stevetheangler

Thursday 9th June saw me heading towards a, perhaps bit ignored recently, club pool (AA-GH) that is predominantly a carp water but is also home to reasonable stocks of bream and silvers – and perch have also been appearing over the past few years with reports of 3lb’ers having been caught…

My quarry for the day was to be the bream but the thought of a good perch was also in my head and played a part in the days tactics…

So, I set off a little earlier than usual at around 0600 arriving on the car park probably around 0630 … and as I had to unpadlock the gate I knew I was the first to arrive and so I’d have the pick of the swims, the one being chosen being peg 1.

On this pool peg 1 abuts the owners cartilage (ie his private land with lawn with its own fishing platform) and to reach this peg you walk the pool clockwise from the car park past peg 5 and then pass down the numbers to peg 1 … for pegs 6 to 24 you walk the pool anti-clockwise with peg 24 located neighbouring the other end of the owner’s private land … so, in effect, our fishing area is broken by this 30 yard private gap.

I chose peg 1 on the grounds that I could cast one rod along the reeded margins slightly to my left, towards the owner’s platform, for perch whilst also casting my second rod straight out into open water for the bream.

Access to the swim was a bit of a test for my new barrow…

… as, as you can see, I’d set it up for two wheel operation but I’d have probably have been a little better off maybe with a single wheel configuration as the path between pegs 3 and 1 is quite narrow with a steep bank up on the left and a sharp drop down to the water on the right and the path itself only about 18” wide with a tilt towards the water too! And, in fact, the path was narrower than the last time I’d visited that area due to the dugout areas for fishing from having been enlarged taking up some of the old track area … With two wheels steering is compromised as the barrow, especially heavily laden, cannot be leaned to compensate for the left/right slope of the path and thus gravity plays in the direction that the barrow wants to go ie into the water! . To be honest though, a single wheel would have been better but only in the sense that banging your head once against a post is better than banging it twice… a slight resolution of the problem was used at the end of the day – I pushed the barrow back beyond the tricky area and then carried the bags up and loaded before pushing for the final part of the journey back to the car. The barrow did work well though once beyond the assault course bit.

A few others turned up to fish from about 1000 and when I left at 1530 there were 3 cars still on the car park.

The fishing … before tackling up the two swim areas were pre-baited … the perch area with catapulted maggot, the bream area with spombed groundbait with maggot and general particles…

Two 11’ ledger rods (Avon Plus, 1.75lb TC), 8lb line were put into play. The perch rod was used initially in conjunction with a 3.5g sliding lead and a size 10 hook baited with a bunch of maggots but worm was also tried… the bream rod was fitted with a size 6 hook initially baited with bread but also chilli sausage and strawberry jelly bread were given a try later in the day.

And it was a slow-slow-slow day! I probably had about 10 beeps (if that even) in total from the alarms all day long despite there being a lot if fish movements – although I saw only 3 sizeable (5lb+) fish, most of the leaping rolling being done as far as I saw by fish in the 1lb-3lb range, and a lot of fry scattering was going on too… and the sum catch of the day for me was one perch of around 2oz

Most of the day was dry although there was a period of about an hour at around 1300 when a fine drizzle fell but not enough to need the brolly though.

1430 and it was time to pack in for the day in order to get home, put the tackle and baits away, grab a cuppa, have a shower and change and then get off to collect Liz from work and head to KFC for a bite.

PLANS:

Monday I have an appointment with my consultant, Tuesday the man to service the boiler is coming after having cancelled this week’s visit due to having to attend to a priority job and so  I had been planning to visit the Worcs Stour on Thursday 16th BUT I’ve noticed that the vegetation has taken a sudden spurt around here – and I remember last year’s slog to the water – only probably 200 yards but its 200 yards through waist high grass and weed and carrying even the absolute minimum of tackle through it last year was *HARD WORK*… so I’m tempted to return back to this pool to try another swim and change tactics – or head to the tench/bream pool. Maybe Monday 20th a trip to Pershore to fish the Warks Avon is a possibility…