stevetheangler

Monday, 16th March, Liz and I set off at 0730 for a club pool (KF-VV) in Shropshire. The forecast for the day being good – sunny, little breeze and warm – and this actually held true for the day, especially in the morning as we sat facing into the sun …

… but just after noon as the sun had passed overhead and went behind us it felt a lot cooler as we had a row of conifers right behind us screening us from the direct sun’s rays… and hence we decided at 1500 to pack in and visit the usual ‘beer & cob stop’ on the way home.

We actually started fishing at 0930 – a little later than we had expected as we had ‘difficulties’ on parking. When we visited the same venue on our last joint trip we found the car ‘stuck in the mud’ when we came to leave due to the solid frozen ground on which we had parked on arrival having thawed and Ford Galaxy’s not being lightweight cars by any means had sunk down and we only escaped eventually by deflating the tyres – which afterwards took the best part of an hour for our electronic pump to replenish the air before we could drive home. Lesson learnt, or so I thought, and I’d loaded my set of bread crate bottoms on which to park the driven wheels on. HOWEVER, we got there I drove up to the parking area and Liz jumped out, got the crate bottoms out and laid just in front of my front wheels for me to drive upon… so I get into gear to drive the 12”-18” required to place the wheels on the crates … and wheels spin!!! So, after deflating the tyres (not so much this time so as to save time on re-filling) and sort of pulsing the drive both in forwards and reverse gears I eventually managed to get out of the rut and on to harder ground, and then onto the re-laid crates… At this point, we decided to leave the car/tyres ‘as is’ and get to the pool, get tackled and start fishing and to resolve the air pressures in the tyres on getting back to the car later.

So we headed off to the pool, and elected to fish our ‘old swim’ on the opposite side to where we’d fished for the past 12 months or more. As I said our positions faced into the sun on arrival (ie we were on the west bank) so we got the full warmth of the sun on us which was also increased by the reflected heat from the tall conifers directly behind us at that time…

So, 0930 or thereabouts, we made our first casts ….

Liz elected to fish with 2 frame feedered rods – one cast to the very edge of an overhanging tree on a small island around 10 metres in front of us and the other cast into open water to the left between this island and another further away. Baits were various – maggot, meat, boilies,…

Myself, I elected to fish ‘lift method/laying on’ with a driftbeater float, feeding the right hand side of the small island ahead with small cereal+particle groundbait balls and catapulted maggot. Baits were maggot+worm cocktail initially but later swapped to punched bread coated with Primula ham’n’cheese spread….

Over the course of the day we both had small knocks and nudges but nothing landed UNTIL at 1458 (literally 2 minutes before the time we had decided to call it a day!) Liz calls out to me and I have to attend with the net …. and she lands a 1lb 13oz chub…

NOW … this is the second time in the last two outings she’s pulled that trick! Catching literally within 2 minutes of our planned packing up time!

So, I’m now looking at a record of 10 trips for 10 blanks whilst Liz’s record is 2 trips for 2 fish and no blanks!

Anyway, we pack up as had been decided, return to the car and get the air pump in action before we start loading the car – and on completion of the loading the first tyre had just reached its right pressure … and we didn’t have too long to wait before the second tyre was up and ready to go….

We set off for our the local hostelry, only to find on arrival there that it was shut just for that one day to complete some recent refurbishment it had undergone… not to be defeated we headed off elsewhere to get  our usual post-session beers, cobs, pork pie and scratchings….. J

NEXT OUTING: As I write this it will be tomorrow (Wednesday 19th) – which in fact would have been Mom’s 96th birthday and so I’m hoping she’ll be looking down on me and give me some luck. Off for an end-of-season pike session at Pike Water 5… and possibly Saturday 21st I may pop on the bus to the local canal with a few lures for a few hours.

TEMPS:

AIR:                  MIN: 10.0’C       MAX: 26.2’C
(NOTE: AIR TEMPS ARE WITH THERMOMETER EXPOSED TO FULL SUN)
WATER:            MIN:  7.4’C        MAX:  8.4’C

WATER TEMPS:

AIR TEMPS: (NOTE: TEMPS ARE WITH THERMOMETER EXPOSED TO FULL SUN)