stevetheangler

Before starting the tales of my latest session on Friday, 2nd June, I’m doing an update of previous matters…

Well, on session 23 I had the misfortune to leave behind my recently acquired Wychwood Pocket Pod – converts a set of banksticks into a rod pod basically and the two parts together fit easily into my jacket pocket – see Session 22’s posting for all the details. Fantastic device that is so easy and light to carry that they were intended to be kept in my tackle permanently in order to deal with those unexpected times when standard bank sticks won’t cut it (wooden stagings, slabbed pegs, hard frozen ground, etc)  – and will do so now as they were found at the pool and returned to me! Fantastic club with honest members! I’ve tried out various devices to deal with the awkward situations from using light tripods (too unstable) to full but light pods (bulky and still extra unneeded weight) and nothing has come near to the functionality, etc of the pocket pods.

AND … I’ve obtained some fluorescent yellow 2cm wide duct tape and 2cm wide luminous tape which I have wrapped on to the pod bits to highlight them – now highly visible in light or dark!! :) Other mislayable items will be dealt with similarly …

So, on to the latest session (or to be trendy, ‘sesh’)…. which was to a club pool and, in fact, designated to be that club’s premiere carp pool albeit containing many other species of good size including a solitary 8lb bream! My intention being to fish one rod for tench/perch/etc and put out a sleeping carp rod in case…

I arrived at the pool at around 0630-0645 to find that no-one else was there – surprising as usually there are one or two of the club’s night syndicate bivvied up, but, I think, one other angler arrived later but he may actually have been bivvied up over the other side of the island and out of sight from my location and anyway had left before I did…

So, having the freedom of, at least, most of the pool I chose to fish next to an overhanging willow under the cover of which I have previously managed to winkle out a few perch, eels, etc on occasion…

The water was crystal clear – I’ve seen murkier tap water!

And at this point that pocket pod came in very useful as usually I have no trouble with my standard screw-point bank sticks to get the rod rests in securely but since my last visit it appears that the pegs have had a makeover of well compacted hardcore covered over in shredded tree bark – looks great but can you screw (never mind push) a bank stick in? Nah – so out came the pocket pod components and rod rests sorted in a minute or two! :)

So, I baited up under the willow with dead maggots, a few particles and some crumb – and spombed out a larger quantity of the same further out into the open water of the pool directly in front and proceeded to tackle up with two rods… one with a running 1/4oz flat pear lead and a size 12 hook to be ledgered under the willow and the other with a size 6 and a running 1/2oz arseley bomb.

The ‘willow’ rod was fished with worm/maggot for the whole session and the ‘carp’ rod fished with bread, meat and sweetcorn until just after midday when the bomb was removed and fished ‘floater’ style using bread and dog biscuits as the carp were seen to be top feeding at that time… and then for the last hour (1430-1530) reverted back to the ledgering as the top feeding fish had moved well out of range and my floaters weren’t attracting any attention.

Right…. now this pool is a difficult pool for most people (including me!) … but its absolutely heaving with fish … some years ago a test netting produced such a haul on a single pass that the net couldn’t be raised from the water with the weight of silvers, etc… and yet matches on there are won literally with ounces rather than pounds – albeit with a few pole line smashes caused by the large carp! Why? Well, its a tale of cause-effect-cause… the pool is highly rich in natural fish foods and thus the fish are well fed and used to that diet and so it needs for the fish to be ‘weaned over’ to recognise and accept anglers’ baits … BUT as its so hard to catch there very few people (other than the carp anglers’) visit and so very little bait suitable for the general run of fish (20mm boilies aren’t going to catch many roach for example) is being introduced … so fish aren’t getting enough bait to ‘switch on’ to it… Catch 22 in essence!

From the above you will then see that I visited the pool with low expectations of even getting a twitch and even less a proper bite, never mind landing a fish… but over the session I had several twitches, four good takes and landed four fish of which one was a Personal Best … hence the title of the entry!

A couple of twitches proceeded a slow rise of the ‘willow’ rod’s bobbin at 1100 and the strike met the solid resistance of a tench – duly landed, weighed and photo’d – 3lb 5oz… also later there came a few more mini-twitches followed by a healthy steady rise of the bobbin but a strike met just fresh air…

And on the ‘carp’ rod a couple of twitches on ledgered bread did not lead to anything further but on the switch over to fishing floating crust a carp was eventually in the net at 1400 … and it was a new PB mirror carp of 14lb 4oz. Later, another take on floating crust met resistance and the ‘bump, bump’ of a head shake but within literally 2 seconds the line went sickeningly slack and the line had snapped close to the hook… after no further action to floating baits and as the surface feeding fish had moved out of range from my peg I switched back to ledgered baits for my final hour on the water but without any interest from the fish.

3lb 5oz Tench

14lb 4oz Mirror Carp (New PB)

So, at 1530 I started to pack up – and at 1535 the skies opened and I got back to the car absolutely soaked to the skin … there had actually been quite a few ‘heavy’ showers during the day as evidenced by the spotting on the pool’s surface BUT those were not actually wetting, never felt on the skin, clothing not damp, etc . However, this final shower REALLY was the real thing!