stevetheangler

Monday, April 1st, I returned to the pool (AA-B) which I visited on the 25th March – which, as I said previously, is a slow starter not really coming to life until usually mid-May but with the unseasonably warmer weather at the moment and water temperatures in general rising I thought I’d return to see if there was anything happening… and although the fish catching results weren’t far better there were slight, although not numerous, over the day, there were signs of fish movements in the form of bow waves and leaping/rolling and one fish spotted cruising (carp around 3lb) so boding good for the near future…

I arrived on the pool around 0715, again the first there although unlike last week others arrived later in the day with two or three others on my pool and one on the adjoining carp pool.

Although these days there are carp in ‘my’ pool, added within the last 12-18 months or so as an attempt to control predation by cormorants after advice by the EA. The club was told to add ‘cormorant resistant’ carp to the water ie carp of 3lb+ … at the time I couldn’t understand why we couldn’t have stocked 3lb+ bream, tench, etc instead of ‘polluting’ the water with carp … as we have a separate carp and chub only water literally 10 yards away … but yesterday I realised something …. this water used to be very clear for most part, only really getting murky only after heavy rains BUT with the carp doing ‘their thing’ ie snouts down churning the bottom and banks, it is now constantly murky … so to the cormorants it must be like driving in fog is to us, a limited visibility … and so the size requirement is probably more to due with the capability for the churn? Anyway, so long as the carp are not allowed to become predominant in this water and if it helps with the cormorant problem then I can live with that…

As for fishing, the methods and tackle used were much the same as last visit – float fished worm/maggot using the ‘lift method’ style and a ledger rod with prawn and bread baits. And the swims pre-fed whilst tackling up. First casts made at 0805 with maggot on the float rod and a piece of raw king prawn on the ledger rod.

First interest came to the float rod at 0850 with a slight float tremble and small lift’n’drop but not strikeable at… and then all was quiet on that front although I had a water disturbance a couple of swims or so off to my left – I couldn’t decide what it was as the area was partially obscured so I assumed it was the ducks. When it happened again around 1000 I just managed to catch a glimpse of a fish leaping towards the far bank and so, not having had any further activity in my swim for an hour, I wandered down to have a look about … and although the fish didn’t show again I did discover a dead bream of around 4lb floating on the surface just off my bank so grabbing my landing net I pulled it to shore. It seemed to have been a recent casualty, its eyes were still very bright, the body pristine without any obvious damage so not killed by cormorants or others (we did/do have mink in the area after some were ‘liberated’ from a local mink farm some years ago and we did have mink traps around the pool at one time) … anyway, I put it in the undergrowth behind the swim and sent a message to the club secretary about it for information purposes.

Back to the swim, I fished on and caught a few (6 or 7) small perch over the rest of the day up to around 6oz on the float rod and mainly on worm baits … the ledger road was switched over to bread around mid-day after having solicited no interest on prawn to that time and within 15 minutes I banked a mirror carp of 3lb 9oz…

However, fishing with bread – and a trial with macaroni cheese – on the ledger rod was without further interest.

1540 – it was time to tackle down and head home….

Next outing … I’m thinking of a return to the local canal on Thursday 4th to get another trip in before the boat traffic starts building up for the year. With the warmer weather there’s been more boats about this year than usual – previous years you’d have been (un)lucky to see a passing boat between November and May but virtually every canal trip in that period this year has seen at least one boat passing through – not too bad though and sometimes a good thing as a quiet (in terms of fishing) clear canal can be brought to life a bit by the churning and colouring of the water plus, like digging the garden can attract birds for the newly presented food items, the newly disclosed fishy morsels can bring fish to feed better.

And on the evening of Thursday 4th, Liz and I are off to fill in membership forms for another local club that has a pool about 2 miles from our house plus a stretch of canal with a pound that lays alongside and another pool around 20 miles out….

WATER TEMPS:

9.3’C rising to 10.4’C over the day…