stevetheangler

What!!! Its the last week of May and this is only ONLY SESSION 15??? What’s been going on??? Think I’d best read my posts back for the year!

Anyway, I’m glad to say there has been a session 15 … far worse scenarios it could have been…

Right, to the nitty gritty…

Leaving the house at 0615 on Monday 23rd May, I headed off, again to the club’s tench/bream pool (AA-B), arriving at around 0715 at the gate – and discovered that the gate had a broken lower hinge and it had been lashed to the gate post with a strap to retain it. However, this is a heavy 5-barred metal gate and thus the weight wasn’t being fully supported and the gate touched the ground so it had to be lifted to swing open – and its a VERY weighty gate! Its not our gate though – it leads into a cow field through which we originally pass to then proceed down a short hardcore track to our own gate into land owned by the club and the two contained pools.

I find myself alone – and alone I was all day long doing the millionaire fishing thing – and having my selection of all available swims in my grasp. But, I’d already decided where I wanted to be as the swim had proved promising on my last visit a couple of weeks before… plus I wanted to try to recover a double bladed weed cutter head attached to a Korum Quick Change Net Adapter that I’d lost on last visit…

[Quest to recover lost items failed – 1. Reeds and other veggies had sprung up a lot over the intervening period and 2.  as the blade was stainless steel and only some stainless steels are attracted by magnets its possible that the attempt was doomed to failure. If I remember I might try again come autumn/winter after the growth has subsided in order to try to eliminate possibility 1]

The swim was pre-fed before tackling per usual with cereal groundbait (a carp designed one from ‘Crafty Catcher’ purchased from The Big One Show) laced with the usual rice/pearl barley/dead maggot/wheat/maize and also with crushed wheat to ‘activate’ and then wetted with hemp infused oil and instead of water I used crushed sweetcorn juice – we have a warehouse that specialises in bulk sales of out-of-date/end-of-life things and I’d bought a box of 12x500ml bottles of the sweetcorn crush which, to be honest I’d forgotten about, some 12 months or so ago.

My set up for the start of day was again my trusty 13’ Hardy Matchmaker rod with 6lb main line, 6” 6lb braid hooklength with size 14 hook fished lift method/laying on style with a 5BB driftbeater style float.

First cast was made at 0740 fishing just off the far end of the lily pads as seen in the photo using a bunch of 5 maggots…

A few small tugs/lifts ensued but no proper bite so I had a short period around 0830  whereby I played around with the shotting including a short period when I removed the anchor shot to ensure that the bulk shot was correct … and I landed a tiny roach that took the slowly sinking bait..

The shotting check must have worked as at 0840 the float skidded along and under the water’s surface … a strike met good resistance … and a few minutes later including an extraction from the pads a fine 4lb 13oz tench was netted…

0930, following a hook change to a size 10 hook baited with a cube of red dyed strawberry flavour jelly bread, another tench hit the net … this time 3lb 5oz..

The next hour saw two more float sinkings, both on blackcurrant flavoured jelly bread, albeit neither was landed with the first being missed on the strike, the second gained sanctuary in the pads and came adrift…

At that time it seemed the usual ‘1100-1400’ lull kicked in with just a few tentative knocks of the float…

1355 – another tench takes a strawberry JB bait and hits the net at 2lb 3oz…

1420, another good fish is hooked on blackcurrant JB but gains the pads and casts the hook away…

1430 … there’s been a few spots of rain on and off over the previous hour but nothing to concern but now it seems to be getting darker and as the BBC Weather forecast had said to expect rain from 1500 I decided to put my gear away and head home … a good decision as it turned out J

PLANS

No Thursday outing this week as I have shortage of time to prepare.

Planning to fish with Liz on Monday 30th though, same venue – as you can probably tell its our favourite! LOL.

Jelly bread … I’m impressed with it … cheap to make and lots of it in one batch … I have blackcurrant and strawberry versions at the mo and toying with making Liz a scopex version as she loves scopex as dips,etc – I’d use her scopex flavour and I have plain gelatine … also fancy trying pineapple BUT as I say a batch makes a lot and so it becomes a danger of being swamped with batches of different flavours…