Saturday, 29th.March 2008

Another session back at Bysing Wood trying to catch a double-figure Bream.

I had another reason for going (in what I knew were going to be bad conditions) and that was to try out my new TFG “Stormshell” bivvy. I got this from the TFG site for about £65 which I think is pretty good considering what you get for your money – twin-skin construction, raised anti-mud thingy at the front, zippable mozzie-netting, and see-thru panels in the “door”. Although it’s a one-man bivvy it has quite a large ‘footprint’ and would just about house two bedchairs at a squeeze. All packing up into a small-ish (but heavy) pack:

After a couple of trials in the garden, I found the best way of setting the thing up is to spread it out on the ground in-situ, and then thread the poles through the seams. This is quite a difficult and onerous job as the take-apart poles can get detached from one another. They are also in two different lengths on this model and could do with being colour-coded so you don’t thread the wrong pole through the wrong seam (which is what I did!). manufacturers please note!

I then tried pegging the thing down in each corner to stop gusts of wind blowing it into the trees but this didn’t work very well because they kept pulling out – the best way of erecting it is to then insert the ends of the poles into the metal rings on the ends of the tags. This I imagine could be a bit of a nightmare in a very strong wind but I managed, and put some of the gear inside to hold it down. In actual fact, for the majority of situations, I would think these sorts of bivvies don’t need pegging at all since they have integral ground-sheets which in effect create a fabric ‘box’; put enough weight inside and the whole thing sits where it is without further embellishment. If you are anything like me, having enough weight to go inside to hold it down is certainly not a problem (despite repeatedly trying to reduce the vast quantity of kit I take with me!)

The only difficult thing really was getting the fly-sheet on. Once again, the high wind was a real problem – and it’s important to find the bit at the front which attaches to the sticky-out canopy thing. Again, the manufacturers could do with marking the sheet with a coloured patch of some sort as you can spend ages (as I did) trying it in different positions until you get it right.

Eventually however, I got everything fastened down and tickety-boo.

The peg was in my favourite place – The Beach. From here, you can cover quite a lot of the bottom end of the lake and there are many options from which to choose. The wind (gusting to nearly gale force) was blowing from right to left and from slightly behind so this allowed me to fish my maggot-feeders mid-lake and beyond.

I had a simple link-leger with the maggot feeder tied to six inches of the mainline. A twenty-inch length of 0.11 ‘Powerline’ was Four-Turn Water Knotted to the six pound Daiwa ‘Sensor’ and a size twelve Drennan Carbon Specimen tied on the end.

I kept casting every ten to twenty minutes during the first couple of hours to get as many maggots into the area as possible and within half an hour of starting I began getting little knocks and jerks on the bobbins. I was fully expecting this –bites from the diminutive Roach and was fully prepared for them, leaving the bites alone until they ‘hung’ themselves and self-hooked. As long as most of the maggots were out of the feeder I didn’t mind.

One thing I was keen to do was not concentrate the feed in too tight an area. Although this is fine for a day session when you can hit the spot with a fair degree of accuracy by ‘clipping-up’ and so on, it is virtually impossible in the dark, plus, with so little feed out in the water I wanted the Bream to move around and find little spots of it in the hope they’d eventually move around and find the one with the baited hook.

I think it is not always advisable to concentrate feed in one very small area every time you go fishing. This is the matchman’s accepted strategy – but is not always successful in a speci context. Wise old fish get to know heavy concentrations of feed mean trouble and definitely avoid them; very often the single bait on its own with perhaps one or two free offerings is all that’s needed to give them sufficient confidence to pick a bait up.

I had quite a few small Roach before darkness and find this most encouraging. These Roach were in prime condition and it was good to know the Pike hadn’t managed to get there gnashers round all of them. Just as I was bedding down for the night I had a really positive bite and hooked this Roach.

Although not huge in the grand scheme of things, it was quite a big one for Bysing Wood which is still recovering its silver-fish populations after years of depredation by Cormorants. It might just have weighed a pound but was gloriously coloured. Unfortunately, the image does it no justice and does not show the iridescent blue down its back. This is a most encouraging sign for the future.

As predicted, the Roach went to bed after dark – and were followed by the skimmers. There is currently a year-class of fish around the one-and-a-half pound mark which will gobble a bait if any quantity at all is thrown in; this was another reason for not wanting to put too much bait out. They can certainly stay with you all day if you feed them; better to let them drift away after all the scraps of feed are gone.

Then there was a blank-ish spell during which I had no action of any kind. In truth, I don’t think I would have managed it very well if I’d had because half way through the night the rain (which had been persistent, if not heavy) really started to set in and with a rising wind the session became most uncomfortable. Winter nights can be merely a matter of survival and it was during the middle of a heavy squall I had a positive take to one of the rods……

At first it felt as if I’d hooked one of the lake’s carp as there was a dogged, heavy feeling on the end; then the fish began to move in a series of heavy thumps and I had high hopes I might at last be attached to my target fish – a ten pound Bream! When I got the fish to the net and could make out a great white slab dimly lying dormant I whooped with delight! Hauling the fish up it certainly looked the part – Bream – big Bream, look simply huge. This specimen was covered in spawing tubercles around its head and gill plates and I was convinced I’d finally done it. It had to be ten!

The scales however revealed a massively disappointing eight-six – well short of the target and not for the first I wondered how a fish that looked so big could weigh so little. Maybe it was because it had been such a long time since I’d caught a big Bream I was wildly out with my estimate!

You can’t be disappointed with a fish like this however. It’s made me even more determined to get the double than I was before!

As Arnie says “I’ll be back!”

Saturday, March 15, 2008, Bysing Wood

Back again at Bysing for another go after the Bream, Carp, and Tench.

There was a fine drizzle falling when I arrived and I plumped for a convenient swim where I could get everything set up quickly before the rain started to fall. I fished almost opposite where I did last weekend in The House Swim.

Tactics this week were to fish the corn again and a new bait – worm. With the water being so cold still, I figured that there would be no trouble from eels which would make mincemeat of worm or maggot in the summer; this proved to be wrong as I did actually get one – the first time I have ever had an eel during March.

The cage feeders were filled with a mixer of White crumb and a few kernels of sweetcorn and cast as far out as I could manage in the vicinity of the plateau area that lays off the Road Bank.
There was no action of any kind to the double sweetcorn all night and only the odd twitches (and take) from one eel. All in all very disappointing.

Whilst waiting for things to happen, I did work out a new way of attaching hairs to hooks. Using Fox Supersilk braid, I tied a loop in one end of the braid. Then I laid the hair along the shank of the hook and got the length right before passing the end of the braid through the eye of the hook. Then in close turns, I wound the braid up the shank of the hook towards the bend until it was opposite the hook-point. Then, in a series of half-hitches, I worked back down the shank finishing at the eye.

The net effect is very neat I think and does away with the need for pieces of rig-tubing on the shank of the hook which can slide up towards the eye and adds bulk to the knot.

One or two fish moved during the evening and once again, fish moved in front of the Compound swim. This swim has not been fished since the water has been down so low so it’s not surprising the lake’s population of carp have sought sanctuary there. There were odd fish moving on the bar in front of me too and I was confident of a take from something during the night.

We are in the middle of March at the moment and although it is not Spring yet, the catkins on the trees herald its start very soon. The water temperatures are still at winter levels and in every sense, winter conditions persist so I didn’t think it prudent to spod out any feed. I wonder whether this might be the answer though. There was no reaction to the corn which I feel should have at least brought some response from Rudd or Roach during a night when the rain fell continuously. I could have really done with the new bivvy of which I am awaiting delivery next week as conditions were extremely damp and uncomfortable.

I shall go back to The Beach for my next session as I always seem to catch something from there – I’ll be able to target the ‘hot-spot’ in front of the Compound swim where the fish have moving too.

Bysing Wood - Sunday, 9th.March 2008

For me, March marks the beginning of the Spring fishing regardless of weather. Some years it’s just a continuation of wet, cold, dreary conditions – in other years, March has come in mild, cheery, and golden; not so in 2008 however.

I always have plans afoot and this year is no different to any other. The Spring is the period when I am gearing up for a serious assault on Carp, Bream, and Tench at home, and the carp of the River in Picardie in France of which I have several trips planned for the coming months.
I have struggled quite badly at Bysing Wood for the past couple of years, mainly due to lack of time and a reluctance on my part to fish at night (when the majority of fish have been caught by other members). Mistakenly, I thought I could get away with fishing short sessions during afternoons but this just hasn’t worked and at last the penny dropped that I just had to start fishing the place ‘properly’.

I have also been playing around with what I call a ‘Catch-All’ method. I have been looking for an alternative to the bolt-rig-and-boily method that 99% of members use at Bysing Wood not only because I think it offers a better chance of catching the carp – but it would also enable me to target the Bream and Tench which are my priorities. Having caught two fish one ounce short of the magic ten pounds, I know there are large Bream in Bysing and it’s about time I got one!

After expending literally hundreds of pounds on different outfits I feel that at last I’ve got the kit sorted – Shakespeare Mach 2 Barbel rods (lovely, crisp-actioned jobbies with a hefty reserve of power, but light enough to give good sport with lesser fish), matched with Shimano Catana 4000 reels with front drags are the items of choice, but what about the rig end of things?

If there were a poll taken of anglers as to who is the most irritating person on TV angling shows there is no doubt the prize would be taken be John Wilson. I tend to watch with the sound turned down because I simply cannot stand his manic laughter and histrionics when he hooks a fish; he is though, without any shadow of doubt a superb angler who is very good at explaining what he is using and the best way to use it. He has often demonstrated swim feeder rigs for use on stillwater – a length of finer lighter line, attached by a four-turn Water Knot to the main line and a cage feeder tied on one end and a small hook on the other. A very simple rig, but a very effective one – my rig of choice on my first night session of the year –

Few members had turned out when I arrived so there was a good choice of available swims. Conditions were however particularly uncomfortable, a blustery wind was blowing into the Road Bank and with the hint of rain in the air it promised to be a damp and difficult night.

I chose one of my favourite spots – The Beach over on the far side. With the wind off that bank there would be shelter should it start to really rain hard and since I was intending to sit out during the night, choice was based as much on where I could fish from effectively, as where I thought the fish were.

With it being so cold still (and temperatures dropping from recent mild levels) feed had to be very parsimonious. I chose a mixture of white crumb with just a few grains of sweetcorn for the cage feeder, partnered with double-sweetcorn on a size ten and six pound line. No feed was introduced other than by the feeder and I didn’t attempt to lay a ‘carpet’ of feed in the swim with water temperatures still being so low.

Encouragingly, a carp moved a few yards down the bank to my right and my first cast plopped the feeder right on top of where it had ‘shown’; the second rod was cast to a mid-lake position out in front, a spot which had yielded me big Bream in the past. Since it was just after lunchtime, I spent the next few hours on the rods re-casting every half-hour or so to get some feed laid down although since it was by the cage feeder only and the chances were that the Roach would clear most of it up it did not amount to a massive amount. Surprisingly however I was not pestered by the normally bothersome Roach and my double-corn baits lay un-inspected all afternoon.

I was delighted to see the Great Crested Grebes had once again returned to the lake. Every March they have come back to nest and perform their charming mating ‘dance’ and to see them back once again was a pleasure. The weather however was not so welcome. Dampness in the air turned to real rain at nightfall and the wind rose in a series of gusts that at one point blew my rod-pod and rods to the ground and whipped up my unhooking mat and blew it into the water! I hate having to batten everything down to stop it blowing away but there we are, such is fishing on exposed gravel pits.

No action occurred for the first part of the night although it was difficult to detect if there was any – the buzzers kept up a constant chatter as the bobbins swayed about in the wind although I thought that once or twice I might have had short pulls of a couple of inches or so. And then the rain really set it, driving in sheets against the bivvy in a series of gusts that would persist for twenty minutes or so – then dying down to a more peaceful roar! It was during one of these periods that I had a take to the mid-lake rod………

I was on it immediately and lifted into solid resistance. As always the first few seconds were key………..what had I got? Was it a Bream? It was certainly heavy – maybe a Tench……….but as it slowly and steadily chugged off I knew a carp had picked up the bait and I let it go against the resistance of the slipping clutch. There were no dramas or undue excitements with this fish – until I got it near the shallow bar that runs across the front of the pitch.

This bar is a matter of only a foot or so deep and shelves steeply either side into deeper water; on top of the bar are many large stones and other debris on which stray parts of rigs habitually hang up. The tell-tale grating through the line was positive indication the line was hung up on the bar and I could feel the carp swimming up and down in front of me with the line caught around something.

There was only one thing to do – give it the old heave-ho and by degrees I managed to gain enough line to get the fish thrashing around on top – and finally over the bar and into the clear water where after a couple of runs up and down the bank I netted it; a fish of around ten pounds or so. Not huge, but a very welcome capture on such a foul night.

I hoped this fish would be the prelude to further catches and when I had another bite soon after re-casting I had high hopes that fish were onto the feed and que-ing up. I connected with the fish which proved to be only a small skimmer Bream – but it was action nonetheless and at last things looked as if they were warming up. No such luck however as this fish proved to be the last. The rest of the night was spent with no action whatsoever.

I was pleased to have caught the carp though – after a long series of sessions during last summer it represented a mini-result.

Hartleylands Reservoir, Cranbrook, Kent

Saturday, February 23, 2008

February has been a very up and down month weather-wise and earlier in the week we had a series of very hard frosts which would have killed the fishing stone-dead just about everywhere.

It had been a very long time since I last fished Hartleylands and I was keen to get over there to see what I could do with my new waggler techniques; I had also got some of the new porcupine quill floats I had bought off eBay and turned into waggler floats and wanted to try them out.

I was the only one there when I arrived and was pleased to see that not an awful lot had changed about the place. Instead of the wooden platforms in the pegs however, there were plain dug-outs with chippings, a much nicer and more ‘natural’ way to create a swim from which to fish and I chose one half way along the left-hand bank. This was not an absolutely ideal choice as there was a troublesome wind blowing right to left which made casting difficult with the waggler rig – but I coped.

As usual, I had a cunning plan. To cope with the deep water, I had a special rig made up on a spare rod. This rig comprised a three-eigths ounce bomb, a split-shot a foot up, and a ‘Polaris’ float up the line. The purpose of this rig was to ‘fix’ the depth of the water where I was fishing so I could set the depth of my waggler rig accurately, relative to the actual depth of the water. This arrangement did exactly what it said on the tin and worked like a charm and I shall certainly use it as a depth-finding rig when next, need arises.

There was about twelve or so feet the twenty-five metres out and I set the depth at three-quarters of this so I was in effect fishing at nine feet with the John Wilson rigged at thirteen feet. I deliberately chose not to fish at full depth as I knew my constant feeding regime would bring the fish up in the water and I also suspected that with the water temperature rising after a very cold snap, they wouldn’t be on the bottom anyway.

My target fish were carp and the aim of the session was to reproduce catches I had made in previous winters fishing on the reservoir, I had however anticipated the presence of the Roach but was shocked at how they have now come to so dominate the fishery for it was wall-to-wall Roach all day long with no other species putting in an appearance during the whole of the day.
I began catching from the very first cast and it was one-a-chuck for virtually the whole time.

I was prepared for this and was determined to stick it out in the belief that the feeding activities of the Roach would eventually arouse interest from the carp and I would pick up the odd one or two at intervals. This was not to be; small perishers of sixteen to the pound eagerly seized upon my double red maggots for the first couple of hours. The fishing however was not as easy as it sounds though as I had to work quite hard at the feeding, at range, in a difficult cross-wind. Gradually though, the size of the fish increased as the day wore on and I eventually got into quite a rhythm of casting, striking, winding-in, unhooking and re-casting.

The reservoir is not what it was however and the anticipated carp just did not arrive. Without a doubt, the place is now a Roach fishery and is catching up Longshawe Farm for the quality of fish it produces. It always did have a reputation for the improving quality of its Roach fishing and it has certainly come a long way since I first fished there. I haven’t fished it in the summer so I don’t know what it is like then, but I would say it’s not worth fishing it for the carp in the winter now as I used.

I had a change at lunchtime and went on the maggot feeder on the bottom to see whether there were any carp there – I fished ten maggots on a size fourteen hook, but apart from one roach I had absolutely nothing. Zippo. Going back on the waggler I rigged up shallower having previously suffered some line bites. I was up to about four feet now, and immediately the catch rate accelerated. Better fish were coming too – real quality roach, not the little ‘bits’ one so often gets pestered with on commercial fisheries. It is alleged there are two-pounders in the reservoir; I don’t know about that, but it is certainly possible to have a day of quality roach fishing here now.

In the afternoon I decided to take things really easy and just dropped the rig under the rod-tip, feeding with the remainder of my maggots. The peg must have been stiff with fish right across as there was no let-up in the catch rate, indeed, the size of the fish increased and I got these (and other) beauties. Had I been able to put them in a keep-net it would have made a very impressive catch but as it was they had to go straight back.

Right at the very last however, the float buried and I became attached to a carp. Only a small one though but it did put up a spirited resistance to finish off the session nicely.

So what of Hartleylands Reservoir?

I hear there are plans to syndicate it as (I presume) it doesn’t make enough money at the moment. I gather day tickets are going up to £10 a day which is still a reasonable charge for this neck of the woods. I hope however, the owners reverse the decision to abandon day-tickets for syndication is in my view is doomed to failure. They did exactly the same thing at Longshaw Farm near Canterbury and reverted back to day tickets within a year.

In my view, the fishing and the lake is just not worth the price of a syndicate fee (which is bound to be high); why would anyone want to pay with so many other excellent venues from which to choose at a manageable cost by pay-on-the-day.

I suspect the owners of fishing assets have (wrongly) got the idea that syndication is the answer to revenue – and well it might be, on paper. The problem is, you have to find enough members willing to pay the needfully high cost to join – which in Hartleylands Reservoir’s case I believe could not be justified. Anglers will pay for exclusivity – but not any old venue, and there has to be a very good incentive to join, either big fish, beautiful surroundings, isolation, or cost.

In my view, although I like the place a lot – it has none of these.

I hope they will stick to the day tickets; it’ll be the best policy in the long term.

Monk Lakes, Match Lake 2, Peg 57

Monk Lakes, Match Lake 2, Peg 57
I decided to go along to Monks to test myself and see whether I’d learnt anything from the previous sessions I’d had trying to learn how to fish the waggler. My ‘yardstick’ was the result I’d had on Match Lake 1 where I’d had 21 fish; if I could beat this then I felt I’d progressed.

I was late starting for the nine o’clock ‘off’ and didn’t get going until nearly a quarter to nine. I spent the first part of the session trying various different types of waggler as had been suggested to me including some ‘loaded’ jobbies. Now I just couldn’t get on with these at all. The peg I was fishing was almost dead opposite the ‘hot peg’ 45 – (which was occupied) dead opposite on the other side of the lake. This was much deeper, something like nine or ten feet at 20 metres or so – but I just couldn’t seem to get the depth adjusted properly for some reason. I tried using an AAA shot as a plummet………….. but I dunno – just couldn’t seem to get the thing right. Only by changing to an unshotted peacock insert jobby and using a light plummet could I really get it sorted and ended up fishing at nearly ten feet – a bit awkward to cast with my John Wilson rigged at eleven feet. On reflection, I should have added the extension and fished at thirteen feet which would have made casting easier – but there you go.

I determined to keep up a regular and consistent feed of red maggots all day and I am sure this contributed to my improved ‘performance’. After about ten minutes, the F1s moved in and I started catching them one a chuck. I employed the ‘active’ technique shown me by Peter (Morton) when we fished Bridges last time – giving the reel handle a turn every minute or so to keep the bait on the move and wafting about; it also has the effect of covering a lot of water and I found myself picking up fish ‘inside’ where my feed was going in, about fifteen yards out. Some of these F1s were chunky little fellas in good condition and went from about half a pound to over a couple of pounds.

Early on the bites were extremely positive and were of the ‘unmissable’ type – but later on became very shy indeed, barely dipping the float at all. Sometimes, I just struck on a ‘feeling’ I had something was there and was not unsurprised to find fish attached! This was a similar experience we had during the Fur and Feather on Match Lake 1 and initially I put this down to angling pressure and shyness; later, I changed my mind about this……

I fed – I suppose, about half a pouch of reds every other cast, all the time mindful of over-feeding. It is oft-mentioned that the fish won’t be feeding as well in the winter, water temperatures being cold and all that, and it is easy to over-feed them and fill them up, so I was on the parsimonious side rather than generous. Eventually however, the F1s deserted me and the occasional chub were putting in an appearance.

Now I love these Monk Lake Chub. They are what I call “good value for the money”, obliging, bold-biting, and hard-fighting. A netfull of these would gladden the heart of any angler. I am also extremely interested in how they are progressing because I have a hunch that in years to come, stillwater Chub will become the new ‘carp’. They do well in stillwater and being carnivorous are capable of eating the millions of miniscule Roach I find such a pest on most commercial waters; they of course grow fat and large on this diet. One day, fishery owners will learn to stock with chub instead of Roach as they have done here at Monks.

For most of the day the fishing was steady rather than outstanding. There were some blank spells as well as little periods of activity when I caught several fish on the trot including the odd small Carp and Tench and by the time it came to ‘stop’ at three o’clock (the end of my virtual match) I’d caught 38 fish averaging I suppose three quarters of a pound to a pound; so I had in fact between twenty-eight and a half to thirty-eight pounds of fish, a vast improvement on my meager nine pounds I scored in the Fur and Feather. It was the evening however that was most interesting…..

You must be packed up and off the water by four o’clock at Monks at this time of year but I stayed on after my ‘match’ to catch a few more. As usual, I was far more generous with the feed – as much to get rid of the bait as anything, and put out much more than I had been using during the day. This resulted in an instant and significant change. The bites which had been barely half-dips of the float became real ‘spearing-the-bottom’ jobs, and the catch rate doubled. Now you could argue that the fish had begun to feed because evening was approaching and this is a good time on any fishery – but the change was almost instantaneous. I was even getting bites on-the-drop, the float failing to rise to the surface and the line going tight to the rod-tip! I’d only got two number eight shot down the line so my slowly sinking double red maggot bait must have been falling gently through the water, much to their liking.

I have often wondered whether the normal ‘rules’ apply to these heavily stocked fisheries – there are so many fish in the water it would be virtually impossible to over-feed them with just a pint of maggots for the day. Next time I fish here I mean to try an experiment – heavy feeding from the off. Competitive feeding is the way to go to produce positive bites – get the fish competing with one another for the available feed and try and induce a ‘sparrows-on-the-lawn’ syndrome where they fight one another to get at the food.

This late spell also produced some good fish including this chub;

surprisingly, there were no barbel, unlike the anglers opposite who were catching loads. I wonder why peg 45 opposite has a high proportion of barbel in it and opposite here on 57 there were none. Was it that I just wasn’t fishing appropriately for them?

All very interesting.

The Willow Pool, Faversham, Kent

Sunday, January 20, 2008

Desperately short of time this weekend and only had a short afternoon available so went down to the Willow Pool at Faversham, one of my clubs match waters. I wanted to try a totally new technique (for me) today – Punched Bread. I had read great things about the method – how it would catch when other methods fail, blah, blah, blah.

I got myself a set of Drennan Bread Punches and prepared the slices of white bread the night before by micro-waving for thirty seconds; the slices were then wrapped in cling film to keep them fresh.

The punches (allegedly) were suitable for fishing from hook sizes 26……….all the way up to a size twelve, the size of the punch increasing with the hook size.

When I arrived at the pool I was surprised to see other members present. I suppose the mild conditions of 15°C had brought them out as you generally never see anyone. I decided to leave them to the popular (and productive swims) by the gate and walked on up to the far end of the pool where it is nice and quiet and where I have never seen anyone fishing. Here, there is a quiet corner with few pegs where it is possible to fish in peace whilst all manner of mayhem takes place on the nearby School Pool just the other side of the fence about thirty yards away.

I set up the waggler rod, it being my current favourite method of choice and tied on a size eighteen Tubertini 808 to 0.10 Powerline – loop-to-loop. The shot of my insert peacock were grouped under the float and I had just two number eight shot down the line. Plumbing-up showed four and a half feet of water in the centre of the bay into which I was fishing.

Now the Willow Pool is a very young fishery and the Faversham Angling Club have invested a lot in creating and stocking the place. Not unsurprisingly they are very keen to protect the stocks from the invasive attentions of Cormorants, the pool being so close to the Thames estuary. To try and keep these birds away they have strung ropes across the pool so that the Cormorants cannot fly in and land – which does of course make casting with rod and line very difficult. Three guesses where I ended up on my very first cast!................

It took me ages to re-rig and finally get a bait in the water with a sort of sideways whoosh rather than an overhead cast, but at least I was fishing – with corn to start with, just to see if there was anything about. I decided to use liquidized bread for feed in little balls.

The oft-quoted advice is to feed very sparingly with these as the fish can fill up very quickly in the winter. I am sure that is true on some waters but in the under-fed environment of the Willow Pool I think there would be little danger of that so I chose to introduce one of these every five minutes or so unless I was struggling.
Very soon I started getting little dips on the float, signifying interest in the corn so I decided to go straight onto the punched bread. The punch has a little slot in it which I assume is to permit the hook to slide through the pellet of bread and out the bottom end; I had quite a lot of difficulty making this ‘work’, the point of the hook getting stuck in the plastic of the punch. In the end, I used the point of the hook to hoik the pellet of bread out and hook the hook-point through manually. I’m sure this is not the way to do it and I hope a maggotdrowner will enlighten me on the correct method.

I managed to get the thing in the water however and immediately had my first bite…………… and then nothing. I assume the bait had been sucked off the hook. This happened several times before I cottoned-on that punched bread was a ‘one-bite bait’ – if you don’t strike at the earliest sign of a bite you fish with a bare hook. The next time I cast out I determined I would strike at the merest flicker of interest – which I did, to produce this baby Roach. This was to prove the first of many and with a bread ball of feed going in after every fish I had them really going for it.

Now I cannot imagine these are the original stockings of Roach introduced by the club – they must be spawnlings being so small; or were they? It was unlikely the new fish were old enough to be sexually mature as my understanding is that they have to be three or four years old before they can reproduce(?) Perhaps someone can enlighten me?

If the pool is going to be full of these diminutive bait-grabbers then I hardly think this is what the club members envisaged when the plans for the fishery were unveiled.

It strikes me that stocking with Roach can be a very chancy business indeed. There is quite a body of opinion supporting the need for quality Roach-Fishing, but it seems it is quite another thing in developing a fishery where Roach can grow big enough to be of interest. To be honest, Roach of this size are nothing more than a pest and I cannot think of any angler being content to fish for these ‘spratlings’ all day long; even the youngsters these days turn their noses up at them. On balance, my view is that fisheries are better off without them and that the example of Monk Lakes should be followed in that Chub are a much better proposition and give a much better return in their investment sport-wise.

Some of my liquidized bread had floated down to the right into a quiet corner and I noticed that a number of carp were taking the morsels from the surface! In January! Crikey, it must be mild!

I did no more – I shortened the rig right down to fish no more than a foot deep and lobbed the float out and drifted it round to the right in the margins where the carp were becoming really active, swirling and splashing at the floating items.

It wasn’t long before the float really buried and I found myself attached to one of the pool’s hard fighting carp.

These are really pretty little fish and are going to look very impressive if they survive into adult-hood, although their rate of growth is slow at present.

Nature goes at its own pace and in its own time.

Monk Lakes, Bridges

Sunday, 13th. January 2008

As previously reported By Peter on Maggotdrowning:
http://www.maggotdrowning.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=66562

The object of the exercise was to carry forward what I’d learnt on my first session with the waggler (previously blogged). There were a number of issues to address – what sort of waggler for which conditions, shotting patterns, that sort of thing, and I started off by showing Peter my float-box. He suggested I try an insert peacock carrying 4 AAA and in addition to the bulk, to shot it with a couple of number 8s – one about half-way down, the other nine inches or so from the hook. This was a fairly heavy rig (as wagglers go), unlike the little six-inch jobbies I’d got which only take a few shot to cock them; it was so windy, even the heavy waggler was a job to cast.

Peter was out of the blocks almost immediately and was into a little run of skimmers;

unfortunately, the shoal must have moved off as their presence was short-lived. I managed to bag one but as usual was falling way behind Peter’s catch-rate. A problem I identified almost immediately was visibility.

I tried to match the distance Peter was casting – quite a long way for float-fishing, about twenty-five meters or so, maybe thirty – I’m not too sure, it seemed an awful long way though and I have to confess I really couldn’t see the float properly and often not at all. Although the fine tip of the insert is great for lack of resistance to a biting fish, its slimness was a real disadvantage to the optically-challenged such as myself. I struggled with the thing for a good couple of hours before finally admitting defeat and fished shorter – even picking up a couple of fish. As Peter continued to reel ‘em in from his long-range presentation I changed the float for something else.

I’d got several other patterns with me, mostly of the straight variety made of reed, clear plastic, and peacock quill, but after several changes I eventually settled on a Premier Windbeater with a balsa body and straight stem carrying a shed-load of lead. At least this was manageable in the extremely strong wind which got stronger as the day wore on. I finally got the visibility issue sorted and could see the bright orange of the tip pretty well and with some fiddling about managed to get the shotting about right too. Peter however had out-caught me by a ratio of about five to one and I began to get ever so slightly frustrated by my lack of action – whereas Peter was picking up fish (albeit the odd fish, but fish nonetheless) a matter of only a few metres away.

Peter of course had the reason – and not for the first time during our sessions together it was FEEDING.

If there is one thing that is more important than anything else it is giving the fish feed in a consistent and regular manner sufficient to keep them interested in looking around for and finding hookbaits. Almost every time we go fishing, Feeding is the number one issue and today was no different. Peter reckoned it was my carp-fisherman mindset that made me adopt the sit-and-wait style I was using – whereas he was always busy, either feeding, twitching the bait back, re-casting, re-baiting, casting spells, talking to the fish – and whatever other devices he employs to coax, cajole, and coerce fish into taking his bait.

True, twitching the bait by giving the reel handle a turn every minute or so I am sure persuades an otherwise disinterested fish to snatch the bait back, but it is the constant and continual investment of effort that really does the trick, an investment that resulted in Peter far out-fishing me.

It was not only the amount and frequency of feed going in that made a difference – but where it was going also. Peter was pin-pointedly accurate – even in what was at times, a howling wind; my catapulted maggots were often going all over the place, blown by a gusty wind veering in sometimes unpredictable directions. There is a definite knack to it – you must aim low and snappy, not high and gentle – allowing the wind to blow the feed near the float, for it will inevitably blow it exactly where you don’t want it. The feed must be little, often, and in exactly the right place. Easy to talk – more difficult to do.

The carp was a total fluke and I claim no great skill in either luring it or landing it. The skimmers fought ten times harder! I am convinced the fish must have been laying-up – and for some considerable time too as it had a number of leech-like organisms on it.


Carp lay-up in the very harsh weather and I have often noticed that sick or mangy fish are particularly prone to doing this. The one I caught was a very sad individual who had obviously had a hard summer – the evidence of disease was obvious – lesions, partially rotten fins, and poor condition resulting in a fish that was in the recovery stage of previous ill-health.

Peter had to go early as his leg was playing him up (poor old thing) and I spent the last hour doing much better than the previous few hours catching some of the Chub and this Tench.

All in all, not only an enjoyable day in good company, but once again, I learnt a lot from my ‘mentor’.

Thanks Peter.