stevetheangler

Thursday, 29th August, I headed off to the closest of my club waters (SAC-DP) for the day as (a) being Thursday I have to collect Liz from work so any travelling time saved is a bonus and (b) the pool is due to have work undertaken on it shortly and the water levels lowered – in fact since, it has been confirmed that the water levels will be lowered by around 0.5 metres and fishing curtailed by the closure of 25 pegs on the far bank – so I wanted to get a session or two in before the workings had their effects felt.

I arrived at the car park around 0730… and was fishing by around 0815…

Previously apart from one occasion when I fished from peg 33 on the dam wall I’ve always fished peg 25 but after my walkaround of the pool a short time ago I decided I’d try peg 8 if it was free on my next trip – and it was!!

As can be seen from the photo it is a peg that has bushes extending out into the water to both the left and the right of it… perfect fish haunts??

So, I decided on a float session, and pre-fed the usual crumb/particle/maggot mix to the outer corners of both bushes in order to create ‘switch’ swims – but during the day I actually only cast once to the left hand side – the reason being the breeze was coming in from right to left and, although it can’t be seen in the photo, there was a bare thin twig that protruded out about 24” and was about 18” above the water surface, and when casting the slight bow in the line caused by the wind invariably got caught over it. So I concentrated on the right hand baited area for the day.

Bites on my maggot baited size 12 hook came almost immediately and all day long I was catching – mainly small rudd/roach, a few skimmer bream to around 12oz/1lb, perch to around 6oz …. plus a mirror carp of around 2lb (well, the scales said 0.99Kg as I’d somehow managed to knock them off their usual lb:oz setting – and I had to play around with them for quite a time later to find how to switch them back to my desired unit!) …

… a nice looking crucian carp of around 12oz..

… and a barbel of around 12oz…

Another, bigger, carp was lost at the net when the hook pulled free … and the end tackle was catapulted straight up into the trees overhead … and tangled around the twigs. I was able to extricate all the bits and bobs OK but they were all wrapped up in one of the most disentangleable bird’s nests ever seen on this planet IMHO! Anyway, the bits had to be salvaged one by one cutting out the bits of line on which they were attached and then replaced onto the new clean end of the line…

1530 … time to leave to enable me to get home, put baits away, shower and head out to meet up with Liz.

So, a pleasant day albeit I had nothing of any real size. It was sunny/cloudy, mainly dry bar one shower around 1230, and when the sun was out it was quite warm but as soon as any cloud obscured it it was quite chilly in the breeze.

PLANS:

Monday 2nd September, tomorrow actually as I write this, I’m going to another club pool – one I’ve actually not visited in quite a time – looking back through my postings it was mid-June when I was last there. I’m intending to float fish at the start of the day hoping for chub but may change over to the ledger rods and feeders – or even the floater rod if the carp are on the surface – around 1130’ish depending on results – and my mood! :)