stevetheangler

Monday 1st December and I’m off to the pike pool again – and this time I’m joined by Liz again.

Arriving at a little after 0800, Liz graciously offers me her swim!!! We usually fish two adjoining swims, Liz on peg 9 and I on peg 10 but Liz says we’ll swap pegs as I’ve not had anything from mine on the last couple of trips while she’s had some action including landing a carp and losing a possible pike…and so that’s what we do.

I bait up both swims with ‘fish piece and breadcrumb mash’ to act as a ruby dubby/attractor and then we set to setting up the stall for the day…

Both of us set up similar setups – one float rod with 18lb mono and one leger rod with 40lb braid – and first casts are made around at 0900….with Liz legering a single sprat and floatfishing sprat too, whilst I leger a sardine popped up 12” from the bottom and floatfish a tree of 4-5 sprats. Both sets of tackle being fished within 2-3 rod lengths of the bank under/near overhanging vegetation….

And so it came to pass… 1030 and I hear a call from peg 10 and nip across just in time to net a chub for Liz that had taken her legered sprat… a nice fish of 3lb 3oz.

And I’m barely back to my own swim when Liz calls again at 1050… but unfortunately whatever it was – not seen – managed to throw the hooks at the bankside before I arrived at the swim and it got away.

After that all was quiet with Liz not having another touch on either rod until we packed up at 1400.

However, I did manage to get a bit – but not a lot – of action by replacing my ‘tree’ with a single sprat and had a couple of bobs and even a couple of short one foot tugs of the float across the surface – heart stopping stuff! :D

So, 1400 as I said, tackle was taken down and home headed for…

Liz used her new pike float rods (2 off Leeda 12’, 2.5lb TC carp rods really) – along with her new XLT 5000 freespool reels on all four of her rods (the other 2 rods are her pike leger rods – Ron Thompson Evo Concept 2 11’, 2.75lb) – and I also used the same reels on my float rod – and she was very happy with both rods and reels.

TEMPS:

Troubles again with the thermometer… I used the one I’d used OK down the canal on the previous session and it started showing a temp of 10.1C at 0900 which was OK and expected…by 1100 it had gone to 10.3C… OK… but then at 1200 it was 11.2C, and at 1300 it was 11.5C – unexpected as air temps never rose above 9.2 at best – and when I went to remove at 1400 it was up to 25C… and as lifted from the water it went to 50C… obviously NOT right!! Anyway, this one is back home now over a radiator to attempt to dry out the probe…

So for sake of measurement recording/trend I’m taking it as an average of 10.2C for the day…

 Time                          Air                                          Water

0900                                  8.3                                                         10.1
1000                                  8.5                                                         10.1
1100                                   9.0                                                         10.3
1200                                  9.2                                                          11.2
1300                                  8.5                                                          11.5
1400                                  8.3                                                           25+

TEMP TRENDS:

PLANS:

Wednesday 3rd December off to the club’s stretch of the Shropshire Union Canal for a spot of lure fishing and Friday 5th probably another spot of canal lure fishing but this time on the Staffs-Worcs Canal closer home.