stevetheangler

Friday, 8th May, saw me heading off at 0615 to one of the club’s carp pools in search of tench and perch… and arriving at around 0700 I headed to my selected swim of the day… no problems getting it as once again I was the only person there for the entire session.

The selected swim was opposite the near end of the pool’s island – a swim where I’ve had tench and perch from on previous visits and so holds a good track record.

As usual, before tackling up, etc I mixed up my groundbait made from my standard base mix of breadcrumb, blitzed Vitalin, blitzed birdseed, blood/fish/bone, and porage oats to which I added maggots, pellets, hemp and corn and pre-fed the swim. So often I see people arrive at the waterside and immediately tackle up, set up nets, prep their ‘area’, etc and only then do they start swim preparation  and feeding… WRONG!! Get the feed in there first, even adding more during your tackle prep if necessary, and so be sure that from your first cast that the fish have been induced to start feeding…otherwise you are really wasting that 30 minutes or more that it takes you to get tackled up…

So, I baited up, throwing out balls of feed along the bank of the island, and also introduced feed into the channel mid-way to the island as a another option to be able to switch to.

And so, having fed, I started the tackle up – and ensured that my landing net did NOT enter the water! An astute reader of my blogs spotted my landing net handle poking out of the water on a photo in my last blog – and I’d blanked on that session – OBVIOUSLY – as any angler will tell you, wetting a net, be it landing net or keepnet, before catching a fish is the ultimate kiss of death! In fact, just after I took that photo I realised my error and removed the net from the water but the damage had already been done… :(

Two 1.75lb TC rods on the alarmed pod, 8lb line. Starting baits were one rod with a size 12 hook baited with dendrobaena worm and the other rod with size 4 hook and a paste bait that is under testing…

First casts were made at around 0800, with both rods out to the island fed area… but three hours later, and with extra feed being added, I still had not had a single indication of any interest and so the baits were switched to the mid-channel area and almost immediately interest in the worm bait was apparent although the paste remained untouched. After a while, the paste was switched over to raw king prawn but although the worm still attracted interest with line twitches and small bobbin lifts, the prawn drew no attention still.

At 1145 the first – and only fish of the day – was hooked and landed – a 3lb 15oz tench taken on the worm.

After landing of this fish all went quiet with no action to either worm or prawn… and it started to drizzle at 1230… and as the BBC Weather had forecast ‘heavy rain’ from 1230 (and their forecasts are very reliable – often to the minute as it was this day)… I decided to pack down and get away before the major rain appeared.

So… what’s with the 66%? Well, 100% success with avoiding the carp, 100% with catching tench and 0% with perch giving the average 66% :)

The experimental paste – well, so far I’ve proved it was not as good as worm on the day but was as equally effective as prawn – but so far data gathered is very sparse and not enough to make a judgement on yet… so testing will continue over the rest of the year…

Next outing – hoping to get out on Tuesday – and probably looking at targeting roach… with the possibility of chub.