stevetheangler

Tuesday 16th June 2015 I headed off on my first visit to a Kinver Freeliners’ water – the chosen water being a 200 year old 9 acre estate lake that had not been coarse fished for many years and which had been a trout water in the past.

I arrived at the water at around 0645 and quickly discovered it wasn’t a water for a fishing barrow user – the path that lead around the west side of the lake was quite sloped upwards making the barrow very hard work plus of course the pool stayed at the same level meaning one had to take the barrow down to the chosen swim which was not feasible as the way was through woodland scattered with fallen branches, trees and very uneven… the east bank was accessible by walking along the pool’s dam (which is actually a road) up to a gate and into a field and then down to the pool – and notice I said ‘up’ and ‘down’ … so really unless super-fit a barrow load of tackle is NOT the ideal…

However, there was one swim directly at the car park – and obviously that is where I fished – with the dam wall to my right hand side and open water in front and to the left.

Once at the water’s edge the exceptional clarity of the water was very apparent – high quality tap water crystal clear – and that the water bottom was extensively covered in elodea (the type of water plant you would buy for oxygenating your aquarium or garden pond) in the water…

And so, I started off with a light baiting up of the areas I decided to fish with my base crumb mix with added particles (corn, hemp, wheat, etc) – one area to the left towards the overhanging bushes on the dam/road bank and the other straight out in front around 10-20 yards… and a few small ‘pults of maggot layed over the top.

Tackle – my two 11’ Barbel Avon rods, 8lb line, 1/2oz bombs on a 2” free running wire link and size 4 hooks. The dam rod was baited with bread, the open water one with luncheon meat.

First casts were made at 0745 but by 1000 there had been little action at all on either rod – just a few small nudges indicative of line bites rather than interest in the baits – and so I decided to try a change of baits and changed the dam rod to cheesepaste and the open water rod to lobworm… and although the change to cheesepaste made no difference and still only small occasional nudges on that rod all though until I packed in at 1600, the change to worm made an instant impression.. with the line pulling away before the lead even had time to settle and the first of many perch was duly landed. And when I changed from worm on a size 4 hook to bunches of 5-6 maggots on a size 12 there was no change to the effectiveness – and I did not once ‘pult out any more maggots or worm the only introduction of those to the water being when I catapulted out the initial few before tackling up. And due to the speed of bites I stopped putting the rod into the rests and instead just touch legered :)

So, I reckon I had 30-40 perch over the day – mostly 4oz-8oz in size with the biggest at 12oz plus a single bonus rudd of 1oz-2oz. And all the fish were in magnificent condition with vivid colouration and the perches fins were of a vibrant blood red colour in the main.

So, an enjoyable sunny day’s outing albeit no tussle with monsters – and I also had visitors to the pool in the shape of a cormorant and a heron…