stevetheangler

Tuesday 18th August and I headed off to one of the club’s pools (WL) I’ve not visited for a while in search of the usual ‘anything but hopefully not carp’….

I arrived on site at around 0630, selected my swim for the day – which just happened to be the nearest swim to the car almost although I had the entire pool to myself – and it stayed like until I left at 1700 – and did the usual baiting up, setting up station and finally tackling up.

I fished 2 ledger rods on the alarms – both 8lb line but one with a size 12 hook baited with worm/maggot/worm+maggot over the day, the other a size 10 initially baited with meat for the first 3 hours before swapping over to sweetcorn for another 3 hours before changing the hook to a size 6 with a prawn for the rest of the session.

The maggot/worm rod was much in action over the entire day and I landed 20+ perch between 1oz and 8oz plus a small rudd. I also dropped off a perch of around 12oz at the bankside and had a hook pull on what felt would have been the best fish of the day. For the last 2 hours of the day I took the rod off the alarm and slack line/touch legered which resulted in an increased hooking percentage plus the fish were of a larger average size.

But, for the entire six hours that I had meat/sweetcorn on the hook of the other rod I did not have so much as  even one touch or nibble. However, I had made a last minute addition to my baits of some prawns I’d found forgotten in my bait freezer and so I tried one of those… and I had a great take with the bobbin rising slowly and surely to the butt rather than the ‘shooting to the butt’ or the trembly little jerks of suspicious fish…. however, the bite was missed as I was landing a fish on the other rod … and a little later the same scenario … but on the third take on the prawn I was ready – perfect bite, strike…nothing. Same happening again on the fourth take made me change the hook from the size 10 I’d been using for the meat/corn over to a more suitable size 6. Next bite, missed again – hook had twisted and point was buried in the prawn… so the prawn hooking was changed to ensure point remained clear of the bait… next take was aborted before I could react … and then  over the last 10-15 minutes before packing up there was no further action.

A bit of a unexpected thing happened – worm rod had been baited and cast out as I decided I needed a pee in the undergrowth behind my peg – returned to my seat just as the bobbin started to rise and struck into a perch of around 8oz but, as it was being reeled in, it came off the hook and left a small <1oz perch on there. Whilst attending to the call of nature the mini-perch must have taken the bait and then got taken itself by the larger one… anyway, smaller perch was unharmed in any way and swam off quite happily after unhooking…