After an enforced long break of around 4 weeks due to weather (heavy snow, wind, rain and freezing conditions) and other considerations I finally got back to the water for what I thought when heading out was the final day of the ‘season’ (March 14th) but I’d got dates wrong and it was actually March 13th. 13th?? Should have stayed at home – although, other than for ‘the calamity’, it was quite a pleasant day weatherwise after earlier light drizzle which was minimal anyway, and a nice bright sunny wind free (although could have done with the breeze as I’ll explain in due course).
So, I’d decided to head off to one of my clubs’ pools (KF-BP) for a final session pre-close of water lure session. The pool is owned by the National Trust and, although there is no longer a legal close season on stillwaters – with a few exceptions, the Trust, as owners, implement their own annual ‘close season’ of March 15th to June 15th on this pool and the others on the estate.
So, I arrived at the car park at probably 0830 to find another car parked up and my heart sank a little as possibly the owner thereof had stolen a lead on me to the ‘hotspot’ – but as it happened I found myself alone on the 19 acre pool as that angler was actually carp fishing on one of the other pools.
By 0900 I’d walked around the pool to my desired start location next to the pool’s boathouse… and all was looking extremely good…
I tackled up my two lure rods – both with 30lb braid and 30lb wire lure traces – and one rod was ‘baited’ with a 16g blade spinner (Zebco luminous twin bladed) with which I’d had reasonable success at this venue and the other with a 5” sinking single bodied plug. And then I spent 30-45 mins casting these around but to no effect. So, as not used to the exercise, my back felt in need of a rest and I decided to set up my Deeper Sonar Pro Plus fishfinder on the 3rd rod I’d taken specifically for the purpose and have a cast about to (a) test it as I’d had trouble with my original and I’d sent it back to be checked and although no problem was found they sent me a brand new one and (b) to try to build a contour mapping of that part of the pool which this particular fish/depth finder has a facility to do.
So… all was going well… the device was working correctly, the mapping was taking shape, etc … when disaster struck! I cast out the device which was attached to 25lb mono line – I’d used 30-40 braid for this before with the fishfinder and with my spod/spombs but after the loss of spombs when the line snagged on the cast and the stretch free braid gave way under the shock I switched to the use of mono whereby the stretch was meant to act as a shock absorber – but again the line snagged somehow – and the line parted with a crack – and the fishfinder sailed out to the centre of the pool where it sat virtually unmovingly for the next hour and a half due to lack of breeze or any water movement – it probably moved 10-15 feet one way then about 10 feet back towards where it started and then started again the other direction and when I gave up the ghost it was about 4-5 feet from where it had landed in the water originally – and about 200 yards to the nearest land in the direction of travel. I even tried casting out a big heavy floating plug beyond and behind it and then walking along the bank so that the line looped around the finder and slowly retrieving to try to drag it towards me but only managed to get the looping right once and then once I’d got the loop to the finder the lure just slid around it with hardly any movement (1-2” at most) of the finder at all…
So come 1130 I decided I wasn’t going to get it back on the day and set off for home … but leaving £200 worth of fish finder just sitting out there is not good so I’m hoping overnight it’ll have drifted to shore and someone having a last day at the pool will find it … or tomorrow I’ll pop over with my landing net and have a walk around and see if I can spot it washed up anywhere… Not easy to spot though as it’s black and sits low in the water and looks like a small bubble from even a short distance – and the battery will have died by now so use of it’s mapping app on the mobile phone won’t locate it either. Bit of a needle in haystack situation.
And in all the time (2 hours+) the finder was in use and then sat out in the water lost it registered just 4 fish in total …..
Anyway, next fishing trip? Not sure, weather is supposedly turning back to snow and sub-zero temps again next week so I’ll have to see. Not good either as Liz and I are due a week’s holiday in Yorkshire in 3 weeks time – camping! Come on, warm up!!
On the agenda, I want to get a couple pike fishing sessions in on my other clubs’ waters – they recently introduced a ‘no pike fishing from 1st April to 30th September’ rule on all their waters – not that it affects me really as I self impose that rule on myself anyway. Also to visit another couple of pools and have a couple of canal sessions, one bait fishing and the other lure fishing, for perch and chub.
stevetheangler 
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