stevetheangler

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!! :D

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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.