to the cocktail bait, and I managed to land 2 fish and lost one when the hook pulled free after a couple of minutes playing the fish. I also had two bites on the leger rod, one on prawn, one on mussel but these were quick short snatches and far too fast to be able to strike at.

Fish landed (and lost) were all tench – the best at 3lb 13oz  is my new PB – beating my previous of 3lb 10oz that was caught in the 1979/80 season!! J – the other landed fish weighed in at 3lb 9oz – and the lost fish looked to be of similar size.

I spotted a few cormorants circling early in the day (or possibly spotted the same cormorant several times)… :)  These are a particular nuisance at this pool as it is quite shallow (around 4’6” for most part and deepest I’ve found is 5’) and to try to limit the damage caused the club has strings over most of the pool so effectively each peg is an enclosed area… the idea of the stringing being that cormorants need a long length of clear water in order to take off and the strings prevent their doing so. The pool also gets the attentions of mink too as there was a mink farm not too far away that many years ago was targeted by the Animal Liberation Front and the farm was raided and the mink freed – to the detriment of all local wildlife… and the mink still roam… as can be evidenced by the empty swan mussel shells that lie in the margins, swan mussels being a particular favourite of the mink.

OK… that’s all for today… need to prep for tomorrow’s planned outing to yet another club pool, have my tea, etc, etc.

And got to get some DiaCalm… I always take them before fishing and I ran out yesterday!! :D So as I need to go shopping – it will be chip shop for takeaway tea then!! :D

ARRGGGHHHHHHH!!! Just editing the photos of the day on the SD card – and they’ve gone and got corrupted and I’ve lost them all including the PB tench!!! No excuse… I used to work in IT… backup first… copy files and work on the copies NOT the originals… and I didn’t!!  :(

Just need to catch bigger tomorrow, I reckon. And where I’m going is where Liz caught her PB so I may be in with a chance… :)