stevetheangler

From August 29th until September 12th we were on our Cyprus holiday – well, until the 13th really as the return flight, although it took off at around 2230 (Cyprus time) on the 12th, didn’t land at Birmingham Airport until 0130 (UK time) on the 13th, and after then getting the 0230 (actually came at 0255) coach into Wolverhampton and a taxi back to the house we didn’t actually get to bed until 0515.

Anyway, I managed to go fishing on two of the days over there…

The first of the days was an hour or so in total spent with a spinning rod and a blade spinner on two reservoirs. Nothing to report other than I had not a single follow never mind a take or capture. However, conditions weren’t the best with bright sunshine and both reservoirs, I was told, were 40 feet below normal level.

The second day was a 3 hour sea fishing trip on a boat – along with the parents-in-law-alike, brother-in-law-alike and Liz plus about 5 other anglers. The boat was anchored on a drift in three different areas over the course of the session and the family all caught – and think the others did too – but not anything of size. Most had sea perch but Liz’s Dad did best of all with the greatest number of those (6, IIRC) plus he also had a mousefish which dentally was similar to a piranha!

So, a couple of enjoyable, if not physically rewarding sessions.

And whilst away I bought a Deeper Sonic Pro Plus depth/fish finder to replace my old ‘Lucky’ one. The new one is more capable with a better display and also has the facility to be able to create and save contour maps of pools which I’ll be making use of. I’ve not managed to use it yet as I’ve not had a chance to go fishing since my return home for various reasons – too much re-sorting of tackle needed meant that a planned outing on Friday 15th had to be postponed – and now next Monday’s (18th) planned trip has also been aborted as the car needs to be looked at for a scraping noise and its booked in for that and for the annual service… so now looking at Friday 22nd for the first trip out.

I have put the interim time to use though – gathered worms from the worm pit into the holding box in the garage, made some pop-up sticks for my pike baits ready for the October start of piking, made some long (12”), thin (1cm) pike floats, ground hemp/wheat/birdseed in my new grinder for groundbait additions, made up some hemp infused oil also for use in groundbait and as a flavour/dip, sorted out and filled some new 60ml bottles with various glugs… and still some work to do with changing line on the floater rod, prepping the pike rods for the new season, mixing up my dry groundbait mix (on last bag), etc….

And I’ve located a good local source of pellets, crumb and groundbait mixes – I bought 2 x 3.5Kg bags of 2mm pellets for £5.50 each, and also got Liz 2 x 2Kg bags of red groundbait for £1.50 each. Several people had mentioned/recommended the place to me over a time and I managed to get there this week … and as Arnie said ‘I’ll be back!’ without a doubt when new supplies are needed… A one-man operation it seems, working out of a shed and a portacabin and he actually makes the groundbait/crumb himself (available as white and brown crumb and groundbait in red, black, brown, yellow and green). Don’t think he does mail order though so you need to visit in person…