Yep, only one session so far in in 2015 whereby I’ve actually been at the water’s side… mainly due to the weather but also due to redecorating the kitchen – best done in this weather than on a bright sunny and warm day when the water’s are not at least half covered in ice…

However, I have been catching some decent fish in the meantime…. smallmouth bass, largemouth bass, crappies, and some very large peacock bass have figured in my catches….

How?

The Wii!!! 🙂

Yep, I’ve set up the games machines again (an original version Xbox and the Wii) after they’d been off the network for a while after we had laminate flooring laid. When that was done I had to take up the cables that ran under the edges of the old carpet as they would (a) have been unsightly just laying on the floor and (b) a trip hazard as they passed doorways, etc. I had intended to lay cable trunking around the hallway and into the rooms downstairs but instead I’ve now bought a WiFi repeater that sits in the room with the games machines and other devices – well, that room is actually our living room and so our TV, TiVo, DVD recorder, Raspberry Pi media server are all in there too with various ethernet attachments – and picks up from the main router/WiFi in the hallway. Works well! 🙂

So I’ve been playing Rapala Tournament Fishing….

And Rapala Fishing Frenzy…

And so the fish are still coming to hand!! 😀

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The promised video from my outing on January 2nd is now available on YouTube at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcicwrWUZlo

The first time out, so you need to excuse certain schoolboy errors such as camera location – used wrong weights and so the camera is sitting on the bottom.

It probably would have better with lesser weight and suspended below a float to give a better view…

But all part of the ‘learning curve’ as I say in the blurb accompanying the video on YouTube… and I have also learnt a bit about video editing with the VirtualDub software that I use and was needed to change brightness, contrast and generally alter the hues, etc to provide an optimum view.

Friday, 2nd January 2015, and I set out on the first of my 2015 sessions at 0900 heading to a club pool on a general coarse fishing session rather than the usual pike session.

As can be seen from the photo a quite pleasant day to be out albeit cooler than the previous day, when the air temperatures reached over 12C, with a high of only 6.4C recorded on this day.

Most surprising was that on arrival there were already three cars parked up there – this being a pool that I’ve fished often during my 3 years with the controlling club – and usually, even mid-summer – I am – or Liz and I are – often the only ones there – and if there are 3 or 4 there it seems like the January Sales there! And over the day I calculate that 16 or more fished – people left, more came, and I counted 12 people on the pool when I left at around 1530.

Anyway, my chosen peg had already been taken but my 2nd choice – actually the peg next door was free – so I slotted in there.

I pre-baited the swim with around 250g of crumb with a few dead maggots and a few prawns whilst I prepped my ‘station’ to my liking and set up my rod for the day – my 13’ float rod with 6lb line straight through to a size 12 hook and with a 3AAA antenna float as indication. Looking around it seemed that most of the others seemed to be pike fishing – or pike fishing with another rod  being used to catch bait fish.

My baits throughout the day – bread to start, and then over the session switched to prawn, worm and prawn/worm cocktail.

Unfortunately, the day was not so good in results – sole positive being a few trembles and tiny lifts of the float – and seemingly no-one else was having much better luck although one of the pike fishers with a bait rod out did have about 3 or 4 small fish that I saw.

And… after packing up the float rod at the end of the day, I did set up the lure rod and lured for 20-30 minutes – but again no joy. However, I did only get to try from my swim as, with the pool so busy, I couldn’t move from swim to swim as I would normally have done.

EXTRAS …

The lure I lost up a tree on Monday but couldn’t reach at the time was still there – and with the longer landing net pole at hand I was able, with a bit of tree climbing out over the water, to get in contact with it BUT in the end it got detached from the tree and unfortunately fell straight into the water and sank… 7’ deep at that point. And the clamber back to land was interesting but luckily not dampening! 😀 So it really was farewell to it this time. However, the previously ordered replacements had arrived when I got home 🙂

I took my new toy (Water Wolf HD underwater camera) out with me on its first trip – and I was hoping to get some video on to YouTube and a link posted here – but I need to get the video files transferred and re-formatted from the .MOV format that the camera stores files as into .AVI format so that I can edited sequences, etc. However, just the re-format of the files is going to take something in the region of 10 or so hours – and then there’ll be the editing to cut down 4 hours of video to just the more interesting material – and then the editing of the display (contrast/brightness/etc) to create the best image… and then post on to YouTube. So, when that’s sorted I’ll have to post the YouTube link at some other time.  Anyway, a quick perusual seems indicate that I got some footage – even see some fish  around – but need to try to get a brighter image on this footage … and also I need practice to get the camera set to video the correct areas – but, as this was the first time of use, I’m happy to have got anything at all!! 🙂 Looking for a small waterproof penlight to try as an attachment – the camera itself depends on ambient light (has no lighting) and at even 10’ the light levels are quite low so thinking of fastening a penlight to the side of the camera…??

TEMPS:

Time               Air                  Water

0930                4.5                   7.2
1030                5.8                   7.4
1130                6.4                   7.4
1230                6.4                   7.4
1330                5.6                   7.4
1430                5.3                   7.4
TEMP TRENDS:

OK – HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

Wishing all tight lines… and big fish, blue skies, singing strings and bent sticks… and their equivalents in all spheres of your life.

And so a new year of blog entries begins shortly… with this being my 170th posting since I started the writings back in March 2013.

If anyone is interested, all the previous posts made from the start in March 2013 until the end of December 2014 are available in .PDF format in 2 separate volumes…

March 2013 to February 2014 – about 50MB in size…

March 2014 to December 2014 – about 230MB in size…

So, if you are interested, just ‘Comment’ to this post with your e-mail address and which one you want or both and I’ll send it/them out forthwith.

I just think it’s easier to read a PDF document (on screen or paper) than scroll backwards and forwards on the blog site – and the PDF is arranged chronologically with oldest entry at the front of the document and newest at the end and so reads like a book whereas the blog on-site seems to work the other way around…

Anyway…. on to the real stuff now…. 🙂