Thursday 25th February, I set off at 0915 – I either have to set off pre-0730 or post-0915 to miss the rush hour traffic although, in these times of restriction and home-working, the congestion is less than it used to be – for a local club pool (SAC-DP) for the first ‘proper’ days fishing since the end of November 2020.

December  is usually a virtually, and often a reality, fishing-free month for me due to Christmas preps and other engagements also seem to work their way into my calendar/diary for the month.

January, I do generally fish often but not this time around … the planned purchase of a new car was brought forward due to problems with the current vehicle of the time and this led to Liz and myself travelling by train to Preston, Lancs to view a ‘Click-n-Collect’ vehicle on the 4th of the month (and 3 days later we were locked down so was done just in the nick of time). The rest of month was taken up with up hospital/medical appointments including, but not limited to, colonoscopy, CT scan, diabetic eye scans, etc. Good news on all fronts – all were absolutely fine! 🙂 And cold wet weather wasn’t enticing me out either!

The viewed vehicle was just the job for us – a silver 2013 Ford Galaxy to replace our old blue 2005 model – and was driven home the same day. Nice vehicle with the added bonus of its road tax being £50/year less than our older version despite being of a larger engine size (1997cc vs 1897cc)! And amazing how the ‘comforts/gadgetry’ have improved in the interim period – voice control, DAB radio vs the old FM, auto-lights that come on/go off as required – and 101 more things to be discovered and studied upon as how to work them!! Plus a BIG bonus for us as we generally only have 1 or 2 of the 5 rear seats in situ, the rest of space being utilised as needed for shopping, fishing and holiday/camping, is that the 2 rear rows of seats fold down flat to become ‘the floor’ of the boot – with the older motor you had to manually unclip and remove the seats – and big bulky and heavy things they were too! Plus it was not an inconsiderable task to release and replace them and space had to be found to store the removed items in the home! None of that any more! Just release the pull a lever and fold down or pull up – just 5 seconds between having a seat or not! 🙂

February, had my CV19 jab – Astra Zeneca (aka Oxford) one – all good really. Only thing that might have been a side effect was strange dreams overnight afterwards. Arm did feel a little bruised if you pressed on the area of the needle’s entry for the following week but I stopped doing that! LOL. No stiffness, etc.

Weather improved a little and Liz and I planned a joint short walk/lure session along a local canal but on the day the weather deteriorated and it was cancelled … but then we managed to fit that plan in on Tuesday (23rd) as posted about previously…

SO… on to this session.

A beautiful day, quite mild and largely bright and sunny.

I was expecting to be a fair number fishing to be honest and there were but not as many as I had anticipated given that the club had, at the end of the previous week, did a major stocking with roach, etc – and bream, some of which exceeded 9lb! Actually on my arrival there were 3 cars on the car park at my end of the pool although it seemed to me that the great majority of anglers arriving at the pool appeared to be parking at the other end… certainly more anglers than cars at my end and more anglers down at the other end to me too.

Tackle … 2 ledger rods, 8lb line, frame feeders. One rod size 10 hook, one rod size 6 hook.
Baits … initially worm (10) and bread (6) changed to meat (10) and prawn (6) at around half-time.
Groundbait … my usual mash of crumb/particles/dead maggot with added molasses fed via the frame feeders and supplemented by catapulted golfball sized balls.

For the greater part of the morning, until 1230 I should say, the area I was fishing was a bit noisy with horny Canada Geese honking, pairing up and chasing each other around the island near where my baits lay.

Results: Not a touch until 1500 when I packed the rods away.

After packing the rods away I then setup my Deeper CHiRP to scan around the area of my swim…

Depths of the 4.6ft- 4.8ft range were recorded – and seemingly a fair few fish were around the area albeit it seemed they were mainly located in the 2.5ft-3.5ft depth range.

PLANS:
The club that closed all its waters as a covid prevention has now decided the time is right to re-open access to the members – and so on re- opening day, Monday 1st March, I’m planning a pike fishing session! Due to operations in 2019, covid restrictions in early 2020 and early 2021 and my usual Dec fishing lull I’ve not done much piking for 2 seasons (the club only allows pike fishing – in all its forms – between 1st October and the following March 31st) and so I’m straining at the leash to get back out to them now!

TEMPS:
AIR:                  MIN:    9.9’C      MAX:  12.8’C
WATER:            MIN:    8.6’C      MAX:   8.9’C

Tuesday 23rd February, Liz and I actually had our lure session that was intended to take place some weeks ago on a local canal for an hour’s walk with the light lure rods.

With the errant rod/reels that had caused our cancellation of the intended trip earlier replaced and re-tackled we left the house around 1130.

The weather wasn’t as good as forecast though being very breezy which made casting with our SSG (1.6g) micro-jelly jig lures – attached to 15lb braid mainline and 14lb fluorocarbon traces – difficult to say the least. After neither of us having a touch after an hour or so we decided to call it a day and call in the supermarket on the way home to pick up a few essentials. Actually, Monday’s (yesterday’s) weather was far better – bright, sunny and calm and with none of the forecast rain.

Anyway, it was good to get some exercise – I’d not been out of the house in about 10 days other than to get the ferrets in a couple of times for some exercise of their own!

Next trip already planned … going to a local club pool on Thursday (25th) – a solo outing as Liz is working. So today has got me ‘in the mood’ for that as I was getting a bit lethargic having been sat indoors for weeks on end … and I’m further motivated by news that the club stocked the pool with a lot of bream (up 9lb+) and roach last week … so have that happy thought in my head! LOL.

Boris announced ‘the way forward’ today but not sure how that will affect my clubs’ waters as fishing already allowed legally but currently one of my clubs has closed all its waters until further notice and another has placed a restriction of being within 5 miles from home (ie actual travel distance, not as the crow flies) as they have interpreted the word ‘local’ in the guidelines as being that… However, one other club has no restrictions and the neither does the BAA. I am suspecting it may be the end of April before any changes occur but that’s my only personal view… have to see how it all pans out really.

Anyway, my latest SENIOR moment – and its a masterpiece!
I said in my own blog posting about the aborted trip that due to a broken reel that Liz and I ended up just walking the canal instead of the intended lure fishing. SO given that you’d think that what I’d need to do would be to purchase a new reel? Common sense? Well, what did I do? I went and bought new spinning rods – and no reel! And to compound the error of buying rods instead of a reel – I bought FOUR rods! Thinking that when I ledger I use TWO identical rods – plus the same for Liz – and thus we’d need 4 rods between us …. However, when lure fishing/spinning each of us using two rods simultaneously is going to test our dexterity!?? DOH!!!! However, I suppose use can be made of them by setting up one rod each as braid with fluorocarbon leaders for small lures for perch, and the other rod as braid with wire traces for larger lures for pike. I read that renowned Gord Burton (aka ‘The Piking Pirate’) uses fluorocarbon leaders for most of his pike lure sessions these days so that adds some weighty recommendation?

Or possibly rig one of each of our two new rods with fluorocarbon main line and the other with braid as one of our clubs does not allow braid main lines (although braid leaders are OK).

The new rods are quite nice …. Okuma, 8’6″, rated for 10g-30g lures but seem to have enough ‘whip’ to send a 2g micro-jigged lure on 15lb braid across to the far bank of the canals around here without problem.

One thing I need to do is resolve the reel issue… I’ve a couple of still boxed Shakespeare size 30 reels I can use plus one still boxed Okuma size 30 reel. So I either need to get another matching Okuma reel OR look through my setup rods and see if there’s one that I could remove/replace OR remove a matching pair of suitable reels from those….