Spring has sprung

I have been luck of late in that my long suffering other half is having to put up with me being away during the week and at the weekend all I want to do is go fishing, any way the weekend after the 4 way I went down with a horrible little cold that saw me decide to stay in bed rather than go fishing.  I made up for it last Saturday though and with it having been the final weekend on my South Cerney Ticket I decided to have a go on one of the match lakes. Stait was my destination and after a civilised start I was setting up on peg 14 at about nine in the morning.

The weather forecast was blustery showers so my plan was to fish the method, short pole and down the edge, I started casting a method off the point of the island and I managed an early skimmer before the sun poked its head out and all I could think was ‘ bet you they will have the pellet wag!’

I got off my box and put up a 6 gram pellet wag with a 4ft hooklength and on my fourth cast carp number 1 was hooked and landed, and at about 12lb it was well worth it.  Over the course of the day I managed 1 carp on the short meat line but it never felt right, I had a few on the method over the pellet wag line but these were of a smaller stamp than on the wag. I had several on the wag at 4 and 2 feet deep as the day progressed and as the session was ending I went down the edge for some proper chunks on meat over pellet.

I ended up with well over 20 carp to mid doubles and a few bream on the tip and short pole, so it was a nice final swansong, well for the moment.

My next trip out was for a cheeky sporty this afternoon and I had heard great things about a pair of lakes just down the way from my work called Wood Lane Fishery.

I turned up at about 1 o’clock, bought my ticket and then due to the blustery wind and showers (again) I set up on peg 6 as I had the wind of my back and an aerator in front of me.

Today the plan was simple, a pellet wag and a short pole line, I plumbed up and found that it was top 2 depth at 11m hence the short pole, I found about 5 ft at 7.5m and decided that I would start on that before I thrashed the water to a foam.  I set up a 0.6g float in to fish expander over 4mm softened pellet and started on a kinder pot, I caught straight away and skimmers about 3 to the pound were coming to hand at a good pace but they started to come off bottom. My solution to this was to form the same number of pellet 20-30 into a small ball and continue to feed that every put in.  This worked and a skimmer of about a pound and a half came to the net after a short wait but it seemed as though you would get a few better fish and then they would move off and leave you with a swim full of small skimmers. To try and make something happen I fed ¼ of a pot of pellet with about 20 grains of corn on top and left it as I went out on the pellet wag. Although the fish were not crawling up the rod over the course of the afternoon I managed 10 carp to 6lb on the wag again at various depths, I again got to try some floats out on both the rod and the pole but I desperately wanted a bigger fish on the pole line so I fed that quite aggressively with half pots of pellet and corn and I had a string of big skimmers to 3lb off that line but never more than 3 before I had to re feed as the small fish descended on me.

All the fish were in good condition and the fishery was very tidy and well-kept so I will be going back and looking for a few of the better fish that are supposed to be in there.

What would I do different

1.       Not a lot really, I had enough prep done and enough rigs for the pleasure sessions that they were.

2.       Perhaps next time I will get someone to help with the catch shot rather than in the landing net between my legs :-)