stevetheangler

Saturday 4th April and I was off to the ‘pike’ pool (GH) again but this time armed with my 1.75lb TC general coarse rods and baits such as worm, maggot, bread, etc in search of chub, bream, tench, perch, etc … even carp if they insisted on taking the bait…

Day was quite nice although there were a couple of patches of drizzle early in the session but they soon cleared to give a bright calm day… and warm as measured on the thermometer (12-13C) although that was moderated by the wind chill of a slight easterly breeze that started mid-day.

I arrived at around 0730 to find someone already there but luckily he had selected the swim alongside the one I wanted and was fishing a pole with a sleeper rod alongside. I wanted this swim particularly as when pike fishing in the previous weeks I had a lot of chub knocks on my deadbaits – landed a couple – but I thought I capitalize on their presence with a more suitable tackle set up.

The area was baited up with my standard groundbait mix with added hemp/corn/wheat/maggots wetted with sparkling mineral water and hemp oil.

I made first casts around 0810, fishing two legered rods with 8lb line to size 6 hooks with 3/8oz leads – lobworm on one rod cast to my left under the overhanging foliage of the tree – where I was getting the majority of the chub knocks previously and bread on the other rod in front and slightly to the right around 2-3 rod lengths out.

Within the first hour, the first take came to the worm rod, and a 1lb 8oz bream was landed and returned.. so things looked promising..

But as usual, after that until 1430, only a few little 1-beep twitches occurred, despite a change of baits to sausage, prawn, and I even tried a head end half of a smelt as that was the bait that elicited most chub takes on the previous weeks… and at 1430, having switched back to the original lob and bread baits a good hour or more earlier, the bobbin of the worm rod slowly rose and a strike met resistance that turned out to be a bream of around 2lb although it was not landed – the line crossed over the other line as I was bringing the fish in and when I went to separate the lines by moving the rod top over, the line fell slack and the barbless hook fell free..

And that was it for the day with me packing in at 1500 in order to get home early to re-sort tackle ready for an early start and a trip to our silvers pool (B).

Noticed the water temps over the day dropping slightly despite the air temp slightly rising… although there was a slight recovery to the starting point on the final reading of the day… And air temps rose at one point to around 16C for a short spell but that easterly breeze, when it started, seemed to pull it down…

TEMPS:

Time               Air                  Water

0800                 8.2                    14.2
0900                 8.7                    14.2
1000                 9.1                    14.2
1100               10.9                    14.1
1300               12.3                    14.0
1400               13.2                    14.0
1500               13.4                    14.2

WATER TEMP TRENDS: