stevetheangler

Sunday 5th April and destination was our club’s ‘silver’s’ pool (B) in search of anything but carp – as they are almost literally the only fish not in there! Carp fishers on this site are catered for the sister pool (O) that is located alongside and which contains only carp and chub.

So I arrived at the pool at 0715, a very misty morning albeit that just an hour earlier the skies were almost unbroken blue and bright sunshine… cold air meeting warm air! However, it was not that cold with air temp at that time around 8.5C – and on the way down the car’s thermometer had been recording around 7.0C when I left home.

What did surprise me on arrival though was that I was the first there – and even more surprisingly was that I was the only one there all day! Easter Sunday, great forecast – and day was as expected and turned out to be the stereotypically perfect fishing day conditionwise – and with the club’s most popular pool inaccessible to most people as there was a club match being held on there it would have been thought that some of the people who would have fished there would have switched to this pool – but seems that the club’s other, closer, pools may have got their business in that case. Still I had a nice peaceful uninterrupted day out of it :)

So… I set up to fish my favourite way on this quite shallow pool (a fairly level 4.5′) by using my 13′ float rod and fishing in the laying-on (aka lift method) style – with a slightly overshotted float, shot being 4″ from the hook, fished overdepth, rod set in rests and line tightened until float cocks – bites being indicated by either the float rising in the water as the fish lifts the bait and shot or shooting underwater if the fish takes the bait and swims away from the rod… the actual textbook bite is a combination of the two… the float rises as the bait is taken and then dives under as the fish swims off…

The swim was pre-baited whilst tackling up as per my usual way with three snooker ball sized balls of  crumb groundbait with added particles and pellets. And maggots were catapulted in separately – and throughout the session a golf ball sized groundbait ball were put into the swim hourly and extra small quantities of maggots catapulted out at about 10-15 minutes intervals or following a new cast.

First cast was made at 0815 with dendro worm as bait – and in fact, was the bait in use all day – and within 10-15 mins the first signs of fish activity were apparent from nudges, dips and rises of the float although most were quick one-off knocks and unstrikeable at … but at just before 0900 the first proper take came and a strike met resistance but the hook pulled free… and that lost fish seemed to have killed the swim as there was no further action for quite a while – probably well over and hour-and-a-half passed before further float movements began again… but from then on there were indications quite frequently throughout the rest of the day and by the time of packing in at 1600 I’d landed a 4lb 9oz bream (with spawning tubercles), 3lb 5oz tench and a 1lb 7oz chub … missed a few good ‘unmissable’ bites … and lost another 5 or 6 fish due to hook pulls, at least 3 or 4 being due to an overhanging bush that arched slightly over were I was sat and rod top caught and line slackened trying to release = fish gone. We’ve a work party at the pool in a fortnight’s time so I’ve scribbled a note to remind me to take my ladders and lopper to deal with!!

Anyway, day off from fishing tomorrow – back lawn really needs cutting as its not been done since the autumn but the weather has not been suitable until now and grass has been too wet for the mower to deal with… but now I’ve a chance to do it… also need to clean out our ferrets… and I want to make some slight tackle adjustments before I go back to the pool on Tuesday 7th….

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TEMPS:

Time               Air                  Water

0815                 8.8                    14.7
0915               10.0                   14.7
1015               12.2                    14.7
1115               15.0                    14.7
1215               18.2                    14.8
1315               20.0                   15.0
1415               22.4                    15.2
1430               22.7                    15.2
1515               21.2                    15.2
1600               24.2                   15.4

WATER TEMP TRENDS: