Fishing In Pea Soup

I was surprised to only find one car at the estate lake car park when I arrived. I wasn't that amazed when I saw the colour of the water - a horrible green colour which didn't really show up in photos. I dip of the hand showed the water to be cool so I decided not give it a go. A light waggler was set up to fish close in. Hemp and maggot to the left. Groundbait and maggot to the right. A couple of ducks turned up attracted by the splashes and made a bit of a nuisance of themselves for the rest of the session. They even tried sneaking up behind me at one point.

Double, even triple, maggot produced plenty of bites the majority of which I hit. All small perch, roach and rudd. Quite how such small fish manage to engulf three maggots and a hook I don't know. Normally they would drive you to distraction just nipping the end of the maggot. Every now and then the predators would move in scattering fish. A bit more feed would have them back feeding. The other chap fishing had only a small bream on feeder tactics, but changed to close range float to rack up net in a short time. before leaving. Over the five hours I was there I managed 204 fish. averaging a fish every ninety seconds. Things were a bit slower for the last hour as the wind had got up and was blowing leafs into the swim. I'm sure with a whip I could have doubled that number, or maybe I'd have got bored.

Not my usual sort of thing but good fun all the same. A keep net would have been useful as the catch would have made a great photo. I also had my licence checked for the fourth time this year and the second time here.