So it was Monday, 22nd May, when Liz and I set off for the water’s edge at a member’s only pool in Shropshire (WL2) at 0700, arriving at around 0740…
A beautiful morning on arrival…
… and, as first arrivals we elected to fish our usual swims on the small peninsula that falls on the boundary between what was the original pool to the right and the relatively new enlargement of it to the left.. with me fishing off the end of the peninsula off to the ‘new’ side and Liz at it’s shoulder fishing down the new section of the pool.
Usual preliminaries and pre-baiting carried out I tackled up my 13’ float rod with a 5AAA antenna waggler set up to fish lift-method style – 6lb main line straight through to a size 12 Kamasan Animal Barbless hook, baited with worm/maggot cocktails apart from an half hour period when I tried a small cube of meat with no joy. Liz set up two ledger rods with feeders fished with a variety of baits … luncheon meat, Old Ghost bloodworm flavoured sausage, sweetcorn, etc but had no bites from any of those … and maggot…. and then later switched the cage feeders to maggot feeders…
Anyway, I was first off the mark hooking into a small silver of around 4-6oz which unfortunately threw the hook before landing and then shortly after I landed an eel also of around 4-6oz …
… but other than that I only managed couple of ‘fingerling’ perch … but did miss a larger fish … maybe a 2lb’er, or possibly even a 20lb’er … I shall never know. Someone else had just arrived at the pool and I heard him speaking to Liz behind me and so I turned around to see but they were out of my line of sight and so I turned back to the rod … and the rod was bent over and the reel was back-winding … grabbed the rod and struck … but felt absolutely nothing… oh well!…
Liz started off quietly with not a touch for several hours and then had switched over to maggot feeders… and then had a good fish on and called for me to be ready to net. However, just before I got there the hook pulled free…. but not too later I was called into netting action again and this time nice 12lb 13oz mirror carp was safely landed…
… and at this point Liz decided that we needed to have separate categories in our PB/Big Fish lists for Common, Mirror and Leather Carp rather than the single generic Carp (King) one. Think it was triggered by her current PB carp being 18lb 1oz – a common – and she wanted this one on a list! And so now she has a new PB Mirror Carp.
Anyway, after dealing with the mirror, she wound in her other rod to re-cast out as I’d suck that rod’s tip to prevent the lines tangling whilst playing the fish and within a clump of weed she’d picked up on the retrieve a small fingerling perch was also found fairly hooked.
And a bit later she also had a nice perch of 15oz… also a new PB increasing from her previous 14oz!
And at 1630 we decided to call it a day and head to a local hostelry for beers, scratchings, and mini-cheddars!
Next outing plans – well, hoping for a Friday outing back to the reservoir of my previous trip out and aiming to go closer to the dam wall where I believe the water is deeper and where the bream may be hanging out – well, there was a YouTube video I saw of the venue and bream were being caught around that area… :)
stevetheangler 
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