stevetheangler

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…

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

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.