Session 16 – A Water Back From Exile…..

OK …. a few preliminary comments before the actual fishing ‘report’…

Liz has gone to Cyprus for a week from Tuesday 8th … which means I’ve got unhindered access to the car. Normally Liz needs the car for work so I only have easy access on either Mondays or Tuesdays when its her day off and often fish together and on Fridays when she goes into work late and I take the car as she catches the bus into work and then I go and pick her up when she finishes at 2000/2030. But as I say, over the course of her holiday I get the car full time… and so far I’ve had three sessions out on the banks of the waters with another two planned for Monday and Tuesday next week. Tuesday night Liz flies back, landing at around 0200 on Wednesday morning and I’ll be back to my normal days from then on…ie the following session will be on Friday 18^th May…

SO… this is my session of Wednesday 9^th May 2018.

I visited a club pool (AA-KP) I’d not been to for a couple of years… 22^nd April 2016 in fact, and reading my blog entry for that session that was also 2 years after the previous visit there!

To save re-stating the reasons why I’m cutting and pasting my relevant comments from that blog here:

“The reason I’d not fished it for that length of time is due to the fact of a massive successful carp spawning season in 2012 – plus the pool is used by the farmer for abstraction to water his crops in dry spells – and in 2012 he drew out between 5,000,000 – 8,000,000 gallons which meant that the water level dropped by around 8 feet (and was almost the same in summer of 2015) – no problem for the fish as the water is saucer shaped with around 11’-14’ in the centre and at the dam end of the pool it is 28’+ although the other, shallow, end of the pool is only 3’ deep when the pool is full… Anyway, 2012 seemed to provide excellent spawning for the carp as in 2013 it was impossible NOT to catch 6oz carp of all varieties. In fact, so impossible that it became annoying because ALL you could catch were 6oz carp… even soft baits (luncheon meat, paste, etc), ledgered, never reached with the bait being attacked as it hit the water and being taken, or stolen, as it sank WHEREVER and WHENEVER you cast – edge of pool, channel, to left, to right,… and even 16mm boilies were whittled down to a bare hook well inside 5 minutes… and come 2014 it was basically the same but, of course, the size of fish had increased to 10-12oz… Anyway, as it was impossible to get to the better level of fish I stopped visiting the pool – and yesterday was the first return since then…”

UPDATE: Reading the rest of that blog entry it seemed that the 2016 session was not too bad actually with better quality of fish being caught – and if I’d remembered that perhaps I’d have returned sooner – but as it was it was that earlier ‘tiddler’ session that I recalled… DOH!!

SO…

Leaving the house just before 0550 I arrived at the pool at around 0615 and made my first casts at around 0700 fishing 2 rods.

I had intended to ‘spomb’ out a carpet of groundbait and particles but discovered on arrival that the handle to the ‘spomb’ rod had snapped off in transit so g’bait had to sent out with my ‘flinger’ (actually one of those tennis ball launchers for dogs) and particles by catapult. Both rods were set up for ledgering, one with 8lb main line, 1/2oz lead and size 4 hook baited with bread fished over the groundbaited area in open water, the other rod was also with 8lb main line but with a 1/8 lead and size 10 hook baited with worm over a maggot fed area in the margins…. and first fish of the day came from this marginal area at around 0730 – a tench of a couple of ounces… A little later, after a period of small plucks on the margin rod I changed the weight to 1/2oz and the hook to a size 4 and fished both rods out in the open water with butterscotch flavoured paste on this rod…

Over the course of the day four common carp were captured of 5-15, 6-02, 6-08 and 7-00. All bar the 6-08, which was caught on the paste, were caught on bread.

I also catapulted out, over the day, a number of floating freebies as there are a number of grass carp in this pool with weight in the upper teens but any sign of rising fish were few pre-8am and after non-existant. I did note that any freebies taken were dog biscuits and not a thing touched the marshmallows also sent out.

I packed in fishing at 1430 in order to get home to unpack and to prepare baits, etc ready for another early morning session the next day, Thursday 10^th…