stevetheangler

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 :D – 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.