stevetheangler

Tuesday 5th February I set off as planned for Patshull Pool and a session of pike fishing having been told the previous day that there were just a few islands of ice drifting and that they were rapidly thawing…

So I was a bit disappointed on arrival at 0800 to find the entire lake looked completely iced over – well it’s 75 acres so maybe not all but at least all the area that could be viewed from the lodge area and from the roadway that runs alongside the pool for as far as the eye could see…

So a change of plan and I reverted to a pool (Pike Water 5) that by travelling the ‘back way’ up country roads wasn’t actually too distant and I arrived there by 0830…

It was better here – the far side of the pool was frozen over but the near side (which is where I tend to fish anyway) was completely clear…

The day was relatively warm (10’C) given the cold patch we’d recently been through and I had to shed my padded wax cotton jacket very quickly although from midday the fingers started to feel the cold and I had to put the fleecey gloves on.

Half a dozen cormorants took off on my arrival – which raised hopes as, like seagulls, where there’s corms there’s fish!

A few casts around with the Deeper Sonar showed that most of the half-a-dozen or so detected fish were in the deeper (ca 14’-15’) water and located with a foot or so of the bottom.

See the scans HERE…..

So, I set up my two ledger rods – I’d prefer fishing with a float at this water but as I’d intended to fish Patshull I’d loaded my ledger rods instead – both with 30lb braid and double size 2 double hooks on 30lb wire traces and with 3oz leads. I use heavy leads as it alleviates the need to detect drop-back bites – I use the free spool facility on the reels set to the absolute minimum pressure with the line between rod and lead as taut as possible thus any pull on the line in any direction will pull line from the reel rather than move the lead and thus activates the standard front alarms. On one rod I used a popped up ‘orange fish’, on the other a standard static ledgered sardine.

First casts were made around 0920 … and by packing up time at 1430 I’d not had so much as a single nudge on either rod despite ‘searching’ around the area including the shallower margins.

So, I’m four sessions into 2019 and still not had one fish this year… Ho hum….

But full of hope … and with another change of plan … for the next session … which is now a canal maggot/worm/bread session in search of perch, bream and chub and the possible gudgeon, roach, rudd or ruffe .. or carp tomorrow (Thursday 7th). weather is supposedly going to be brighter and warmer too…

WATER TEMPS:

2.9’C rising to 3.2’C over the day…

UPDATES:

A couple of things…

I said in the last post that the tripod comes with a bluetooth remote control to fire the phone/camera shutter … and it does … but it seems that mine came adrift of its holding port yesterday. Not a problem as my primary use of the tripod is to hold my phone when using the Deeper Sonar to scan the water depths, etc … and if used for my camera I’d probably use my standard camera in self timer mode which allows up to 6 shots at 2 second intervals which start at a predetermined interval after shutter release (eg start 30 seconds after button press to allow return to fish, pick up and pose – and then take 6 shots, one every 2 seconds). BUT it would be good to have a remote for those one-off/unique occasions (wedding selfies, etc?) so I’ve put a message on the club’s forum and FB page in case it gets found … but also I’ve discovered that similar items can be bought from eBay for around £3 (in UK, cheaper from China of course :)) and I’ve ordered a couple, one pink one and one white one so easy to spot! Probably not fit the holder on the tripod but seeing as the original seems to have escaped from that then probably better in my jacket pocket?

Navel/tongue bars … not as good as I hoped. The 25mm curved version arrived today and they barely fit across the smaller of the 3 sizes of scull lip AFTER straightening out … and possibly too fiddly in cold weather to use if the fingers are numbing? I’ll have to check out B&Q for fine but lengthy nut and bolts?