stevetheangler

Hi to all again! Before I start on the fishing I’ll just mention the gig I was about to attend following my last posting…

The Altered Images gig was very good and besides the headliners there were two supports … a duo, male acoustic guitar and vocals and a female vocal going under the name The Daisychain – very good but not exceptional … and a rock band called Turning Black Like Lizards, exceptionally good with a fantastic vocalist and definitely see them again  if I hear of them appearing…

So… Monday 9th May, Liz and I set off for Parkdean’s Skipsea Sands site to do our usual Easter’ish camping week trip until Monday 16th, Skipsea Sands being a favourite camping spot of ours. Great value as it cost us just £102 for the 7-night stay (ca £14.50/night). Most campsites are around £20 per night just for a grass pitch with access to a very basic washroom/loo block) but Parkdean’s site is an electric pitch with free electricity (a lot of sites charge extra for the facility to be available and sometimes also charge for the electric used – can be up to another £5-£7 per night) for that – plus for food/drink you’d need to visit a local pub/restaurant and your entertainment would also have to be arranged for and paid for by you, more additional expense! At Parkdean, reasonable food is available onsite all day, perhaps a bit more expensive than a pub, and, as a camper, you get free entertainment passes for all the shows and bingo, etc in the in the Showbar…  but saying that I was in bed by 9:30 every night! My age showing LOL! Liz did stay up later reading and surfing the ‘net though she was usually tucked in by 10:30pm!

Another plus is that there is a small fishing pool onsite available for £5 per day but we’ve fished it a couple of times without joy over the years we’ve visited the site and then, last September, we visited the Mill Pool at Ulrome, about 1 mile down the road, after advice given on here by WheatNotCasters(?) and enjoyed our day there and so it was made our destination again this year…

So, Thursday 12th May, we set off from the campsite at 0700 – the pool itself open to fishing from 0700 – arriving around 0710 to an empty pool and our choice of swims. We chose the same area that we did the previous visit – a spit sticking out into the water. The pool used to be two separate pools but they were joined into one some time ago and the spit is what remains of the land that separated those two pools. However, we fished two slightly different swims this time – Liz had fished into the old right hand pool last time, this time facing into the left hand one and last time I fished slightly into the left hand pool and this time directly over the old separating land…

Groundbait is not allowed on the pool per se but before visiting the pool I checked with the owner that small amounts to plug a feeder would be ok as that was Liz’s intended tactic and was told that wouldn’t be a problem … myself, the usual laying-on with my float rod was to be my flavour of the day and loose feed catapulted as attractor. I had taken a particle mix of rice/pearl barley/hemp but the notice board at the entrance declared that hemp along with boilies, tiger nuts and peanuts were not allowed and so my feed consisted solely of maggots.

The day started promising, my first cast eliciting a rise and run of the float but the fish was missed …. and Liz had a take within 15 minutes of casting and a 2lb 11oz mirror carp was landed … but sucked maggots were the only sign of life for the rest of the day until we packed up at 1430.

Not long after our arrival others started to arrive – I suppose at one time there were 10 of us fishing on what is a small pool and there were only a few vacant pegs remaining. We didn’t see anything sizeable landed – except for a duck who wasn’t very happy being hooked – just a few sprat sized silvers caught on the pole.

So, not a successful day really but it was good to be out  there … warm when the sun broke through but a chilly breeze when overcast.

PLANS

I was hoping to get out on Thursday this week (19th) but unpacking and the other things associated with return from camping (inc drying the tent – it rained overnight on Sunday but stopped pre-collapsing the tent on Monday morning so at least we didn’t get wet doing it) – has made short thrift of that plan! So Monday 23rd I’m hoping, possibly with Liz, to fish the club’s tench/bream pool and also try to recover my lost weed cutting blade of the last trip there.  I’ve bought a new blade anyway and the Korum Quick Net attachment that it was attached to on its loss.

I’m due to get a Korum Bopper arrive in the post tomorrow … a bait dropper that looks like a spomb but ‘explodes’ when it hits the water bottom rather than the surface so creating discrete piles of bait rather than spread out like a spomb’s load as it falls through the water. https://www.korum.co.uk/en/products/feeders-leads/kp-10734