Tuesday 22 March 2011

Commercial Failure & Old Faithful



Two days worth of fish for me this weekend  so on Saturday I ventured to a local commercial fishery for a spot of early season bream and tench fishing. Trouble is the weather had other plans.

I woke up on Saturday and looked out of the window at a gloomy sight. Hard frost, minus 3 deg C. Not a happy bunny.

So instead of the 5am start, I went back to bed and decided to let the sun come up and warm the air. Fat chance. I head out to a local commercial fishery and on arrival found the car park to be packed out. Ticket was duly bought and I motored to the my chosen lake. Most of the anglers present were on the east bank with the easterly wind on there backs. Wise decision. So I had not choice but to settle into a peg on the west bank with the cold wind on my face.

Two rods were tackled up and put on on the sheltered side of the island. Both were rigged with semi fixed rigs, with different hook baits/PVA bags and I sat back with a morning cuppa.

And that it for the morning, by midday I'd had not a sniff despite re baiting and recasting, so a change was in order.

I had brought the float tackle so quickly rigged that up with a waggler and plummed the depth, 6ft a 5 16 yards could explain a lot about the lake of fish.

So the rig was set up on the lift and baited with maggots and after an hour of gentle feeding tiny bites started to emerge, but they were unhitable in the ripple.
The floats rigs was rejigged and a more sensitive float was attached. Even though this help, the bite were still hard to hit and hook size was reduced to a size 18. After a while the wind dropped and the small bites  became easier to see and I managed to hook into a few roach and one tiny perch.

By 15:00 of tiddler bashing, I'd had enough and packed up. Memo to self don't fish this water during the weekends, too busy for my likening.

Second day was Monday and I ventured off to one of my favourite if not hard local decoy ponds to see if the bream and tench would come out to play.


Monday was a mild, gloomy morning but more importantly without the frost. I was abit on the drag so didn't get to the water until 8:30.

On arrival it was soon apparent that I was the only one there. Result! So I had a walkabout and decided to settle in on a reed lined swim with the Rudd topping in front of me.

Two rods were setup, with a straight waggler with maggot/hemp combo and a semi fixed bolt rig with mini sweet boilieswith a PVA bag.

On this water its only 25 yards across, so its a gentle lob to the far side margin with the ledger rod.

Float was set for 10ft which is about 1ft off the bottom and I was soon into the Rudd on the maggot/hemp combo. I kept them on the feed for a good couple of hours until I got fed up with nothing bigger that 6oz and decided to set the float up for the lift method with bigger baits. Bite soon tailed off, but when they did come back on the stamp of fish, now roach was better 6oz-1lb, but again tiddlers soon came back on the feed and I started to get small Rudd on the drop.

The mini boillies remained untouched and what with the small fish, I decided that both needed changing to feeder rigs with long hook links and size 14 hooks. Bite were still coming regularly with the feeder and despite managing to get the smaller skimmer bream to feed, not of the bigger bream or tench showed up.

By 16:30, the bite dried up and so did my fishing time allowance, so I packed up and ventured home.

At least I've broken the duck with species for the year, with Roach, Rudd, Bream and Perch all being caught from the two session, just wish their size had been a tad bit bigger.

Hopefully next time.

TL

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