Monday, September 29th, and I’m again back at the local carp pool, arriving at around 0745.

And the first thing I did on arrival was to throw out my depth sounder again… as the bottom of the pool here is quite interesting – a lot of almost vertical long drops – and as the pool bottom is full of bricks and boulders I wonder if in fact there had been a building standing on the site that was demolished and then the land dug out for the pool – which was originally a trout pool I believe – and the drops are parts of old cellars and walls?

Take a look at my depth sounder’s output on this YouTube video… http://youtu.be/C4hkSTKRLcc
Apologies for quality but not an easy video to make without a tripod and with a £30 digital camera from China via eBay (:)) but you can see the results OK… The retrieve rate of the transponder was about 1 yard per 2 seconds to give some ideas of the distances, etc.

Anyway, next job was to bait up my swims for the day – the first swim was aimed to be that 25ft deep section straight out in front of me, the second swim about 8 yards out off the end of an overhanging tree on the left hand edge of the peg. Both were baited with crumb mixed with commercial groundbait, fish/bone/blood, gravy granules, custard powder, chocolate mousse mix along with a hemp/maize/wheat mix and added maggots….

The tackle for both rods were identical except for hooks – 1.75lb TC 11’ Avon Barbel rods, 8lb line, 1/2oz (free running on 3” links) bombs… The long range rod was fitted with a size 6  Kamasan ‘Animal’ eyed barbless hook, the near range rod with a size 12 of same type.

And first casts were made after all pre-prep was completed (unhooking mat, camera on bankstick, landing net set up, baits and small  equipment laid out). I *ALWAYS* pre-prep my ‘station’ pre-first casts – there’s nothing worse than casting out, having a bite and the landing net is not set up, the unhooking mat is not ready, forceps/disgorger are not handy, scales and weigh net are still in bag, camera is still in bag requiring to be fetched, set up on bankstick, aimed, focussed, etc. All adds to the stress!!! So I spend a bit of time getting everything set up in readiness before casting – and as soon as the first fish is played out, the landing net is ready, fish is on to the mat to unhook, weighed, photo’d and returned to the water all easily within 2 mins, and that even allows for the camera’s self timer set to fire after a 20 second delay plus a further 4 shots at 2 second intervals. Try doing that with northing prepped!!!

And so it was 0850 when the first casts were made with bread on the long range rod, worm on the short range.

First action of the day came to the worm rod – a roach of approx 3oz – at 0920…

Then at 0945, the first action on the bread rod resulted in a 2lb 11oz Common Carp coming to the bank…

2lb 11oz Common Carp

Whilst fishing I’d been feeding out a few floating dog biscuits and bits of old crusts from my bait loaf and there was a fair bit of action on the surface and so I thought I’d try some floating bait… but had also noticed that te fish seemed to be, again, ina ‘testy’ mood – bashing the floating baits about a lot… so this plus the fact I didn’t really want to get my specific  rod out of the bag led me to fish a ‘zigged’ up bait – basically a floating bait on a leger rig which is then cast out and the line left slack until the bait floats back to the surface and then the line is tensioned just enough to pull the bait the required depth below the surface – and in my case this was around 6”-12”. And this was successful in that shortly I had netted a 4lb 2oz Common Carp.

4lb 2oz Common Carp

And over the course of the rest of the day I successfully landed….

2lb 9oz Common Carp – Bread
3lb 9oz Mirror Carp – Worm

3lb 9oz Mirror Carp

2lb 13oz Common Carp – Bread
1lb 8oz (approx) Bream – Bread
4oz Roach – Bread
3lb 9oz Common Carp – Bread
4lb 11oz Mirror Carp – Bread

4lb 11oz Mirror Carp

3lb 9oz Common Carp – Bread

At this point, I had lowered my worm rod’s tip down in the water to prevent the lines from tangling as I brought this fish in… and as I was playing the fish the worm rod was pulled viciously across… I grabbed it but there was nothing there… as the line had been snapped… :(. As time was getting on I decided not to re-tackle this rod and continued for the rest of the session with just the one rod.

2lb 13oz Common Carp
2lb 13oz Leather Carp
3lb 8oz Common Carp

And at this time I decided to pack in – and never have done so at such an opportune time. Having packed up the tackle and arrived back at the car and started loading up a few spots of rain started to fall … and as I had literally driven 6’ the first flash of lightening of a quite heavy, and totally unforecast, downpour began… 🙂

And one other thing happened that nearly stopped my heart beating….

BUT *that* I’m keeping to myself  😉 as sometimes one needs to keep one’s own secrets…. 🙂

BUT I am going to let you in on the recorded temperatures of the day 🙂

Time   Air      Water
===============
0825    15.0     15.6
0850    14.6     15.6
0920    15.6     15.6
0945    16.1     15.6
1004    16.7     15.8
1050    19.5     15.8
1056    19.1     15.6
1205    19.3     15.8
1240    18.9     15.8
1410    20.3     16.0
1440    20.3     16.0
1530    20.2     15.9
1555    20.2     16.1
1605    19.5     15.9
1610    19.0     15.9
1700    19.8     16.0
1705    18.8     16.1

Friday, September 26th, and I start on the new half century of sessions, heading to the club’s silvers and tench pool for a session arriving there at my swim – the usual peg 11 – at around 0800.

As usual, groundbait was mixed and fed, along with maggots, into the 2 areas I’d be fishing for the session – to the left, between the entrance to the channel  between island and lily pads off the mainland’s bank, where I would be laying on with worm and maggot and an area to the right to be fished with a ‘sleeper’ leger rod on a bite alarm baited with bread originally. I also baited with maggots just off the edge of the lily pads to my left as a standby swim to be built up over the day and this plus the two main areas were fed with small maggot helpings throughout the session.

Early morning on the pool – the island where I fished opposite to is to the right. The blue rope across the pool is one of several that are placed there to deter cormorants, the idea being that they need a long section of clear water to take off and so they are being denied that facility but it does spoil the feel of the pool when fishing there slightly  but better that than a fishless pool.

Having baited the swim areas up, the two rods were set up – the float rod with a driftbeater float set slightly overdepth and all shotting placed 4” from the hook in the standard laying-on/lift method way and hook was a size 14 – the leger rod was set up as a standard sliding leger with the 1/8oz lead on a 3” leger link and stopped about 18” from the size 10 hook. Both rods had 6lb main line and short braided hooklengths.

So at around 0830 my first cast were made – and a few moments later the float lifted in stereotypical ‘lift and glide along’ fashion and a tench soon found itself in the landing net – and for the pool not a bad fish either… a 3lb 6oz female…

3lb 6oz Tench

And so it seemed a good day was ahead but for quite some time after I was only getting small nudges on the float and when I changed the worm to maggot the same occured and the ends of the maggots were sucked and stretched indicating that small fish were around and possibly to blame. So back on went the worms… and at around 1245 the second fish of the day was landed, again on the float rod, a small perch of 3-4oz …

Meanwhile, action on the leger rod had almost been totally non-existent and so bait on that was switched to maggot and re-cast…

Around 1445 with just nudges on the float rod I decided to start fishing the ‘standby’ swim on the edge of the lily pads and at around 1500 had a good fish on temporarily which proceeded to do a surface roll and throw the hook… and in the next 45 minutes this happened a further twice plus I changed the leger rod to a small worm and had a tiny perch of around 1oz, if that.

So it might have seemed a poor session – but in fact between 1st July (Session 30) and this session (51) my total catch on this pool in several visits consisted of a few very small perch – so it really is an improvement :).

Also, as night time and general day time temps have been noticeably dropping over the past couple of weeks it is time to start reading those waterside values!! 🙂

And so…

Time   Air      Water

0800    15.2     13.8
0950    16.8     13.8
1050    17.1     13.9
1145    23.2     13.8
1245    20.5     13.9
1345    20.5     14.0
1450    19.4     14.1
1505    19.2     14.2
1550    19.4     14.8

This is a noticeable drop from the measured  water temp noted at the water (albeit a different venue) last week when the temp was around 18.5C at around 0800.

And also making it noticeable that winter is heading in now….

OTHER PICS:

It seems the camo for the new season is ‘Hi-Viz’ 🙂

Tuesday, September 23rd, I set off on on my half-century trip of the season to one of the club’s most local pools – and the most popular. And it was especially popular on this day it seemed, as normally, if I’m not the only one there, which on Tuesday’s I often am, then another two people are a crowd – but on this trip there were, at least, nine of us on the water.

Chosen peg for the day was along the tree lined bank in a swim directly facing the pool’s island…

I recently depth sounded this swim and found a lot of sharp changes of depth in the gap between island and main bank but as I wasn’t sure what these depths were and where they lay exactly then before setting I re-scanned again with the depth sounder and found the following info…

Island 11′ -> 14′ -> 30′ -> 14′ -> 7′ -> 14′ -> 25′ -> 14′ -> and then, from around halfway between island and main bank,  a slow rise to 6′ at 1 yard from the bank. So the major depth changes all occur within the space between the island and halfway to the main bank AND the rises and drops are ABRUPT… no slopes, almost vertical rises and drops.

So, I decided to fish my two rods – one just off to my left off the edge of an overhanging bush with worm/maggot on a size 12 hook, the other rod towards the deeper water towards the island fishing chili coated sausage and bread.

So I baited the tree area with catapulted maggot and spombed out crumb with particles and meat to the deeper water. There were also a lot of surface cruising fish take surface foods so I catapulted out a few dog biscuits which were readily taken and then set to tackling up.

First casts were made and a number of small twitchy bites were received on the worm rod and so I started touch legering and first tug resulted in a bream of 1lb 9oz…

1lb 9oz Bream

And a little later, another bite resulted in a rather bedraggled perch of approximately 8oz..

Perch ca 8oz

… and this poor devil also had the indignity of, whilst I bent down to get the landing net, being on a pike’s intended breakfast menu and was grabbed by said Esox Lucius who held on for about 15 seconds before releasing hold… however, the perch fared no ill seemingly by this encounter and swam away quite happily on his return.

The deep water rod fished with chilli sausage had a few quick lifts from time to time but nothing strikeable at.

So I fished on like this until noon, having knocks on both rods but nothing substantial, when I decided to wind in the two leger rods and fish floating baits for the surface feeders having been feeding bits of bread and dog biscuits throughout morning and keeping them interested. I spent the two hours at this and had one fish of around 2.5lb… the fish being generally very cagey and, although interest in the baits was shown consistently, the baits were being tested thoroughly by tail bashing and quick suck’n’blows before being destroyed or left alone completely until re-cast when the same occurred again.

So for the final two hours of the day I went back to the two leger rods – the ‘tree’ rod again on worm, and the ‘deep water’ rod was baited with bread … and another few carp (around 6 up to 3lb 15oz) were landed.

3lb 15oz Mirror Carp

NOTE: I think I said in one of my postings to avoid Aldi bread – and at the time I DID mean Aldi brand (‘Village Bakery’) bread – but now I’m changing that to ‘bread FROM Aldi’. When I went out to purchase my loaf for the day I had a few groceries I needed to purchase from Aldi and rather than then have to trek to Morrison’s or Sainsbury’s for my bread I thought I’d get a loaf of Hovis whilst in there… MISTAKE!!! As bad as the ‘Village Bakery’ loaf.. almost… perhaps 0.1 out of 10 for the Hovis instead of 0 out of 10 for the Village – quite dry and difficult (read as ‘almost impossible’) to mould around the hook and I reverted to using squeezy Marmite to act as a glue… although the centre of the loaf did have signs of a slighter moistness but not enough….

FUTURE PLANS:

Well, Liz won’t be able to fish on Friday as she’s a driving lesson at 1000, and wants to shop on Thursday, the day which I suggested (fish Thursday, lesson and shop Friday) we go on… so looks like I’m on my own on the Friday. Might go to the silvers/tench pool then.

Next week I’ll only get one session in as we are due to go away on the Monday and so the end part of next week will be packing and prepping tackle  for that – destination has an on-site fishing pool.

Saturday, September 20th, finds me heading enthusiastically and ecclesiastically towards one of my club’s carp waters – albeit the water actually contains an assortment of species – perch, tench, eels, bream and pike – along with roach and rudd but I don’t mention those 😀 – and the pool is destined to be the club’s premier carp water.

On arrival at around 0745, the day was a bit overcast with a misty sort of drizzle – not enough for a brolly though and was clear of rain for the rest of the day and even at times had blue sky and bright sunshine – despite Liz telling me that in Wolverhampton, 20 miles away, it rained continuously all day long.

So I selected a swim alongside a willow tree and facing the end of the pool’s island with the idea to feed maggot just off the end of the willow and fish worm for perch – a tactic that has proved successful at this pool before albeit the perch were of no great size but also eels were encountered and so I thought I’d try again. The second rod I was intending to fish off the edge/end of the island with bread/meat baits for tench or carp mainly but a decent bream would not have gone amiss.

However, before fishing I decided to scan the area with my depth/fish finder to see if any ‘pool bed features’ were apparent and was very pleased to see a feature seemingly choc full of fish as can be seen from the photo below… the general depth of the area in front of me was around 6’ as you can see indicated … but that channel running across from left to right, was of about 12ft-15ft width, dropped down to 12+ft deep and was located around 3-4 rod lengths out. Note the water temp too… not bad for late September?

And so, in light of this info, I baited up the channel with particles an dry crumb with added maggots – and also baited up the end-of-willows and end-of-island swims too, as intended originally, similarly to act as fallbacks.

And so the day started with me legering worm just off the willow whilst legering bread in the channel… and over the course of the day, due to any lack of interest shown in them, the baits were moved and changed (bread, chilli sausage and cheesepaste) – trying out the end of island swim, just off the outside edge of the channel, just off the inside edge, tweaked within the channel, etc but try as I could I could not elicit one single nudge or sign of interest and eventually gave up at around 1515 and started to pack up to head for home.

Another angler, a couple of swims away, had been there overnight and managed a couple of carp but in the time I’d been there he’d not had a single touch either and with that and the changing water conditions (will get to that in a moment) he decided to cancel his second night on the water and was also packing up to leave at the same time that I was.

On arrival there was a general surface flow from left-to-right and many ‘leafbergs’ were travelling in that flow occasionally getting caught around the line but causing no major problem and requiring just a slight lifting of the line to release them. The water itself at this time was actually quite clear with visibility at the edge of around 3’ or so. But at around 1400 the direction of this flow reversed to travel from right-to-left and due to the packing of the ‘leafbergs’ they returned larger in size and more closely packed together plus the water itself started to turn a milky-grey’ish colour and visibility was severely hampered with zero visibility at the edge due to the sharp drop of the pool sides down to 6ft. I’m not exactly sure of the reason for this colouration but surmise that, as the pool is stream fed from the righthand side and water exits from the far left of the pool into a stream that feeds a smaller pool a couple of fields away that possibly a farmer upstream had started to irrigate his crops or that a herd of cows had gone to the stream to drink or to cross and churned up the silt.

Pre-1400 with light debris travelling left to right, slight water colouring.

Post 1400 – heavier debris, clay colouration of water.

On Friday, September 15th, having arisen at 0530 and left the house at 0630, I arrived at Long Lane Pool that lies between Wellington and Crudington in Shropshire on a first ever visit to this pool that is available via the Serck Audco AC book at around 0730.

See http://www.audcoac.co.uk/1.html for more info on the club and its waters.

A lovely looking, albeit small, pool with 18 (closely spaced) pegs available – (http://www.audcoac.co.uk/11.html), the bank nearest the road that runs alongside the nearside of the pool is a Caravan Club site but fishing is only available to Serck Audco members and no day tickets are available on this water.

The pool as seen from my swim… looking in sequence to left, part left, front and right

There are a number of rules that apply that affected my fishing from my norm – some general rules applicable to all SA waters (barbless hooks size 10 to 18 only although barbed hooks can be used in size 20 and smaller, no pet food of any sort, 500g max dry groundbait) and some that apply only to Long Lane Pool (no floating baits, one rod/pole only). See full rules list on the web site – I have listed here only the ones that affected me and my setup for the day.

On arrival the day was damp – a fine, misty drizzle – although the air was quite still. Over the next hour or so the skies cleared and the rest of the day was sunshine interspersed with light overcast periods.

So I had a quick look at the pool and selected the swim on the near bank that faced just off the end of the island that faced to open water. My 500g of dry bait was mixed up and several 30mm balls of groundbait were fed into the swim accompanied by catapulted particles and maggot loose feed – and this groundbait/particle feed was regularly supplemented in small quantities throughout the day.

Having done the swim prep, I set up my tackle of the day which consisted of an 11’ Grandeslam Des Taylor System 3 Avon rod set up with the Avon tip, 6lb line, 1/2oz bomb and size 10 barbless hook. Bait was bread to start with.

Casting out initially, although there were obvious fish movements, and I was getting short knocks, decent strikeable bites were few and far between… and I noticed there seemed a lot of activity with bubbling/fizzing very apparent and surface swirls at the chrysalis that were on the water by the way of my feeding maggots that were a little old and a few were starting to turn. Normally, that would have been the signal for me to put on floating bread or dog biscuit – but as pet food and floating baits were unusable under the rules I devised a new plan. The water was not deep – the info said 5’ but I think in my swim probably 4’ or maybe slightly less than that – so I elected to use a method that is nowadays called a ‘zig rig’….

… basically, using bread crust or lightly compressed bread flake that naturally would float on the surface and by setting the hooklength at around 3’ I could cast out and then by tensioning the line pull the bait underwater so that it ‘sat’ about 12”-18” under the surface – basically a ‘pop-up’ on a long hook length.

Anyway, this almost immediately starting producing the goods with a BEAUTIFUL common carp of 4lb 7oz soon netted.

And ALL the fish caught throughout the day were in magnificent condition, absolutely flawless, brilliant silver flanks with well defined scaling and all had an absolutely gorgeous orange lower tail flukes and belly..

And so it continued until I’d landed 7 carp – all commons – and then I thought I’d see if I could winkle out a possible tench by legering with a bunch of worms – esp as there was a lot of bubbling in the area. So, off came the bread bait and the hooklength reduced to around 18” but I kept with the size 10 hook, baiting it with 2-4 worms (dendrobaena/dendro) each time. However, although I kept catching there were no tench – all carp – and another 6 added to the total but these were ALL mirror carp. Weird? Bread=all commons, worm=all mirrors.

At the end of the day when I packed in at 1615, I’d had around 12 carp in all, the two smallest at around 2lb/2.5lb being mirrors and the largest at 5lb 9oz also a mirror… and all the rest fell between 3lb 5oz and 4lb 7oz. And, as I said before, every one pristine 🙂

Unfortunately, I can’t recount full specific details of each fish caught as it seems that my digital voice recorder that I use to dictate notes about the fish and other details throughout the day threw a wobbly in the middle of the day and no recordings were saved from around 1000 to 1500… it was a bit fiddly anyway, and I was never sure of it – needed to initialise after switching on each time before recording, etc…. I’ve today downloaded a Smart Voice Recording app for my new Xperia mobile phone and had a quick play with it – and that seems perfect – and will mean one less device to carry with me. In fact, I might try adding it to my old phone and using that as my ‘fishing phone’ meaning it won’t be a disaster if I should drop it in the water?

Anyway, it was a very enjoyable day – even if crowded compared to my usual club pools. Another three fished during the day and all alongside me – well, all from the nearest place to the water from the car as one usually expects, seems no-one likes to walk but good news for me as anywhere more than 100 yards from the car park is deserted… but then again on this pool everywhere is 100 yards from the car park!! 😀

5lb 9oz Mirror Carp

3lb 15oz Common Carp

==================================================================================

4lb 0oz Mirror Carp

4lb 7oz Common Carp

================================================================================

Next outing is likely to be Friday – although weather is forecast as wet and so it may get changed to Saturday according to the severity of ’wet’ – but destination decided as being one of the club’s pools towards Newport.

Friday, September 12th, 0730 and Liz and I set off to one of our club’s pools in search of carp and bream. Only a short drive away and so we were at the water’s side, in our desired pegs, tackling up by 0815 being the first arrivals. Later in the day the crowds arrived though … another two anglers!! LOL! … and the four of us had the pool to ourselves all day.

Action was steady throughout the day with Liz bagging 8 common carp to 4lb 8oz, 1 mirror carp 4lb 7oz, 4 bream to 1lb 11oz and 2 roach of around 4-6oz. Myself, I had 7 common carp to 4lb 0oz and 3 bream to 1lb 10oz. Chronological captures listed at the end of this posting.

Both of us fished by legering with two Grandeslam 11’ Super Avon rods (1.75lb TC) with 8lb mono mainline and 8lb braid hooklengths. I used straight 1/2oz leads and catapulted out small groundbait balls laced with particles throughout the session and Liz used small swimfeeders with groundbait/maggot feed. Hook sizes varied to suit bait for Liz – size 12 for maggots and size 6 for luncheon meat – whereas I used size 6 all session baited with bread, spicy sausage, cheeseballs and luncheon meat.

Liz with 4lb 7oz Mirror Carp – almost a Leather.

First into action was Liz, and in fact she had the first two fish of the day – a carp and then a bream – before I started my ‘batting’.

Most of Liz’s fish came on luncheon meat (well, Chopped Ham with Pork it was to be pedantic) but I couldn’t get a decent bite at all on it despite being in the next swim, any attention to my meat baits taking the form of quick short bobbin lifts…. but bread was a different story for me, at times I was attaching the bobbin to the line and the line was being snatched away out of my hands!

4lb 0oz Common Carp

Anyway, at 1645 we decided that we’d pack in at 1730… but, hooking a fish 10 or so minutes later that swam over my second line and tangling the two sets of tackle into an extreme knot that required cutting out, I decided it was not worth re-setting up and started to pack my tackle down. And meanwhile Liz had, in the shallows, the attentions to loose feed she’d been laying down there of a good sized (a good double, possibly upper teens) carp… so she stealthily set up her tackle and laid her baited hook in the area … and hooked the mirror carp which had, along with a third fish, had joined the first… Obviously, the disturbance of hooking and landing this fish caused the others to leave the vicinity… but Liz continued to feed and fish and had a couple of small roach and not long after Mr Big returned… and was induced to take Liz’s bait… and unfortunately Liz had the anti-reverse of her reel switched on and the shock on the line as the fish shot off like a bullet was too great for the drag despite it having been set for normal fishing (ie at distance where there is give in the line to lessen the shock and allows the initial inertial resistance of the drag to be overcome) – but at less than 2 metres from the rod tip then there is less give and the shock more severe and so the line broke… At this we decided to call it a day as it was probably approaching 1830… but whilst tackling down Liz’s gear the fish returned and was happily munching, along with a companion, the maggots and groundbait in the margins.

And the day ended with a quick pint in The Station, Codsall on the way home.

Catch Details In Order

• Common Carp                  3-14                     Liz                       Meat
• Bream                                  1-11                      Liz                       Meat
• Bream                                  1-10                     Steve                  Bread
• Bream                                  0-4/0-6             Liz                       Meat
• Common Carp                  2-6                       Steve                  Bread
• Common Carp                  2-5                       Steve                  Bread
• Common Carp                  2-15                     Liz                       Meat
• Common Carp                  4-0                       Steve                  Bread
• Bream                                  0-12                     Liz                       Meat
• Common Carp                  2-8                        Steve                 Bread
• Common Carp                  2-0                       Liz                       Meat
• Common Carp                  2-11                     Steve                  Bread
• Bream                                  1-7                       Steve                  Bread
• Common Carp                  4-8                       Liz                       Meat
• Common Carp                  3-3                       Liz                       Meat
• Common Carp                  2-8                       Steve                  Bread
• Common Carp                  2-9                       Liz                       Meat
• Bream                                  0-12                    Liz                       Meat
• Bream                                  1-2                       Steve                  Bread
• Common Carp                  3-3                       Liz                       Meat
• Mirror Carp                      4-7                       Liz                       Maggot
• Roach                                  0-4                       Liz                       Maggot
• Roach                                  0-4                       Liz                       Maggot
• LOST LUNKER                 XX-XX                 Liz                       Maggot

So, I was well and truly trounced on ALL fronts… First Fish, Most Species, Biggest Fish Overall, Biggest Fish Of Each Species, all awards went to Liz!! 🙂

Future fishing…
I’ll be out on Monday most likely, but don’t know where… probably give the river a miss this week as it needs rain really .. have thoughts to a couple of pools inc one I’ve not yet been to … also a couple of possible canal venues…

Friday – Liz is working so won’t be able to make it but possibly Thursday? Or head off on my own 🙂

Monday, September 8th, saw me at the water’s edge on the River Severn again in search of barbel and chub – and perch too, later in the day.

I arrived at my chosen swim for the day and made my first cast of the day, full of hope and confidence, at around 0800 with paste wrapped chilli sausage on a size 2 hook on 10lb line.

Over the next 5 hours, despite changing baits (Liquid Worm infused meat and cheesepaste) and trying different areas within the swim – slack water, crease, faster water and in different areas of each – all I had to show for my efforts was a few small knocks (seemingly small fish nudging the bait) and a couple of slightly more vigorous nudges on the cheesepaste.

Whilst fishing for those 5 hours I’d also been feeding maggots down alongside the near bank to try to get perch on the feed as a fallback and now was the time to capitalise on that… but despite much swirling to the loose fed maggots I was unable to elicit one single bite on light legered maggot or worm or even on freelined small/medium/large worms allowed to drift down 20-30 yards…

And so it was that at 1530 I decided to call it a day and head back home.

Note to myself… taking boilies, pellets, pellet paste, pre-wetted groundbait and extra baits that meant I required the use of my (small porter type) fishing trolley is a NO-NO in future… pulling a trolley over a cow field is HARD WORK!! AVOID in future – limit weight to be manageable in a carry bag!

OK – next outing – with Liz to the carp pool on Friday 15th Sept.

Learnt today that the canal I’ve been fishing recently that I thought was the Shropshire Union for some reason is actually the Staffs-Worcs!! And that means I’ve actually caught a pike from the Staffs-Worcs!! YAAA-HOOOOOOO!!! 🙂

Friday, September 5th, and Liz and I visit our club’s silver’s and tench pool arriving at the water side around 0815.

I fished my usual peg 11 facing the island with a lily pad patch to my left and Liz chose to fish peg 10 with the lily pad’s to her right.

I fished one float rod (laying-on with maggot and worm) and one leger rod (meat and squid) and Liz fished two rods with swimfeeders, one across the pool to the edge of a lily pad patch on the far bank, the other off the edge of the near bank lily pads to her right using maggot and meat baits.

We actually fished, after prepping tackle and baiting up, from around 0930 and fished until 1615 – and then departed for home stopping off at a local pub holding a beer festival for a much desired beverage.

The fishing was very slow – Liz had one bite early in the day but no fish landed, and I was getting very tentative bites on the float rod but nothing at all on the leger one. I eventually ended up with two small perch plus a few that I struck and felt but the hook pulled free almost immediately – however, at least one of those was a tench or bream, as on retrieval, the hooklength had a glob of ‘snot’ attached to it.

This pool has not fished well, at least for me and I heard that the results of a match held there weren’t as good as usual, since late May. It fished fine through March/April/May and I said in earlier posts that I wish I could catch other species to tench at that time as I was catching well but all tench. Perhaps the water’s too warm – plenty of natural food in there in the form of daphnia, etc as stated in a previous posting – and perhaps a dip in temps will cause a fall in the concentration and cause the fish to have to search for food?

The Nash Deliverance Ball Makers… tried at home and seemed to work well BUT couldn’t get it right at the waterside at all. Problems possibly due to having maggots in the mix causing the balls to break up – and wetting the groundbait more caused it to stick to the walls of the ball maker. More experimentation/practice needed I think!

Hoping to get to the Severn on Monday in search of barbel and chub – possibly perch too.

Monday 1st September and at 0630 I leave home heading for the banks of the River Severn at Hampton Loade, specifically the Kinver Freeliner’s day ticket stretch… on the waiting list to join but at the mo still need to purchase a day ticket…

So, I arrive at the car park at around 0715 and head, with tackle, to the area that I intend to fish but thinking that maybe I’m a bit late as there are several cars on the car park already – although possibly non-anglers. Walking down I pass several anglers on the near end of the stretch and my hopes revive as by intended area is quite a way along….

Arriving at the first swim that I’d thought to fish… it looked very nice but, as the rest of the section from there down is good, I decided to wander down the rest of the length – and as the last swim looked gorgeous I decided to set up there…

So, tackled up with an 11’ TFG 2lb TC rod, 10lb line, 33g lead and size 2 hook, I made my first cast at around 0800 with a 1” section of chili infused sausage as bait… and later changed bait to a string of 6 half inch cubes of ‘Liquid Worm’ infused luncheon meat and later still to a ball of pink coloured (and smelly too as the main ball is around 2 years old!) cheesepaste with added cotton wool fibres to help the bait stay on the hook in the current. And so I fished until around 1330 casting around the swim – from far bank to near bank, sliding lead around and across, etc, etc, I tried it all and the only action discernible was slight nudges from small fish nudging and nibbling at the baits.

At 1330 I decide to switch tackle and tactics and target perch in the downstream slack water on the near bank – so I set up my 10’ 1.75lb TC rod, 8lb line, small swimfeeder (later changed to 1.75g lead), and size 12 hook baited variously with worm, maggot, worm&maggot cocktail. When I packed up at 1700 I’d had around 10-12 perch with the largest two probably around 12oz… plus about 3 minnow sized silver fish… plus two gudgeon, one of which was a stonker of about 1.5oz.

And so that was it for the day… the barbel/chub never made a showing for me – and not one eel either :(! … but the perch fishing was a fun end to the day and enjoyable :).

Weather was a bit damp too from around 1000 and I was soaked by the time it decided to finish for the day as I don’t like brollies at all as they hinder you so much – if I use one then (a) its just for the bait and tackle and I sit outside or (b) its raining *HEAVY* (ie visibility probably is 10’ or less). But such is the British weather that once it stopped raining then I air dried within an hour or so 🙂

Plans ahead:

Friday, planning on a visit to my club’s tench/silvers pool with Liz – 2nd attempt to get there as we were going last week but I did my back in over the previous weekend and wasn’t fit to cart tackle, etc. And I will be using, for the first time, my new Nash Deliverance Groundbait Ball Makers… I’ve got the 60mm and 30mm versions… the 60mm for hand/catapult/thrower delivery and the 30mm with the bait compressed within it on the line to give a sort of ‘method feeder without the metalwork’ sort of effect – could use PVA bags to similar effect but they cost 🙂

See: http://www.nashtackle.com/products/view/ball-maker

Also looking forward to our Sun £9.50 Holiday break starting the 6th October at the Lakeside Holiday Park in Burnham-on-Sea where there is a resident’s only fishing pool We went there last year but didn’t do too good as I recall… a small perch being the only catch but the pool does have a good head of bream and pike and other species too of reasonable size.

Next week – back to the Severn for a barbel hopefully – only a few weeks left as pike will take over most of my fishing time from 1st October – and I may head over to Lilleshall on a joint perch/carp session ie one rod for perch, the other for carp later in the week.