stevetheangler

Tuesday 19th July 2016, and I’m at a club tench and silvers water (B) hoping for a few tench, bream, barbel, perch and possible crucian carp thoughout the day.

You can see to the left-hand side of the picture the island that houses an automatic winter pellet feeder to ensure that the fish have feed during that little fished period – and also the solar panel powered automatic aerator system that was doing sterling work during the day… and the island also has netting walls below the water line to act as a refuge for the fish from cormorants…

As it was a gloriously sunny day, flat calm – and temperatures reached 32C over the day – I elected to float fish using a bodied waggler shotted to catch fish on the drop but also set to about 6″ overdepth to fish the bottom once settled. So 13′ float rod, 6lb main line, size 12 hook and a 4AAA+ bodied waggler was the equipment of the day. The swim was fed with balls of my usual mix before the start of the session and this was added to during the day…. Bait was mainly worm and maggot … other baits – meat, bread, corn, prawn. etc – that were tried were totally ignored and not one solitary nibble ensued with any of those despite being left out in the water for 30-60 minutes…

Anyway, first cast and first fish – a perch of 3-4oz…. and so the day continued and at the end of the day about 7 hours later I must have had at least 60-70 perch of similar size and a couple of rudd of around 2-3oz … but I was unable to attract anything bigger despite, as I said, trying change baits for lengthy periods. Anyway, I fared better than the previous two visits to this pool when I totally blanked without a single touch…

But I do think I demonstrated the fallacy of the myth that returning fish to the water causes the catch rate to drop or even stop completely as the returned fish somehow communicate to their companions that there is danger or similar… all my fish were returned immediately in the water at my feet and well within 20′ of where I was actually placing my baits but that didn’t seem to affect the catch rate one iota… and I had many more bites than captures … and several drop offs on the wind in too…

As the sun rose over the trees at midday,  large shoals of 2″-3″ rudd were surface active dappling large areas of the water but I only saw 3-4 bigger bow waves and jumping fish at all during the whole day which is a bit unusual on this water in the kind of weather experienced.

So, next session is set with Liz tomorrow (22nd) down another club pool….