stevetheangler

I said at the end of the last posting that I intended to fish on Monday 8th September – well, firstly the date was wrong (I’ll correct it shortly in the original document) as Monday was the 9th … and also I didn’t fish on that day due to (a) bad weather and (b) given (a) I thought the time would be better spent other ways. I’ve got an hospital appointment on Wednesday 11th and was thus intending to use the rest of the day to shop for wood shavings for our ferrets’ bedding and a couple of other chores … but decided to ease the time on Wednesday by using some of the Monday down time.

All went well with the Monday chores, and I got tackle and bait sorted for today’s (Tuesday 10th) outing with ease … which was the outing that had been planned for Monday…

So I arrived at the pool (AA-B) and found that it was still quite weedy with elodea visible in much of it and the near end of the pool covered in duckweed….

However, I did locate one swim that appeared to be weed free and which had a lily pad bed to the right hand side .. and to ensure that the elodea wouldn’t be a problem I cast out my water rake several times which came back in quite free of weed on all casts – so it seems someone may have raked this swim previously.

I did usual preliminaries (feeding, etc) and  at 0815 I made my first cast with my float rod (5BB waggler fished lift method with a single 2SSG shot 4” from the size 14 hook baited with maggot)… A few moments later the float lifted and went under …. missed! … but this bite a cast continued and by 0930 I’d landed 8 perch to about 4oz, 2 small roach and a 2lb 12oz tench… 

2lb 12oz Tench

Perch

Roach

At this point I tried a switch of bait to sweetcorn, both standard yellow and strawberry flavoured red for half an hour but apart from a few ‘knocks and nudge’ nothing was doing….

So.. 1000 I switched to small cooked and peeled prawn (in the ‘old’ days we called them ‘cocktail shrimps’ and they adorned our prawn cocktails) – and this proved to be a ‘super’ bait – plenty of bites and the average size of perch doubled (not that they were huge – about 5oz-6oz) … and by 1200 I’d had 15 or more perch plus lost a good sized tench when it headed for the sanctuary of the elodea to my left and I had to try to pressure it to stop short – hooklink snapped – but I did see it roll on the top and reckon it was getting on for 4lb at least…

Anyway, for the rest of the day, from 1200 until I packed up at 1430, I swapped baits between maggot and prawn and had another 10 perch, a small roach, a small rudd and two tench of 2lb 2oz and 1lb 10oz – and another three good fish managed to reach sanctuary in the lily pads and throw the hook, and they were almost certainly tench.

2lb 2oz Tench

1lb 10oz Tench

So an enjoyable day all-in-all… and looking forward to the planned outing on Thursday at the pool of another club. Well, there’s two pools on the site which one I’ll fish I’ll decide when I arrive.