stevetheangler

…. and so, as I’d said we would in my previous posting, on Monday 12th February Liz and I set off at 0800 for that small pool (KF-WL1) in the almost wilds of Shropshire … with remnants of previous light snow covered in frost on the ground and a frozen over windscreen on the car to defrost before the journey could start. Sounds like it was cold but it actually felt much warmer than the previous few days … and on arrival at the pool I had to take my hat and jacket off whilst prepping the gear, etc – and never put them back on at all afterwards for the whole day (well, 1500, when we packed up but even then the jacket, etc were consigned to the back seats)…

We arrived poolside after a journey of around half an hour and, after passing frozen puddles and ponds in equal number to those unfrozen over it was good to see the average kept up as half the pool had a thin layer of ice and the other half (which is where we’d wanted to fish anyway) being ice free.

We were quite lucky really as I went with the site’s owner to investigate a car that had been stood over at the larger member’s only pool for a couple of days … and no-one spotted nearby to it … and as a couple of years ago there had been an incident when someone overnight fishing during the winter used a gas heater within his bivvy and presumably closed its doors as he was luckily discovered comatose having subdued to carbon monoxide poisoning just in time to be rescued and ‘healed’ the owner was worried about finding someone over there who’d had an heart attack or other issue. As it was it was an abandoned bogged down in the mud van. Enquiries led to finding out that the van man was coming back later that day to recover it… Anyway, to get back to the original point of this paragraph, were I was saying about Liz and I being ‘lucky’ … to the extent that the entire member’s pool was 100% covered in ice (ummm, grammar … tautism? ‘100%’ and ‘entire’?) … so if we’d intended to fish there we’d have been way down on our luck!

So, back to the fishing… Liz and I set up our tackles for the day in a sort of mirror image to our usual ways. I’m usually the one that floatfishes whilst Liz sets up and fishes her feeder rods … but on this session, due to the cold, I thought it would be possibly the best to put a static bait on the bottom and use a small feeder with fishmeal and dead maggot as an attractor … meanwhile Liz had set up her float rod :)

It was 1000 as we made our first casts and by 1100 neither of us had had a single nibble or nudge … and I wandered over to have a word with Liz … and complimented her on her set up … light waggler float perfectly shotted and the rod in rests perfectly angled down with the tip 1/4” from the water’s surface to sink the line and the butt perfectly aligned to the hand… perfection! Or so it seemed… as Liz said that the float/rig was still drifting slightly on the light breeze … so I asked her if she’d set her shotting/depth so that the bottom shot dragged the bottom to act as an anchor … and asked how deep she was fishing … and she responded by indicating the measure between her two index fingers … 18 inches! Now the water here is around 4’-5’, so I reset her float, etc to put the bottom shot just touching bottom and left her to it again… I’d hardly got back to my seat when I get the call ‘Fish on!’ … but before I could reach her the hook had pulled free. However, that was the start of a 15 minute ‘hot spell’ and the was the first of 4 casts that resulted in fish on the hook … firstly that lost fish, second cast resulted in a decent carp which threw the hook at the net, third cast saw the landing of a 6lb 15oz common carp, and the fourth cast a small perch of a few ounces. All on maggot.

Meanwhile, back on the feeder, my bait was being totally ignored despite ringing the changes from maggot to worm to bread (compressed to sit on bottom and also fluffy to ‘pop-up’). So, come 1200, I decided “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” and put away the feeder rod and tackled up my float rod … however, despite my best efforts I still could not buy a bite for love or money all the way through to the end of the session. However, Liz managed another small perch just after the mad 15 minutes and then around 1430 had another common carp of 4lb 11oz … followed just pre-1500 by another good fish (and Liz reckons it would have been the best fish of the day) but suffered a snap-off due a suspected knot/fault in the line.

And, as we’d decided to pack in a 1500 anyway, it wasn’t worth re-tackling her up (in fact, I’ve redone the rod for her this morning ready for her next outing) and so we packed away the gear and headed to our local alehouse.

So, completely destroyed by Liz on this session (first fish, last fish, biggest, smallest, most species, biggest of species, etc) – although I think I can grab a minute bit of glory in that my tackle adjustment put her on that winning road LOL. 

6lb 15oz Common Carp

4lb 11oz Common Carp

 WATER TEMPS:

PLANS:

Well, I’ve decided to go for a Thursday deadbaiting trip to one of my pike waters… tackle has already been sorted ready this morning for that so I just need to resolve baits, flasks and butties now really.