And now something completely different

Its  been a strange week for me on the fishing front, at times it has been fun, and at other time thoroughly frustrating.

It started well enough with a evening session to a local pond with a review of catching a few of the resident perch and carp on the fly rod. This was to be part of my new 2013 challenge , well not the use of the fly rod, but catch (hopefully) coarse fish on the fly. I had tried for chub on the fly a couple of weeks ago, but whilst on that occasion, I did get the chub to take the fly, none were hooked.

The evening started well enough and there were an number of carp and roach coming up to the surface to take bugs and beasties from the surface, but no signs of perch striking at the fry shoals.

I decided to first target the carp and started to work my way down the side of the pond.
The first fly was to be a Caddis fly which would sit nicely in the surface film and hopefully get a take. My casting was a bit rusty and it did take me a while to get the fly to land nice and straight.
But I did in the end get it to settle on the edge of the lilies were the carp were sucking the underside of the pads for leaches.

After 5 mins of nothing, I stripped the line back in and recast, this was met with a near immediate take by a hungry perch. Not quite what I was expecting  on the surface Caddis, but it was one of my chosen quarry for the evening.

The next few cast were uneventul, and the carp seem not interested in any of the flies presented in front of them, including the bread flies. It was time to change tack and have a go for the hungry perch.

I took off the caddis and replaced it with a orange headed buzzer and began by casting it out into the shadows were I hoped the perch would be lying out of the evening sun.

I soon had a take and another small perch was on and lifted clear. Not very big, but another perch

I continued fishing for another hour, but didn't have more takes so headed for home.

Saturday saw me go down to the river for a dawn raid for the bream and tench. I headed out nice and early and arrived to find a friendly face in the car park loading his barrow.

We had a chat and formulated a plan to fish one of the deeper sections of the river. After I had load my barrow, we trundled off down the tow path and found a couple of swims that looked likely to produce. I also spied a couple of spots for a spots that some pike maybe lurking, but that will wait for the autumn/winter.

After a short stroll of chatter we arrived on the stretch of river we wanted to fish and unloaded the barrows.
I decided to fish the tip rod again and soon the rod was setup and a few balls of ground bait were introduced. Even before I had gotten the first bait out, the fishing companion had a fish. Curses, I know I should have fished that spot. Within 10 mins, I think he had had 3 or four fish including a skimmer, whilst I was biteless.

After an couple of hours, bites had started for me on the tip, and then the first prober tug. This was hit and a nice small bronze river bream was soon netted. Feeling a bit more confident, the feeder was loaded up again and cast back to the main channel.

Bites again started and the tip gave another jangle and a small perch was on the end. This was soon unhooked and returned.
In the distance upstream I could hear some splashing, must be a dog in the river. No it was a coxless pair who decided that a straight line down the river was the best navigational route. Five minutes later and a coxed four boat came down, followed by a single scull, another coxed four and finally a coxless pair. All of which gave no regarded for the presence of two anglers on the bank.

After an hour of f'ing and jeffing, we decided to bugger off before our tempers frayed any further.

I decided to head to a downstream weir pool over beyond a sluice thinking this would be a quiet spot. Wrong!!!!

To cut a log story short, after the move and settling in, an armada of canoes, kayaks etc all decided to descend on the weir pool and frollock about!!! Well that truly ended the mornings fishing. The pool turned for clear blue to muddy brown.

By 11:30am, I had had enough and head for home.

TL

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