stevetheangler

Monday 11th march, exactly one week later than my last planned trip was meant to be due to commitments and weather, I ventured out to a club pool (AA-GH) hoping to engage with a few bream and chub – and the inevitable carp.

I was the first arrival although I was closely followed by another angler a few minutes later but we were the only people on the pool for the day…

Air temps were a bit cool (ca 4’C) but felt even cooler in the northerly breeze – however it was a bright sunny day and I’d taken my 60” oval brolly which provides 270’ protection from the elements and when I orientated it I arranged the sun to be shining directly in the front opening and created a suntrap – and it worked so well that I had to shed two tiers of clothing as I was so warm initially!

My chosen swim faced the end of an island with an overhanging bush (usually good for chub) and open water which is usually good for bream (casting towards the conifer in front of the house in the photos)….

Usual mishaps started quickly … I found I’d left my rod pods at home … and also I’d not got my spare pocket pods which turn 5 banksticks into a pod (4 for legs and a long one to connect the back and front) … and my alarms seemed to be sticking a bit as a bit of mud from a previous outing had got on to the rollers… Alarms in the end worked well enough not that they had to do much on the day … and the rod rest situation was coped with by individual rests at front and rear on both rods, the ground being soft enough to insert them despite there being a hardcore base just a couple of inches under the surface but still glad that I use screw-tip rests that could work their way through the hardcore as simple push/hammer points wouldn’t have coped at all.

I eventually cast in at around 0820 using two rods with frame feeders loaded with crumb/dead maggot/hemp – one rod with bread on a size 4 hook cast to the open water, the other with 2 worms on a size 10 hook cast to the overhanging bush.

Whilst waiting for action I then decided to set up my Deeper Sonar for use later as I’d not used it over this part of the pool before so I set up the rod and ‘ball’ and went to test all was OK – which is when I found I’d not got the Deeper application installed on my phone – must have been uninstalled for some reason… so the set up was put to one side…

Then at 0850 the bread baited rod’s alarm burst into life and I was into what I was hoping was, and felt like, a good sized bream but on landing it was a common carp of 5lb 10oz… still a nice fish nevertheless.

At this point I realised I’d not set my camera/tripod up – hence the non-selfie photo – and when I went to take the photo it seemed the camera’s battery pack was depleted – a minor inconvenience as I carry a couple of charged spares and only takes a few seconds to switch over. Fish returned, camera/tripod was setup ready for the next capture – YEP! Kiss of death! LOL!

From then on until 1400 when I packed in not a lot happened – just about 6 lots of 3-5 beeps on the buzzers (probably line bites)….

I noticed the other chap had disappeared at around 1300, not sure if he’d caught as although only a few pegs away he was obscured by bushes between us.

SO… final mishap of the day was still to come … I installed the Deeper Sonar app on the phone via mobile data and after I’d packed away the main rods I decided to cast the sonar out for a few scans… all went fine for the first few casts but then … the longest cast towards the centre of the pool … the ball sailed out but the line remained slack! I’d connected the ball to the line via an American style ‘safety pin’ snap link which was prefitted to the wire trace at the end of the main line and I hate those things … extremely unreliable (as in this case) as apart from a tendency to spring open they are also liable to fall apart as the spring wires are only crimped into the ‘body’ and I prefer 1-piece wire constructs … anyway, this time the clip had sprung open. However, it being a breezy day the ball was being blown relatively quickly to shore and I could track it via the GPS it transmits as part of the scanning operation … so 15 minutes later I’d gone 1/3 of the way around the pool with my landing net and recovered it from the shallows. So glad as they’re not cheap … may be cheaper now but cost me £160 when I got mine and that was 2nd hand off eBay….

BAD!!!

GOOD!!

6.5’C rising to 7.1’C over the day…