Match Hours On An Estate Lake

 After last weeks change of plan I ended up where I should have been last week, but this wasn't the plan for today either. Today's plan didn't involve fishing as such, but things altered so I was at the tackle shop at open time for some bait and a few bits and pieces. The plan was a spot of float fishing maggots for whatever. I'd be fishing match hours, 10ish to 4ish. After a bit of plumbing about I found the edge of a none to distinct ledge four rod lengths out with 4' 6" of water. I also set up a method feeder to chuck out in the middle to see if anything took a fancy, This was set on an alarm as I didn't expect much action from it.

A mix of red and brown crumb with dead reds and chopped worm was made up to feed the swim and half a dozen small balls were chucked out to start with. Hook bait was double maggots of various colours, though I also had caster and worm. The first problem of the day was the strong breeze blowing down the lake, left to right to me. I'd been advised that fishing just off the bottom was generally the best until the skimmers move in. Because of the strong breeze and the shallowness of the lake you get quite an undertow and the float was moving right to left. While this produced the odd bite it was from tiny rudd, roach or dinky perch., none of which were easy to hit. The only solution was to add a number eight shot 4" from the hook and fish 6" over-depth.

It took the swim a little while to get going, but it was nearly a fish a chuck, only small fish, when it did get going. You could tell the fish by the bite. The float shot away with the perch. The roach bites were a sharp dip and the rudd caused the float to skate across the surface. You'd get three or four fish then a few silly bites before hooking fish again. Casters just got shelled and worm produced the tiniest of perch when I tried them.

After lunch the skimmers turned up. The float would just slowly disappear. Strike before it was underwater and you'd miss. The only problem with these beasties is the snot left on the line. I'd been feeding a golf-ball size ball of ground ball every 30 minutes up to this point, but stepped it up to every 20 minutes. Things then went slightly awry. I bumped three reasonable sized bream in as many casts. The last one coming adrift just beyond the net. The rig ended up wrapped around a willow branch. I had no choice but to re-rig. The skimmers kept on coming and getting bigger, along with the odd roach and rudd. The bites were further apart than earlier. In the mean time the method rod had done very little. Five bites resulted in three middling sized skimmers. As planned I stopped at four. The bites had been slowing for the last hour anyway.

With three middling skimmers removed the fish weighed 11lb 6oz. Not sure what a good weight from here is really. It may have won me a section. Who knows. Apart from the carp angler there were three other anglers all catching. One on feeder seemed to be taking a few as the day wore on. A pole angler seemed to b catch a few more than me.  The third didn't seem to be catching much but he didn't arrive until the afternoon. It didn't seem a bad net of fish considering I wasn't trying to hard.

Even More M'thud and Float Fishing

 I was quite surprise when I arrived at the gravel pit to find three other anglers already there and three more arrive through the morning. This meant all bar one swim taken. I'd come up with a cunning plan for today. Along side the method feeder out on the bar I's feed two swims for the float. One close to the tree roots was fed chopped worm and one further out was feed groundbait and maggots.

The day was not a sunny as previous and a chilly wind was blowing into the corner I was fishing. Definitely not T-shirt weather as I had to put a fleece on. Bites were scarce today, for me. Other were taking a few roach on feeder or float tactics. While other had even less bites than me. The far swim produced the most fish, all roach. The inside swim didn't until afternoon and then it was to maggots. Occasionally a couple of squabbling wrens to chase about to my right. A large crow kept landing in a tree opposite looking rather ominous. Plenty of alder beetles about again. A very noisy robin that seemed to prefer worms to maggots kept defying my attempts to photograph it.

The method rod was ignored again despite a fair collection of baits been tried. As mentioned earlier I couldn't get a bite on worm but maggot produced a small perch over the chopped worm. By mid-afternoon the wind had dropped and changed direction slightly. So the debris which was piled up in the corner started to drift about over my swims, but I persisted. I thought I'd hooked another jack at first, but the head thumps suggested a decent perch. After a brief battle and a couple of close shaves with the tree roots a nice perch estimated at 2lb graced the net. Weighed later I was surprised to see it turn the dial to 2lb 9oz. A couple more small roach came from the groundbait swim but what few bites I was getting dried up.

Despite the perch I really don't think I'm getting the best out of the swims I'm fishing. I also think the few stillwater floats I have are a bit ion the light side and need to invest in few heavier ones. I also need to tie up a better selection of hook lengths.

More M'thud, and Float Fishing

I don't do a great deal of still water fishing, especially float fishing. This can be seen by the paltry collection of floats I have for still water. While I have enough river floats to stock a small tackle shop the still water floats would barely make a counter display. Quite a few of them seem to be Angling Times give-aways from donkey's years ago as well. I was setting up in the opposite corner to yesterday, mainly to avoid squinting into the sun to see the float. After a fair bit of casting about I'd found a clear spot for the method feeder which was fished similar to yesterday.

For the float I'd decided to start with four large balls of ground bait and loose fed maggots over the top. The ground bait didn't seem to have the desired effect as it was a couple of hours before I got my first bite. As yesterday double maggot got the bites but were very hard to hit at times. Eventually I managed a dozen roach, a perch and a hybrid. In the mean time the method feeder had produced nothing until I put a scopes cream pellet on. I had several drop back bites but never contacted with any thing. They could have been liners, but eventually I managed a little skimmer. Not the slab I was hoping for. A second fish of similar size would have been added had it not got itself into the weed and come adrift. Should have held the rod higher.

Like yesterday it was not the most rewarding of days but apart from pike fishing I've done very little still water fishing and really need to get to grips with it again. An angler on the opposite bank to me seemed to have quite a few fish to the pole and another had three decent looking fish on feeder. I'll be having one more go on the bank holiday to see if I can get any better. There seemed to be quite a few fishing crashing and swirling in one area over the weeds. I suspect they may have been the larger bream spawning.

M'thud Fishing

 I'd decide some time ago to give the local still waters a go over the Easter holidays rather than battle the traffic to get to and from a trout water, especially as warm sunny weather was predicted. Arriving at the lake around 8:30 I was surprised to be the only one there. I'd expected other to have already arrived. Maybe they thought it was going to be crowded and had given it a miss. 

I selected a corner swim as I knew where the feature was that often attracted bream, my target species. I intended to fish method feeder on one rod and float fished maggots on the other. Despite owning several method feeders I'd never actually used them so this would be something new to me. First order of the day was mix up the groundbait. I'd been advised that a 50:50 mix of pellets and groundbait worked well here. I don't own one of those fancy branded mixing buckets but I do have a rather splendid blue two gallon bucket of considerable vintage. I believe it's getting on for fifty years old, but it's not been heavily used. I even know which shop I bought it from, or where the shop was more precisely. For bait I had a selection of pellets and some small bollies in various colours, flavours unknown. 

After a few casts to get the correct distance I clipped up and proceeded to fish. Recasting every three minutes for the first half hour to get a bed of bait down. After half an hour I was leaving the rod ten minutes, so with it resting on the squawk box I set up the float rod. This didn't go well. As I was threading the line through the rings I dropped it and broke the tip just above the next guide. It was still useable, which was a good job as I only had the one float rod with me. Actually I did have another, but it was a specimen float and way too stiff for flicking out a little 3BB insert waggler. After a spot of plumbing three balls of groundbait and some loose fed maggots were dropped on the chosen spot.

With the alarm on the phone set to go every fifteen minutes for recasting the method rod I proceeded to fish the float rod as well. Initially the signs were good. Fishing double maggot I managed to get every third bite and soon managed a dozen small roach before getting bitten off by a little jack that grabbed the maggots as I wound in. As I replaced the hook length I remembered I'd brought the keepnet so set that up, hoping for a nice bag of roach. This was not to be. I was then plagued by a string of unmissable bites. Single maggot didn't get any bites, but bites on double and triple maggot rarely contacted with anything. Meanwhile the method rod failed to elicit a bite. I'd changed the hookbait every hour, but nothing was to the bream's liking. Three more times I was bitten off by small jack pike. I ended up a few roach, a perch and a couple of hand sized skimmers.

A couple more anglers had turned up for a few hours both taking a few roach. There was quite a lot of alder beetle about and a tree creeper kept tormenting me by waiting long enough for me to get the phone set to camera mode before hopping round the back of the tree. The toads were also about, playing piggy back rides, but sinking away before i could get a photo. I did manage to snag length of spawn which took a bit of removing from the hook. It's incredibly sticky stuff.