stevetheangler

Friday, April 22nd, I headed to a club pool (KP) that I’d not fished for a couple of years – the main species in there is carp but there are also roach, rudd, tench, chub, pike and bream.

The reason I’d not fished it for that length of time is due to the fact of a massive successful carp spawning season in 2012 – plus the pool is used by the farmer for abstraction to water his crops in dry spells – and in 2012 he drew out between 5,000,000 – 8,000,000 gallons which meant that the water level dropped by around 8 feet (and was almost the same in summer of 2015) – no problem for the fish as the water is saucer shaped with around 11’-14’ in the centre and at the dam end of the pool it is 28’+ although the other, shallow, end of the pool is only 3’ deep when the pool is full… Anyway, 2012 seemed to provide excellent spawning for the carp as in 2013 it was impossible NOT to catch 6oz carp of all varieties. In fact, so impossible that it became annoying because ALL you could catch were 6oz carp… even soft baits (luncheon meat, paste, etc), ledgered, never reached with the bait being attacked as it hit the water and being taken, or stolen, as it sank WHEREVER and WHENEVER you cast – edge of pool, channel, to left, to right,… and even 16mm boilies were whittled down to a bare hook well inside 5 minutes… and come 2014 it was basically the same but, of course, the size of fish had increased to 10-12oz… Anyway, as it was impossible to get to the better level of fish I stopped visiting the pool – and yesterday was the first return since then…

So, I arrived at around 0800 and as I was the only one there – as, again, I was all day apart from another member who came to look at the pool and chat for 5-10 minutes – I easily got to my usual swim, a sheltered bay facing the dam wall with a weed/reed bed (looks like reed and amphibious bistort are appearing there) along the right hand bank heading out to the dam (pre-drying out in 2012 it was a lily patch that sheltered perch but that never returned and was devoid of all plant-life but seems new stuff is starting to emerge although not lilies – and I’ve not seen a perch on the pool since that drying out either :( but hopefully the new plant material will draw them back to the area.).

Usual pre-tackle prep (groundbaited, mats set out, camera set up, net set up, …) and then the 2 ledger rods were set up and cast into position … one rod with size 12 hook baited with dendro worm and maggot cast alongside the new emergent greenery, the other one with size 6 hook baited with lob worm initially but then switched to bread later cast out into deeper water (ca 11’) towards the dam. Also a few floating dog biscuits and bread crusts were scattered over the water surface to see if anything was interested in surface baits.

Over the next few hours the worm/maggot rod was subjected to a lot of small twitches – presumably small fish but nothing of essence and the lobworm/bread rod was virtually inactive and the floating testers were getting attention from fish of around 6” or so it appeared… but at 1300 one larger piece of floating bread disappeared in a ‘cloop and swirl’ and this was the start of what seemed to be a ‘mad half hour’ as I wound in the 2 ledger rods and placed a piece of crust on my ‘floating bait’ rod and cast that out… and within 5-10 minutes I had a common carp of 4-04 on the bank – another 5 minutes on the crust and a 4lb 11oz common was landed – and followed 10 minutes later by another common, time taking the scales down to 8lb 13oz…

I also lost 2 other carp on hook pulls, one in the emerging plant bed, and also had 2 or three missed takes… but after about 1345 all went fairly quiet again – the main action thereafter being the attempts to detract/deter a mallard and a coot from my floating bread bait to which they seemed endlessly attracted despite several free offerings also being the area…

And so it remained until 1500 when I packed in for the day…

The ‘perfumed garden’ of the title? Well, last Sunday there was a club work party day on this pool and several of the swims were re-built with log edgings and shredded bark covering – and this was the largest of the swims done on the day. Now it seems that the bark used was primarily pine as the aromas were definitely ‘pine fresh’ as it says on the bottle usually! :) Actually quite heady stuff – and the level was also probably boosted by the big stock pile not too far from the back of the swim… Quite pleasant but I should think also quite bait-tainting if bait and bark got in contact – as my hands did from time to time…

TEMPS:

Water: 12.3C rising to 13.1C over the day…

TEMP TRENDS: