stevetheangler

SO… at around 0530 I set off on my inaugural visit to new waters at Kingsbury Water Park in Sutton Coldfield (near Birmingham), a trip of around 25 miles – and for which I avoided the M6 preferring to travel through Walsall and along the Lichfield Road, etc as I did back in my golfing days when visiting the Belfry … far easier and quicker usually!

On the park there are many waters as can be seen on the map of which 12 (plus a 1 mile stretch of the River Tame) are fishable on annual permit or day ticket ….

….and there are various annual permit types…

… and so I obviously took out the ‘Coarse Permit’ on the concessionary rate LOL! Well, I’m not interested at all (even if I could afford it) in night fishing nor the carp fishing – but the tench and bream fishing looks really good! As does the pike fishing looking ahead…. and the River Tame stretch looks nice too, which is earmarked as my first venue post-June 16 (probably June 19th as Liz is flying back in from Cyprus on the 16th…)…. One other thing comes with the actual permit – an annual Park User’s Parking Pass which allows the user free onsite parking for the year, fishing or not, which, as the usual cost is £5-a-day, gives a big saving!

Anyway, as said, I ventured out to KWP with the intention to visit Bodymoor Heath Water, the largest of the lakes at 45 acres having visited the site on the previous Monday in order to get my permit and do a recce of some of the waters. That day was a Bank Holiday plus the first day of the local school’s half term and so was quite busy with the general public particularly around the entrance side to the park where the visitor centre was located BUT over the whole day I saw only one angler – and he was on his way back to his car having had a couple of bream and he gave me some useful info re BHW.

I arrived onsite after an hour’s drive around 0600 – and ready for the loo at which point I discovered the loos don’t open until 0900 – however, with my RADAR key I was able to access the disabled/accessible one so all was good there! :)

First obstacle surmounted I then drove around to the relevant car park for the intended area of fishing which was the opposite side of the pool to the park entrance and also the Tamworth Sailing Club’s moorings and club house and headed to my peg chosen on my initial visit – peg 12.

Once there I changed my usual plan of starting attack of [feed > station and aux setup > tackle setup] to [station/aux setup > tackle setup > feed]….

First thing discovered was that the ground forming the peg was pebbled … and hard to get a bankstick/rod rest into … but, with my screw tip banksticks, I was able to get a wobbly fix …. with standard pointed sticks, would have been a lot harder. Probably I should have took my rod pod (esp when it comes to the next item) but had decided not to due to trying to lower weight and bulk of my barrow load…

Second thing I discovered was that I’d only one bobbin in my bag and had intended to fish two rods. I thought the bobbins were in my bite alarm pouch but wrongly so! As I’d been fishing the club tench/bream pool which is a lot smaller I’d only needed my float rod most of the time and when legering it wasn’t even necessary to ‘cast’ to the far bank, a simple smooth underhand pendulum swing sufficed easily and hence I used a single light feeder rod when legering coupled with a cheapo alarm and bobbin mounted permanently on a bank stick – my pair of heavier 1.75lb TC leger rods being far beyond what was needed for that job. And the last time I’d used the pod and those rods was in Somerset back in March …. and the now needed bobbins were still attached to the pod’s crossbar. SO … I took the single bobbin off its bankstick/alarm, attached it to the now to be used bankstick and alarm and resigned myself to fishing a single rod.

Third thing was to check out the water depths/topography with my Deeper sonar attached to my general purpose rod which is used for spod/spombing, the sonar, my WaterWolf underwater camera, etc as required. A 12’ Ron Thompson ‘Desperado’ carp rod, 2.5lb TC it is and works well in conjunction with a reel (about 6000 size I think) loaded with 60lb braid with a 40lb mono shock leader at the front end. The mono leader is there as, without it and connecting directly to the braid, I’ve had snap offs a couple of times when the line became snagged and the resultant shock was enough to do the damage … but luckily I’ve recovered/had returned to me, the sonar when that happened. The problem lies in that braid, lacking stretch as it does, is very susceptible to shock and even 60lb will snap as easily as 6lb mono if a snatch occurs … the 40lb mono although being far lower rated does have a stretch factor which absorbs any shock that occurs and not once have I suffered a loss of any terminal equipment since adding that leader. However, I was fishing into a rather strong breeze, and after about 3 ‘wangs’ of the sonar I’d managed to get an untangleable wind knot in the line …. but I did discern that the water depth ‘out there’ was about 1.5 metres shallowing up to a few inches at the bank.

OK … at this point, time to stop the faffing about and to get a baited hook out there! I cast out a 40g square feeder loaded with the usual porridge mix including particles and dead maggot with double worm on a size 8 hook… poured a coffee ….. and repeated the sequence several times over the next few hours but to no avail…. but by noon the cold breeze was having an effect on me, especially my hands, so I decided to tackle down at that point and to go to look at a couple of pools I’d not managed to look at on the previous wander round – and also at the River Tame with a view to visiting there at the start of the river season.

First port of call was to Causeway Pool which was located on the other side of the track that led to the car park, so just 50 yards or so away. It looked quite really nice with a nice lily patch … however on later perusal of the ‘species’ list bream weren’t listed – although ‘tench to 8lb’ did appear… so maybe :)

Next trip was in the car and a short ride up to Swann Pool and Mill Pools. Didn’t really see Swann Pool as I passed by with it shielded unseen by trees but Mill Pool looked promising – calm water shielded by trees and in a slight dip. The site’s description states deeper water on the near side with a bar further out. Promising! And car parking on the grass verge by the pegs is a plus for me too!  With Liz away from the 9th in Cyprus for the week and thus that time to myself it’s a very likely candidate for a visit on the 10th! :)

Driving further on to the far end of Mill Pool I arrived at the start of the River Tame stretch. The Tame is a tributary of the River Trent… and it looked lovely … a bigger river than I’d imagined it to be to be honest… sort of Dorset Stour at Throop as I recall it…

As seen in the photos the water level is low at the moment so probably not at its best for fishing but will be tried asap after Liz’s return home – she returns home on the 16th and so my earliest possibility to visit will be the 19th.

PLANS

Well, I’ve spent the day so far ensuring that all the things that went wrong on this trip won’t occur on the next one. I’ve also gone through my bags etc discarding all but ‘the necessary’ in order to lighten my load, make things more accessible and remove duplications … seems to have gone well :)

With Liz away I’ll be making two, possibly three, trips back to Kingsbury and intend to fish a different water each time.

Initial visit to Mill Pool, second visit to South Cliff Pool or Gibson’s Pool … and most likely if a third visit does get made then that would be to the pool unvisited on that second outing.