Ouch!

With the weather being as hot as it is currently, it was difficult to decided whether or not to fish at all this weekend. But the thought of not wetting a line was a grim though, so an early morning crucian carp session with the float rod was necessary.

I arrived a little later than I want to, but had the lake to myself. Soon I have plumbed the depth and I was depositing some pellets and casters on to the lake bed via a bait dropper on a spare rod.

Some weeks ago, I had been think about how to get a carpet of bait on the bottom without attracting the attention of the large shoals of nuisance rudd that inhabit the lake.
After a chat in the local tackle shop a plastic bait dropper was bought and put into action.

This worked a treat and soon I had a lovely bed of bait out and had the first cast over the top.

It didn't take long for the first nibbles to start on the casters and soon a number of small perch and roach were caught.

After a couple of hours with no sign of the crucian's, I decided to stick a second rod out on an alarm, bait was to be a lobworm cast to the fair side under the tree's in the shade. It didn't take long before this was taken by a perch.

The nibbles on the float was continuing, but this time the nuisance rudd were intercepting the casters on the way down. Time to change the bait to sections of worms. This had an immediate affected and a crucian carp decided to oblige. On light gear a the crucian put up a scrap but was soon netted.

A nice pump crucian carp of about a pound.

With the float gear back out, it was the turn of the sleeper rod to spark back into life and the first of three better fish were landed in quick succession.

Soon the heat started to burn and after the second and last crucian had snaffled the worm section, I decided to retire to the shade and put two rods out on alarms.
I continued with worm on one rod and decided to use one of the deep hooked rudd as a deadbait for the perch. The paternoster had hardly settle before the bobbin was jangling . Having not done must deadbait for perch, I was quiet surprised for this rod to be inaction and made a complete hash of the strike and missed it.
The 3" rudd was cast back out and even before the bobbin had been attached it was nailed. Guess what happened? Yep, missed it. So out it went again. This time the bait settle for 10 minutes or so, but soon the bobbin was jangling and the float sailed away. I lifted into a fish and soon a nice perch of 12oz was landed with the whole rudd in it mouth.

With the perch returned, I realised I had no fish baits, so out with the float rod and I soon had a couple of 3-4" rudd for bait.

A further two 1lb+ perch decided that the fresh rudd where just too nice not to consume, before they too decided it was just too darn hot.

Whilst packing away, I noticed a lots of litter including wrappers, tubs, sweetcorn tins etc. So I had a tidy up. Trouble is one of the tins had a razor sharp edge. Soon blood was pouring out of my finger. Four plasters later, I managed to stem the flow.

TL