stevetheangler

Monday May 25th, 0700, Liz and I set off for a day at a club pool over in sunny Salopia (KF-VV). However, the LATE start was due to Liz’s refusal to get up pre-0600 or to leave the house pre-0700 and personally I’d have aimed to have been on my way at 0430-0500 especially as (a) it was a Bank Holiday Monday and (b) with the restart of angling after the lifting of the ban due to the Covid thing people are keen to get out there again…

I read in this week’s Anglers’ Mail that there has been a huge surge in sales of rod licences in the past week due to angling becoming an ‘allowed exercise’ – perhaps some good has come of all this! I also saw elsewhere that the same has happened on the Continent too… I just hope that is good for the sport, introducing new blood and increasing renewal sales of rod licences come next year…

Also it seems that the Angling Trust Guidelines are just that – guidelines and not enforceable in their entirety.
From ‘Anglers’ Mail’ again, it has transpired that several commercial fisheries have started to allow matches on their waters again contrary to the AT Guidelines and informers {spit} have contacted the police to report them… the police have turned up and having found that procedures are in situ to maintain the 2 metre – NOT the 15 metre AT suggested distance between pegs – general social distancing have announced that no offences are being committed, and that the law was being adhered to and left without further issue.

Anyway, as it was, we arrived at the pool at around 0730 and there were already 4 cars on the car park and, obviously, the swims we’d had as our primary objectives were already taken and so we settled for the nearest pegs to the car LOL! They were pegs we’d not fished before but, as the pool is very commercial in nature – stocked with everything probably other than sturgeon, pike and alligator gar from what I can tell – it’s not usually an issue, the worst swim will generally produce something. Anyway, Liz sat on a dam wall peg facing the front a small island and I on the next peg albeit around the corner from the dam facing the side of the same island. So effectively the whole corner was ‘ours’… :)

So, my first cast, on the float laying on (13′ rod, 6lb line , 12 hook), with worm/maggot as bait was made at 0800 … and Liz cast out a few minutes later fishing 2 feeder rods as is her norm…

First fish of the day came to Liz, a common carp of 4lb 2oz…

Unfortunately, it was also her final fish of the day despite having a lot of bobs, nudges and beeps on her bite alarms early on to sweetcorn but a little later even these faded away…

Myself, I was getting the occasional float lift and dip and managed to connect with one tiny (as in 5 to the ounce tiny) perch. Then at around 1100 a carp started nosing around in the rushes toward my right and so I pulled my pre-setup ‘floater’ rod kit that consists of a 1970’s Winfield (Woolworth’s) ‘Specialist Angler’, 11′, 1.75lb TC  rod, coupled with a Diawa 5000 size freespool reel loaded with 12lb mono and a size 4 hook – nothing else, freelining at its most basic really :) If ever extra casting weight is required I carry a ball of wax collected from the truckles of Xmas cheeses and Babybels which (a) floats and (b) when its warm (and surface fishing in the cold is not really productive anyway?) easily moulded around the line in the necessary quantity and at the required distance from the hook – and also has a secondary quality of being a good indicator. The aforesaid tackle was baited up with a piece of bread (about 1/8th of a slice) which was momentarily dipped into the water to add a bit of casting weight and cast over to the area of the slurping carp. A few minutes later, the line started to tighten…

When floater fishing DO NOT strike when the bait disappears, wait for line to be actually taken … in fact, its better to watch the line on the water than the bait as by watching the bait you can at time instinctively strike as soon as you see a  mouth engulf it BUT usually by the time the effect reaches the hook the carp has already spat out the bait … but if the line is moving then the fish has got a hold of the bait most definitely!

… and the strike met firm resistance … and a little later a nice 7lb 7oz common carp was landed.

After that, with no more surface activity visible, nor could any be induced I switched back to my float setup… and managed a few more small perch and a few equally small rudd….

Later, I decided that perhaps fishing a more sensitively could help and so I switched from my laid-on method with a 4AAA driftbeater float to a more sensitive 3BB stick float shotted to fish more on-the-drop style and dropped from my 12 hook to a 14 baited with maggot or small pieces of worm… this resulted in more ‘catching’ – of small rudd and perch mainly – and by the end of the session I’d probably had 20 or mixed rudd/perch for a total weight approaching 8oz I imagine! BUT I did swap my bait to bread for a while – and this resulted in another common carp, this time of 4lb 10oz at 1330…

Following on from this, switching between bread, maggot and worm piece baits added a few more perch and rudd to amass the aforesaid 20 or so of the little darlings before packing up and heading home – and greatly missed our homeward bound visit to the local!

PLANS

Well, I’m looking at making a Friday visit to one of my clubs’ ‘premiere’ carp fishery – albeit carp will be the last fish I’ll be looking to catch – far more interested in the tench and perch – albeit that I may put out a floating bait or two at the end of the day. I’ve put feelers out for info about the bankside situation with regards to the ‘bivvy crew’ and the swims available… a far distance to travel there if its going to be packed out, and my preferred swim there is also one the carpers head for … so a drop-back option is to make a return trip to where I was 3 sessions ago (Session 12) and head for my second of my preferred swims there – its one that virtually no-one fishes as its on the far bank and it must be a 100 yard walk to it (and you rarely see anyone on that bank at all to be honesty), the most fished pegs being with 10 yards of the car parking – but, to me, the least attractive – and the least productive ones too from my experiences when fishing them.

ALSO … planning to rubberise Liz’s landing net … well pleased with my own DIY’d one … and I know I’ve promised to describe how to do it and my experiences … and the info will be published soon as I’m planning to video the procedure when I do Liz’s net. However, and lucky in its timing really, Liz’s net broke on this outing and we’ve had to scrap it – so glad I’d not rubberised it yet as the effort – and cost – would have been wasted. A new net is now currently on order and in transit I believe and should be here soon at which point the operation will be performed! :)