stevetheangler

Sunday 25th May 2014, and waking early I headed off to the tench pool at around 0545 arriving at a little after 0630 and headed as intended to the ‘summer’ swim on peg 24. Weather on arrival was damp’ish and throughout the morning a number of showers passed by with a rather bad one at around 1030 but after that the weather improved and eventually the occasional blue sky and a bit of sunshine showed through the clouds and only one further short shower appeared.

Tackled up per usual with the float rod to be fished lift-method style using worm and/or maggot baits on a size 12 hook and a 11’ Avon style rod to be fished with legered prawn/mussel baits on a size 6 hook. Both 6lb main line with 4” braid hooklengths attached via snaplink to the main line to allow quick bait renewal  by use of a bait needle.

The new float, as described in the previous posting, was set up with a 3SSG shot immediately above the hook length’s snaplink with a AAA shot mid-way between that and the float that was set at about 6” over-depth and another AAA about 12” above the float that assisted in line sinking and also acted as a buffer to ensure that the bottom shot was not disturbed by the act of line tightening required to set the float to cock correctly. However, it was discovered that, due to it (a) being breezy and (b) having been wet that the flow of water into and out of the pool was appreciable and consequently that there was a bit of drag in the water, that I needed to change the mid-length AAA shot to a SSG in order to grip bottom firmly enough not to be moved by the currents.

Before setting up I baited up the 2 areas I would be fishing with relevant feed… to the left hand side of my peg was a patch of lily pads and so just off the edge of these I introduced a few balls of breadcrumb mixed with maggots, corn, hemp and wheat to fish on the float and the right hand swim, the leger one, I introduced a few loose mussels and prawns.

Then, after, setting up the rest of my ‘station’ and the rods I cast out the leger rod at around 0700 baited with a mussel and started to bait up the float when within one minute of casting out the leger rod the bobbin flew up and a few minutes later I netted my first fish of the day – a nice tench of 3lb 15oz. This was followed by another tench of 2lb 13oz and then a bit later at 0745 by a 6oz example both on maggot on the float rod. So it started off well BUT then for the next hour I was only getting small nudges on the float rod and short and sharp tweaks on the leger rod which were impossible to strike at… and then the bites stopped altogether until the float lifted and started to sail away and this produced a small perch of around 2oz-3oz which had taken a worm bait. The next bite came around 1315, again to worm on the float rod, and what felt to be a good fish was hooked but managed to get into the lily pads and did what tench do in lilies (and chub do in streamer weed) and transferred the hook to the stem of a lily pad. And the final bite of the day came at around 1445 as I was starting to pack up my gear, again on the float rod with a worm/maggot cocktail bait and resulted in the landing of a tench of around 2lb.

So a promising start seemed to fizzle out after the first hour or so…

Next trip I’m planning to make is to a new water over Newport, Shropshire way – if I can get a club card in the meantime that is… if not, then I may go on a carp session at one of my main club’s waters… not been carping for a while.