stevetheangler

Friday 11th July 2014, and Liz and I departed the house on our way to Kinver Freeliner’s Woodland Lodge Pools. There are two pools on site – Pool 1 is available to non-members on a £5 day ticket but Pool 2 is members only. Thus as non-members (but currently on the waiting list – and have been for two years now) we were limited to fishing on Pool 1. But this is no hardship as it’s a lovely pool near woodland, far from any main roads and so all very quiet and serene.

And so, we arrived at the pool at around 0745 and had a quick walk round – I say pool, but more a large pond really? – and selected our (adjacent) swims for the day on the far bank over on the far bank but only 100 yards or so  really from the where the  car was parked. My swim faced the left half of island and the left hand channel between that and the main land, Liz’s swim was to the right hand side of the island and the open water twixt that and the main land on that side.

And so, we wheelbarrowed our equipment round to our swims and prepped our tackles for the day. Liz elected to fish with two leger rods with feeders loaded with groundbait/crumb and maggot and using meat based baits and maggots for bait. Myself, I elected to floatfish (laying-on style) with maggot, worm and bread baits over a bed of particles (hemp, wheat, corn) with additional dead maggots catapulted out.

And so we fished until 1700 when, after a long and swelteringly hot day, we packed up and headed for home.

Results… well, unfortunately Liz blanked but did have one small perch on which took a maggot bait but which popped the hook just before landing. However, in her own words, she was going for ‘quality not quantity’ and that the place was so nice and idyllic that if there was to be a blank then that was the place to do it. Myself, I just enjoyed myself in a sort of ‘catch what comes’ sort of day – and finished up landing 31 perch (and at least another 10 or so popped the hook before landing) on maggot and 2 roach on bread. However, it was all quantity – the total catch would probably have only amassed a grand total weight of between 5-6lb with the 2 roach probably the 2 biggest fish of the day at about 4oz each.

During the day there was quite a lot of surface activity from small fish of around a few ounces dappling the surface to feed on midges, etc but not much in the way of larger stuff – biggest I saw was a single carp of around 2lb, but possibly 3lb and flicking a bait caused said fish to scarper whenever it spotted it – not so much it landing on the water as it could be 10 seconds or more before the bait appeared to the fish on the drift but as soon as it got close he gave a quick tail flick away from it.

And so  the day ended with a visit to the bailiff’s lodge to pay for our day tickets (£5 each) and I had a quick chat with him. He advised light tackle and small baits and changing depths to find the fish – he said that he’d had carp to well into double figures from there – but also that some fish may have escaped in the floods as the pools were flooded over their banks (at the bottom of a slope as can be seen in some of the photos) and a brook runs along the back of the pools only 10-20 yards away.

Well, I say ‘ended’ … ‘ended’ in respect of fishing really as due to the thirst building weather a stop was necessary for us on the way home… at the Bandon Arms in Bridgnorth for a couple of pints of ‘Old Thumper’… beautiful and well satisfying!!!

FUTURE PLANS:

Tuesday: I’ll probably take the spinning rod and some blade spinners to a stretch of the Shropshire Union Canal that has become available to me via a club card – and I’ve received my personal key to allow me to access some limited parking at one end of the club’s stretch – so I intend to go there and walk the full available length to see what it’s like and suss out good looking areas for future bait fishing visits and whilst doing so I’ll be casting the spinner in likely looking spots too :)

Friday: Unplanned as yet. Liz is not sure if she’ll be coming out to play as she says she has a lot of stuff she needs to catch up on, partially a dress she’s making for when she attends my niece’s wedding at the end of August… so destination may depend on her final decision… as I’ll be out whatever!! :D

TACKLE TALK:

In ‘Improve Your Coarse Fishing’ magazine this month there’s a ‘Reader’ Special Offer’ for Q-DOS 7-box tackle boxes with an offer of being able to purchase the boxes for £14.99 each as opposed to a RRP of £24.99.…

Now, I had thought get one of these boxes and having seen one that my best mate has and his recommendation of them that idea was firmed up.

The boxes consist, as can be seen from the picture, 1 large box along with 7 other smaller boxes that sit inside the larger one. One of the accessory boxes is a rig box (the longer one) that has a foam insert, a bar to put the hooks around at one end and comes complete with pins to hold the rig’s end loops to the foam. Around 25 rigs can be contained on this. The other boxes are identically sized and only differ in the number of inner compartments each one contains – there is one of each of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 compartments. Great for all your small bits – beads, leger stops, legers, shot, etc. And all these boxes can be stored in the middle row of the box – and the depth of the main box means that 2 small boxes can be placed on top of each other thus maximising the use of space. And you also get dividers that allow user defined partitioning of the middle and bottom rows. BTW – the depth of the main box also allows loose storage of items under the rig box – I’ve put my shrink and silicon tubing, etc under there. In fact, all the contents of my old dividered box PLUS the contents of a wash bag that I used to store my tubing, elastic bands, etc have all gone into the Q-DOS system AND I still have room, albeit small, to spare.

However, when purchasing, rather than take up ‘IYCF’s deal which seemed rather expensive still, I went on to eBay and fund someone selling them at £9.00 each (plus £4.00 p&p) but who was also ameniable to ‘Best Offers’… end result was I offered £15 for two of these boxes and this was accepted – and P&P came to £6 with multi-item discount. The ‘IYCF’ deal was post-free  but even then I got the best deal at £21 as opposed to £29.98 all-in with IYCF. BTW – there’s also a Q-DOS 6-box option available – same as the 7-box BUT no rig box and hence no rig box space either within the large box – but then again smaller in size if you don’t have any use for a rig box….

Currently available on eBay at around £8.50-£9.00 inc P&P.

Also available separately are the smaller compartmented boxes that fit both the 6- and 7-box versions – as are the rig boxes, so if you had a 7-box and wanted another rig box then you could obtain one – and it would sit on top of the supplied one within the main box…