Tuesday 25th August and I headed back to my ‘new’ tench pool…
… arriving at around 0630 and electing to fish a ‘new’ swim to me, chosen due the weather forecast predicting heavy rain later in the day and thus I chose the swim closest to the gate back to the car for a quick escape if necessary – and rain it did…
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… the pictures being taken around midday … BEFORE the main deluge started at around 1300 and was still pouring as I starting packing away the tackle at 1500 and walking back to the car soaked like a drowning rat at 1600.
Was it worth it? YES!! Always worth it! LOL!
As usual I fished my usual worm/maggot bait on one ledger rod, and the ‘test bait’ rod was prawn baited and I ended the day with 3 tench of 3lb 8oz, 3lb 12oz and 3lb 13oz, plus had 2 tench get into the weed and throw the hook – well, actually ALL the tench got into the weed but the 3 landed I managed to land albeit complete with about an equal weight of weed festooning each one. Also had a few missed bites/twitches.
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Tackle talk…
I recently changed my lines from NGT DuraCast and NGT Camou over to Diawa Hyper Sensor and this was the first outing with those changed lines. Impressed with the Diawa actually, it handled beautifully, cut through the weed like a charm and far easier than the NGT lines to tighten up to the lead – despite using 1/2oz leads when I used the NGT stuff but only using 1/3oz with the Diawa on this trip. Early days but I think I will be sticking with the Diawa if all is as good in future use.
I actually changed lines due to seemingly unexplicable line failures at times – I remember thinking – and at this very same pool – that it seemed like there was a sharp edged metal sheet cutting the line at times esp in one swim ie barely enough pressure to bend the rod tip a bit and yet the line gave way. However, another local blogger who fishes the same water reported in his latest blog, and had a photo of, that a swan mussel had actually closed around his ledger weight … methinks now perhaps I was fishing over a mussel bed and getting line cut but dragging over the edges of mussels and/or their shells? Whatever,. The new Diawa feels better to me in any case – just see if the situation remains for a while…
AND … bite alarms… the ones I’ve been using up to now for several months have been Nash Siren S5Rs that I won in a magazine competition a while back – 2 wireless heads with receiver (£150 worth as the 3 components are £50 each in the shops – prize was actually valued at £206 as it included batteries – £6 each a pop in the shops – and a ‘presentation case’ (euphanism for extremely large padded case that one could pack with clothes for a weekend – so not really that useful))!! Alarms were ‘OK’ but too clever – seemed to have processing to detect line bites from proper bites, etc which drove me a little loopy at times as I’d see the bobbin popping up and down or rising very slowly but not a beep! Me, the line moves an inch, I want a beep!! Anyway, another fault to me was that the LED positioning wasn’t great – hard to see in bright daylight due to the way they were installed and the red LED’d one was impossible to see at all unless it was a very dull environment. So, I decided to improve the LED problem – and cutting a long story short, I buggered it up… and so had to get new alarms.. and, being short of the readies, I went for some cheaper ones – NGT VS ones (2 heads plus receiver) for <£32 – and these were also put into action for the first time – and behaved admirably/impeccably! Twitch of the line… ‘BEEEP!’, LEDs like mini-spotlights!! Like ‘em!! And survived that deluge of rain without mishap despite being out in it for 2 hours.
So on the tackle changes it seems like NGT is down one, but also up one!!:)
stevetheangler 