Round Up

It been a few weeks since I last posted, sorry been fishing and doing family stuff

In fact I've been out twice, I think, or was it three times. Anyway, they have consisted of a all day still water session and one evening session on the river.

Th still water trip have been for the elusive tench again, and yet again the tench decided not to play ball and I'm considering taking up golf again, as I'm more likely to hit a hole in one, rather than catch another tench this year. But as my golf swing is worst than my ability to cast a rod, I'll stick to the fishing.

The last still water trip saw me up with the crack of dawn and off down one of the club lakes for a another go at the tench and bream. This time I was meeting up with a good friend and we ha arranged to meet at 06:00.
For a change I was on time and infact was a bit earlier, the only down side was the rain and the westerly wind. A warm soggy day was ahead of use. I soon had the barrow (thanks again wife) loaded and was wheeling it off to one of my favourite swims. We had the lake pretty much to ourselves appart from the carper on the far bank corner swim.

After a brief chat and with the rain starting again, I soon had the brolly up and was sorting the tackle out along with mixing the ground bait. I'd decided that my ground bait needed altering this trip, so I'd bought  with me nice fresh casters to give the mix something crunchy for the tinca. With the the bait soon mixed, it was time to catpult it out, but thing was soggy and after a couple of attempt to get it out, I gave up and opted for a simpler method, the spod rod. Now I would normally want to put the bait out with the cat, spread it out at various ranges along a line to encourage the bream and tench to graze over the bait, but with the spod rod this tactic is more difficult, much after some mucking about I had it sussed.

Once the baiting up was done, the rods went out. Normally rigs, semi fixed rig with boilies and bag, method feeder with hair'd fake casters and finally the reliable "the rig" and three red maggots. These where soon out and fishing.
First to go was the maggots and a 6-8 oz roach was landed, that's the blank saver done with.

It wasn't long before the same rod was off again and a bream between the 4-5lb bracket was in the net after a spirited fight (bream can and do fight on some waters). It was a nice fat fish and I hoped that more would follow.

By 9am the maggots were away, and the third species of the day was landed, a perch, not a large perch, but big enough to give me thoughts about its bigger brothers and sisters.
The rain was still coming down and my fishing buddy was landing another bream on its 10mm boilies, must be using a new flavour I thought.

The rain continued to be patchy, one minute heavy rain, then sunshine, but the bites continued mostly on the "the rig" and a number of roach continued to self hook themselves. However, I was miss a number of bites too on all rigs, which was baffling. Along this this was that there seemed to be alot of line drifting from left to right, when the wind was blowing across the lake in the opposite direction, and I was finding my three lines were becoming tangled.....strange???

Long drop on the bugs

After several hours of this happening and with more bites and tangles, me and my fishing mate, concluded that there must be a massive piece of weed which has  broken away and is flooding across he lake. So I tried fishing 10 yards closer in. Bingo!!!!! No line movement. It was also noted that I wasn't allowing a big enough drop on the bobbins (have recently changed over to gardener bugs).

The bites frequency on the rods started to increase too and by 16:00 the roach tally was easily into double figures, but alas on tench.

I decided that the bugs which I love using needed some modifications, so additional 5g weights have been ordered, along with 60 deg bug sticks to alter the angle and I be looking to increase the chain length too to 30cm.

I've also think on the boilie rig, I need to back to braid for my hook links, I've been using mono and am not happy with it, 1) occasionally knots slip, 2) its gone abit springy and 3) with 10mm boilies they dont seem to hair as well as bigger boilies. So a change is needed.

The week previously, I did venture to one of the weir pools on the river for a spot of evening chub fishing. Alas this is the only photo, the tip just didn't more all evening.

I did take a fly rod with me and manage to get a few chub on the river to take in the fly, but for the size of the chub in this stretch, the flies I had with me were too big and the fly was soon spat out. But the theory is there are so I'll be back for another try new soon.

TL