stevetheangler

Monday 14th September I ventured out to the club pool (AA-B) that I’d been wanting to visit recently but due to circumstances I’d had to settle for alternate venues. However, on this fine and sunny day, although maybe NOT as good as the temperature readings shown below would suggest as an air temp high of 40+’C does seem slightly high although possibly, with the thermometer exposed in direct sunlight, it doesn’t seem unfeasible as I’ve recorded temps in excess of 50’ in previous times under such circumstances and the water temps do appear to be as would be expected. Anyway, it was a bright warm sunny day with only a slight breeze….

Setting off at 0700 I arrived pool side, parked 15’ from my selected peg for the day, at around 0730.

The blue line that you see to the left of the picture is one of the lines that cross the pool between most swims in order to act as a cormorant deterrent – and I also noticed a large ‘eagle’ kite attached to the top of a large tree to act as a ‘scarecrow’ type deterrent – plus this pool used to be carp free until about two years ago when ‘cormorant resistant’ carp were added on EA advice – and have had an effect mainly due to the usual muddying of the water due to their digging and thus the clear water as was is now far more translucent/opaque so fish are not so easily located by the cormorants…

Car unloaded, some feed (cereal/particles/maggots) was fed into the swim, my ‘station/area’ and accessories (eg landing net, unhooking ‘cradle’ (Korum Fast Mat – https://www.korum.co.uk/products/fish-care/fast-mat), scales, camera on tripod) were all sorted and ready to hand and first cast was made at 0800.

Tackle for the start, and most, of the day … my trusty 12’9” (TBH it was 13’ back in the day but an unfortunate incident saw 3” of the tip snap off in yesteryear) Hardy Matchmaker clone (made by a moonlighting Hardy’s rod maker using the exact components and blank as the original) … this was coupled with 6lb line … size 10 barbless hook baited with worm (dipped in ‘Predator Plus’ which I find good attractant for tench and bream too) and tipped with cross hooked maggot to prevent the worm’s escape … and a 6BB crystal waggler float slightly over-shotted to be fished laying-on completed the setup.

Bites were had from first cast but had difficulty connecting and I assume they were small perch mouthing the free ends of the worm. First fish hooked came at 0845 and turned out to be a common carp of 7lb 14oz…

… and this was followed later by a nice bream of 4lb 12oz…

… and these were quickly followed by a couple of perch of around 3oz and 6oz..

And then at 0920, the float disappeared and a strike met with solid resistance immediately followed by the fish flying almost unstoppingly across the pool straight for the patch of lily pads that can be seen over by the far bank… I say ‘almost unstoppingly’ but, in fact, I did stop it just short of the pads and was just managing to gain back about 12” of line when all went sickenly slack. I suspected a hook pull but when I retrieved the end of the line it seemed I’d suffered a snap-off about 2”-3” above the hooklink.

After that all went quiet for a while with just an occasional tweak or slight lift/wobble of the float but between 1050-1130 I did manage 4 or so small perch. In the interim I did also try sweetcorn but still just with the small wobbles continuing.. so possibly roach/rudd nibbles…

1130, I switched from the 6BB crystal waggler to a 5AA wind/driftbeater type float fished in the same method as previously.

At 1145 I landed a 3lb 0oz bream followed by another of 2lb 12oz twenty minutes later…

1220 I switched to bread baits which seemed to entice slightly heavier bites but still nothing was hooked until 1310 when a 7lb 6oz mirror carp was landed…

Following that I switched between worm and bread baits until 1545 when I packed in for the day and added a few more perch to my tally including my ‘Best Of The Day’…

AHEAD:

Well, this will have been my last session until Thursday 1st October, which in itself will be my first pike session of my new pike season. I’m away all next week in Great Yarmouth at the bros-in-law’s-alike caravan, taking said gent and partner – and Liz – and a freezer and can fridge with us to install in the ‘van as well, so its a fishing free week but wouldn’t have room for tackle anyway!

And this possibly – but extremely unlikely to be given the warm winters we’ve been having recently – may have been my last ‘general’ fishing outing until April 2021. For piking, I like water temps to be below 8’C and at the moment they are generally around 15+’C and it will take some time to drop even with a few frosts appearing, etc. So I expect I will flit between some pike bait fishing, pike on lures and ‘general’ fishing until such times as conditions become more pike favourable for me.

TEMPS:

AIR:                  MIN: 11.1’C       MAX: 42.0’C
WATER:           MIN: 15.1’C       MAX: 16.9’C

WATER TEMPS:

AIR TEMPS: