Out For A Waggle

 With the trout rivers up again, though dropping, I decided a spot of stillwater angling may be a better idea. I quickly gathered up the requisite tackle and stopped at the tackle shop for some maggots. I already had ground bait and sweetcorn, but maggots never go amiss. My first problem of the day was the road was closed to the pond I wanted to be at. I traipsed round the diversion to another pond instead. I was surprised to find the car park empty. I remembered a club notice about it being closed, but a quick check showed it to be last week, so all OK. As I put the reel on the rod I noticed a complete lack of line on the spool. A spool of 4.6lb was found in the tackle box. As I wound it on I couldn't help thinking it felt a bit thick. Another look at the spool showed it to be 4.6Kg. Ooops. After winding it back onto it's spool I found the 4.6lb and got that onto the reel. Next cock up was the tube of insert wagglers wasn't to be found, all I had was a collection of rather thick river wagglers. Oh well.

 

I selected the slimmest float I could find and dotted it down as low as I could. To avoid the tiny rudd I put the bulk of the shot a couple of foot above the hook. A few balls of groundbait laced with maggots and a few bits of sweetcorn. The first few fish followed by a skimmer.  It then went quiet for a while. This is how it went for the rest of the day. While I was struggling to catch a couple more anglers arrived. I alternated between live & dead maggots and sweetcorn. The sweetcorn picked up the odd roach, live maggots got the Rudd, and dead maggots the little skimmers. For 4½ hours fishing I really didn't catch very much. I had plenty of bites, but I suspect the thickish float was the problem.

One of the later arrivals had a reasonable catch of skimmers and bream from the far side of the pond so the fish were feeding, just not in front of me. To be honest the swim I'd chosen does well in winter but I'm not sure it's a spring/ summer swim. I was entertained by a carp during the afternoon that kept rising vertically out of the the water to it's shoulders. A bit of a strange antic but then carp are bit strange at times. Once I got home I made sure the tube of insert wagglers was in the bag as well as the spare spools with more appropriate line on the them.