Friday, March 20th, Liz and were off to the club’s silvers/perch/tench pool – well, in fact, the pool holds many species with the notable exception being common carp – which are in a carp and chub only pool which is only 10 yards away if you should feel the need to target those. In fact I’ve only fished that pool about six times in 4 years of being a member of the club, and five of those for just an hour after fishing the earlier part of the day in the silver’s pool… we have better carp pools closer to home and I’m not a great carp fanatic anyway – you could give me gudgeon any day!! About the only species lower than carp in my estimation are roach and rudd but I am thinking of maybe even targeting those come autumn time… tench, perch and bream are my top of list species if I had to express a preference but barbel, chub, crucians, eels, ruffe, gudgeon etc are not too far below – and all those are in the silvers pool too. And the other club carp pools but the preponderance of carp in those wrecks any hope of really targeting other species.. Catching carp is OK – especially on floating baits and casting to spotted individual cruising fish (or BBSs, Big Black Shapes, as I call them) which is good fun and a good double is quite pleasing at any time – but I’d rather catch other things if possible….
Anyway, back to the day, we arrived and were baited up and fishing by around 0930… I electing to fish, as I usually do at this pool, with float using the lift method… and Liz elected to fish the next swim up from me opposite the end of an island and using two leger rods with small swimfeeders..
Our start also coincided with a solar eclipse – not a very good one though as I was still troubled in the first hour or so (and so when the eclipse was at its max really) by the sun, as I was facing in that direction, reflecting off the water’s surface effectively around 6′ from the bankside and making watching the float difficult… the direct sun was OK though – peaked cap solved that! :)
Before fishing I prebaited my swim with around 300g of groundbait consisting of breadcrumb, porage oats, blitzed Vitalin, and blitzed birdseed with maggot and casters…
And so, Liz and I fished until 1645 using a variety of baits between us – worm, maggot, meat, caster, prawn, etc and although we did get small indications of fish being around the baits, there were no bites of note and we finished the day fishless…
One thing though… there were patches of small bubbles reminiscent of tench feeding but I’m not sure they were as it seemed that in the midst of each patch a small/medium/large lump of black detrius (looked like old sodden rotten bark) would appear… and dropping baits into the area of bubbling elicited no response at all, not wavering of the float caused by tail wafting… and if the shot was slowly dragged along bottom then a stream of small bubbles followed the line of travel. Thus I suspect that the sunlight and warming of the water was causing increasing decomposition of the material on the bottom… accompanied by release of marsh type gas and possibly ‘sickening’ the water slightly…
SO… another blank day…
And now it’s a matter of looking forward to the next outing… back to those pesky pike…for possibly my penultimate piking trip until October 1st when my new pike season starts. Hopefully have my last pike session of my current season on a week on Monday but may also get another one in on the intermediate Friday. Whatever, the tackle is now re-sorted from the silvers trip over to the pike gear and all ready for the off… just baits to be boxed on the day and off I go. And I think it will be Monday as well next week that I’ll be off rather than the usual Tuesday as the weather looks slightly better according to the forecast…
TEMPS:
Time Air Water
0930 6.9 11.2
1030 15.9 11.5
1140 16.6 11.7
1230 15.9 11.8
1530 14.5 12.8
1615 14.1 12.7
TEMP TRENDS:
stevetheangler 
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