Originally written July 2007
Had a thoroughly enjoyable session on a
new venue for me yesterday and thought I would share. Having had a rather
disappointing session on Saturday morning at a local commercial-type venue I
decided a change was in order and headed down to a local club lake for Sunday
afternoon.
I'd not fished the venue before (I'd
only seen in once in the dead of winter), and having gathered a few snippets of
information from the local tackle shop, so I thought what the heck, I would
fish pellet on the pole and see if the rumoured bream and carp would show. I'd
been told not to expect too much, whilst there were a head of both bream and
carp in the venue, it was far from commercial levels of stocking. In fact the
advice was, go fish the far (shallow) end, it's a bit slow, you should catch on
pellet although expect a good wait between bites and it's about 3 foot deep. A
quick check on previous matches showed the 20-30lb was a typical winning
weight, so bag-up city it most definitely was not.
So arriving at about 2:30 in the
afternoon I headed off to the far end of the lake and one could not help but
notice the large carp-shaped things cruising just below the surface. Quite a
few fish, low doubles I'd guess including some very attractive looking
ghosties. This was encouraging, although the 'no surface baits' rule put paid
to the obvious tactics.
Suffice to say I got to the peg, potted
in a few pellets to kick start the swim and got busy getting organised. Initial
set up was a longish rig for plumbing up. I plumbed up, it disappeared, 3 foot,
indeed. A quick rig set up on the bank and we were back in business, with 15
foot of water.
Hmm, note to self: I must teach the
folks in the tackle shop how to count, if only they'd make the same mistakes
with the pricing.
Anyway, just before 3pm I was ready to
fish. One 11mm expander on the hook, ship out, feed the main line, feed the
swim by the snags in the left hand margin and wait. And waited, and then, I
waited some more.
After about 15 minutes I started to get
a few knocks on the float and a few bubbles in the swim. Not proper bites, but
the sort of thing you get when there are fish milling about, but not really
feeding. After 3 or 4 air strikes (the type when you strike into nothing as
opposed to the type over Afghanistan) which I assumed were small skimmers, I
struck and finally made contact. The fish came up in the water like a dream, to
a point about 3 foot from the top and followed me in as a shipped back, giving
me all the tell tale bream signs, I slowly eased the pole back when somehow the
bream underwent a metamorphosis into an angry common carp that suddenly decided
that an excursion to the left hand snag was greatly preferable to having to
look at my face.
Despite my best attempts to lose the
fish in one of its three forays into the roots, I finally slipped the landing
net under a lovely, dark common that just touched 7lb on the scales. Well that
was a nice bonus I thought.
So back it was out again, a few more
pellets, and following another wait, a repeat performance (with a little less
root action), another, almost identical common of 6lb 8oz. At this point an
hour had passed but with only two bites and lots of knocks I decided to change
the hook size down and go in again with a soft 6mm pellet on the hook.
20 minutes later, bite, strike, lots of
elastic and after initially minor runs an explosion in the water saw a spirited
ghostie on the end of the line. Despite its early indications or a gentle
fight, this was one carp that was not going to surrender easily, but
nevertheless and despite numerous misses with the landing net, eventually it
graced the bank, a gorgeous ghostie of 13lb 9oz.
Another carp, and suddenly bream
started to appear, give or take all about the 5lb mark, as bites became more
frequent and my ongoing tally of weight started to tick over at an increasing
rate. Never rapid, never one after another, but definitely no longer having to
wait 30 minutes for a bites, the odd carp and a few that escaped (probably
foul-hooked in the deep water).
Suddenly the tally was climbing with
the bream really starting to add to the weight, before I knew it I'd hit the
87lb mark, then along came a cracking 8lb common to make it 95lb. At that point
a passing angler, who'd just packed up, came to watch me and the bites….
stopped.
A few switches later, inside line,
deeper, shallower, different hook size, another foul-hooker screamed off before
getting free. It was all looking like curtains as darkness was starting to
threaten when I tried a grain of sweetcorn for change. (I'd tried this a few
times earlier in the day with no success at all). The float settled and then
was gone, another 5lb bream into the net and the 'ton' broken.
A few more minutes produced another
carp of 5lb, before packing up and a quick drive home to a quick round of the,
now, infamous "where have you been husband?" game.
So there you have it, a hundred pound
of fish (11 bream & 7 carp) caught in just under 6 hours from a new water,
and, I have to sense with a great sense of achievement. But, now in the cold
light of day, I cant help wondering why…
Now I've caught bigger fish on the
pole, and recently for that matter, and I've put together bigger bags of fish.
I've caught faster and arguable fished better.
I did enjoy throwing a few pellets to
the family of baby geese that kept passing through the swim. And there was a
certain enjoyment from observing the kamikaze moorhen in the nearby tree that
did not so much go for a swim as made a semi-controlled bellyflop from tree to
water?
I did also have a sense of excitement
during the session that I don't normally experience, was it the virgin water,
or was it the snags that adorned both sides of the peg that made any bite an
adventure waiting to happen?
Was it the friendly club members I spoke
to on the bank, including the "I've never seen anyone fish the pole down
here before" statement? (I suspect that might change) and the friendly
shake of the hand and a "well done mate" as I passed the 100lb mark.
I don't think I know,
I could sit and ponder this for a while, but d'you know what, I don't think I
will. All I know is this that work today was slightly less objectionable than
normal because of the wonderful sport we share.
I’ll be back
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