stevetheangler

Thursday, 15th August, and it was a trip to a local club pool (SAC-DP) for me. This is a venue that is fast becoming my standard Thursday one as not only is it close to home (15 minutes away) which is perfect for me allowing me to collect Liz from work at 1730 after my session usually allowing time for me to get home and shower and change beforehand too … and if the fish are in a feeding frenzy I can stay on a little longer and collect her straight from the pool albeit that I might be a bit smelly when we go in to KFC for our usual Thursday evening meal … and its a lovely quiet pool to be at too with a good selection of species to go at… I love it! :)

Only thing though is that apart from one session I’ve always fished the same peg opposite the wind turbine island… and on a pool with, I estimate from the far end peg being peg 33, over 60 pegs, I think on further visits I really ought to venture more … and those pegs out by the bushes to the left of the picture seem interesting as seen from my peg… Really I ought to just walk the pool, something I haven’t yet done as I’ve always had my tackle with me and just want to get down to the business. I’d like to pop down unencumbered one of the days and just walk a circuit around but usually Liz has the car for work and there is no public transport that stops anywhere within probably a mile and a half….  BUT I’ve just had a thought! I had to attend a hospital appointment today and it was suggested that I should do more exercise … so perhaps I could take the car for an hour or so before one of Liz’s late shift starts and do a wander, two birds-one stone!! :)

OK … so I arrived on this latest session at the pool – and headed to the usual peg – baited my swim, tackled up and arranged net/baits/etc around me – and first casts were made at 0745.

I mixed up the usual feed and catapulted out 8 golf balls to just short of the island as first thing on reaching the swim to start attracting whilst I set up all else…

Tackle for the day was the usual two 11’ 1.75lb TC ledger rods, both equipped with 8lb BS line (Daiwa Hyper Sensor) with 15g running frame feeders. A size 6 circle hook baited with bread was used on one rod all session, the other rod equipped with a size 10 Kamasan Animal hook baited with mussel for the first couple of hours but this was then changed to 5-6 grains of sweetcorn for the rest of the session.

For the first couple of hours or so I catapulted out feed at 15 and 45 minute intervals and re-baited and re-cast refilled feeders at 30 minute and 60 minute intervals….

So it worked out like the listing below…

• 0 minute – cast out full feeder and bait
• 15 minutes – catapult 6 golf balls of feed
• 30 minutes –  retrieve lines, re-bait hook, cast out full feeder and bait
• 45 minutes – catapult 6 golf balls of feed
• …. above 4 steps repeated

Then I changed to larger timings of 20 minute intervals (so catapult after 20 minutes, re-casts at 40 minute intervals) for the next couple of hours … and then to 30 minute/60 minute slots ….

And by 1430 (ie after 6.75 hours) all the interest I’d had was two 6” lifts of the bobbins which didn’t and were probably line bites….

However, at 1430 …. the sweetcorn rod’s alarm suddenly burst into life and good weight was felt at the end of the line. Initially I thought it was a good sized bream as the fish seemed more dead weight than a fighter like a carp but as soon as it came close in it did suddenly come to life but it was soon netted… a common carp of 5lb 15oz.

So … I fished on until 1500 … and then decided it being such a slow day … and unlike the previous week, when bites were more numerous and fish were bow-waving, etc, there were very few signs of fish activity albeit the chap on the next peg fishing the pole had 24 crucian carp (albeit best I saw was probably 8-12oz) …. that I’d pack up, get home , sort out the wet gear and baits, shower and then go to collect Liz.

PLANS:

I’ll be out and about somewhere on Monday 19th, with Liz most likely, but venue has not yet been decided…. Liz’s choice!