Little bars of gold

Sunday 30th May
Ok, i know i said id be concentrating all my efforts on getting a decent Tench till the river season starts but today i found myself with a brief window for a fishing trip and decided on a quick evening session on a local club water. On the water in question theres always the outside chance of a Tench or a Bream but the Carp are most likely to get to the bait first.
With this fact in mind i geared up and baited up ready for a Carp or two. The rods were still rigged up from yesterdays Tench session so i baited each one with the same pellet/boilie combo which did the damage with the Tench.

To cut a long story short i ended up hooking 5 and landing 4. None were bigger than 8-9lb but all were little gems, each was fin perfect in every way and fat as butter to boot. Id love to see a 20lber from the venue thats for sure.

The start of the final push

Saturday 29th May

With not long to go now before the river season is upon us ive decided to concentrate all my fishing efforts on getting a decent Tench before i run out of time. If i dont get one in the next couple of weeks then theyll have to wait till the next closed season cos ill be too busy chasing the river species in the meantime!

Todays trip was to be on the estate lake i started fishing at the beginning of this closed season. A friend had an 8lb Tench from here last week so its as good a place as any to try for a lump. Tench of that size are pretty hard to come by in my area as there arnt many waters around here which hold them.

Despite arriving on the bank at about 4.45am i was most surprised to find pretty much every peg stitched up already. Most people were just setting up and i rued the fact id pressed the snooze button on the alarm twice! The forcast had given out rain this morning and with a light breeze pushing into the road bank on the lake i managed to squeeze into a spot there.

The Tench were certainly very active along this bank as i could clearly see frothy patches of bubbles coming up accompanied by several fish head and shouldering in the area too. Thatll do me i thought as i sent a couple of maggot feeders out to them.

Straight away i started getting liners and within 20 minutes the first fish of the day, a tench of about 5lb, was soon banked. This was quickly followed by a 7lb Bream on the same rod. After this it all went decidedly quite for a while. I got the impression that something was amiss so i decided to try a change of bait.

I found a tub of halibut pellets in my bag, god knows how long theyd been in there but they smelt ok so one was soon winging its way out into the lake on a method feeder rig. Within about 5 minutes the rod was away and i struck into what felt like either a Carp or a big Tench which had me backwinding right from first contact with it. It plodded out towards the middle of the lake on an unstoppable run and the hook pulled.

Within minutes of recasting, the same rod was away yet again and the culprit proved to a Tench of around 5lb.

After this i thought id give the bait a bit more visual impact by tipping it with half a bright orange pop-up boilie. Tutti-frutti halibut pellets eh? bet they havent seen many of those before! Whether theyd seen it before or not it didnt matter cos i lost a fish on it about half hour later, at least i knew theyd pick it up.

With around an hour left before i planned on packing up, i put the cocktail bait on both rods and went on to catch two more Tench to round the trip off nicely. The last fish was just shy of 6lb and looked rather tatty unfortunately. Its the biggest ive had from the lake so far but i think im gonna have to play the numbers game to get amongst the bigger fish. Its common knowledge theyre in there but from what people tell me theres a lot of smaller fish showing this year which doesnt help matters. Nobody said this specimen hunting lark was gonna be easy!

The Heat is on!

Friday 21st May

Once again the weekend was upon us and so was a heatwave surprisingly enough! The forecast had given the hottest weekend of the year so far and with such conditions not being great for catching big Tench and Bream i took the opportunity to head down to a local lake for the evening to catch some Carp on floaters.


When i arrived they were everywhere and i soon had them confidently taking the bread that i put out. A couple of small carp were soon banked before the wind got up and the fish moved off up the lake towards where a couple of other chaps were fishing.

I chucked a couple of method feeders along the margins for the rest of the evening and apart from a couple of good pulls which i suspect were liners, no more fish materialised.



Saturday 22nd May

Todays session was supposed to be on Lakeside fishery near Hinckley in pursuit of some crucians but when i arrived i was most disappointed to see a bivvy in pretty much every peg on the lake. I set up in what amounted to the last available spot but i wasnt confident so i packed up and headed to Makins fishery just up the road in a bid to get a bend in my rod.

The weather given out for today was a scorcher and the carp were spawning heavily in all the lakes on the complex. I set up on lake 5 phase 1 on a peg near the carpark. My intention was just to spend a couple of hours on there to catch a few and save a wasted trip out.

I set up a waggler to fish small cubes of meat right under the bank on the nearside margin as this method has scored well for me on Makins in the past. I missed the first couple of bites so i changed the waggler for a pole float to give me a better contact on the strike.

From the first put in with the new rig i was into a succession of carp. They all ranged between 2-10lb and were great fun on my avon rod. It was real bite a chuck stuff and a change of hookbait to maggot had the same results exept the carp were replaced by tench and bream.

I packed up at about 11ish just as the sun was starting to reach full strength and my arms were starting to burn. Id estimate that i had around 100lb of fish in 4 hours of fishing, thats pretty good going and even though i didnt get any specimens, it was great fun catching!

Another trip to Tamworth

Sunday 16th May

After my blank session on the Tamworth lake the other week id been itching to get back down to settle the score and this was the first chance id had for one reason or other to have another go. Weather conditions were much more favourable this time around with a warm wind and even some sunny spells.

I found i had the lake to myself upon arrival and soon settled into a swim in the windward corner of the lake. I decided to keep feed to a minimum this time rather than balling it in to try and see if there was anything in the area without spooking it. I opted for the usual maggot bolt feeder on one rod and method/boilie combo on the other. At this point i accidentally knocked my mobile into the lake completely knackering it, i hoped this wasnt an omen of another blank session!

After an hour or so of inactivity i noticed a couple of fish roll and almost imediately began to recieve lots of liners. Some of them were so strong i actually hit them thinking they were proper bites and struck into thin air every time. I had to sit on my hands, that is until the baitrunner on the maggot rod went into meltdown. The culprit proved to be a nice Tench of 6lb8oz which was a welcome capture and proved i was doing something right at least.

The liners continued for another hour or so until the sun came out proper whereupon they stopped completely. I fished on for a couple more hours without any more indications before packing up. Those Bream can be frustrating buggers!

Acorns from the ashes

Sunday 9th May
On my way back from the night fishing trip the other day i passed a lake which suffered a major fish kill a couple of years back which killed virtually every Carp in there. It was a shame because the place was starting to chuck up some decent fish too. The following year the lake was restocked with some small carp and left practically unfished .
Anyway, as i passed i saw a Carp leap out of the water so i stopped and watched for a few minutes and soon enough a couple of other Carp leapt out too. I made a mental note to come back one evening and catch some to see how theyd grown since stocking which is how i came to find myself on the bank there this evening.

I took my Tench and Bream gear as i wasnt expecting anything of any size and id also made up a batch of boilies to test out as i intended to use them for Barbelling come the glorious 16th.
I cast a stick rig on one rod along the margin and then began to set up the other rod, as i did so the first rod was practically pulled into the lake! after a lively scrap a chunky little mirror of about 9lb hit the net.


The bait worked then! bolstered by the early success i cast the other rod to the far margin and catapulted a couple of dozen freebies over each. The lake seemed to have gone dead as i didnt have any more indications for over an hour after that until a fast take on the nearside margin rod had the clutch screaming as a fish powered across the middle of the pool. I locked up and applied some heavy sidestrain to try and turn it but it proved to be too much because the hook pulled.
The lake died again after this with just the odd fish topping and it was a good hour before i had another take. This time the fish, another small mirror, was landed and i decided to pack up. Even though i was only there for about 4 hours and the fish were small, i was really pleased to have been down. The stockies are coming on nicely and my new bait proved itself to be a good fish catcher. Its great to see the lake getting back on track after its previous catastrophe, give it 2-3 years and it will be somewhere near where it was before i reckon.

Dreaming of a Breaming

Weds 5th May


If the Title of this entry is anything to go by then Dreaming of catching a Bream is about all i can do at the minute cos i sure aint sticking much on the bank!

I found myself with a day off on Thursday so decided to try and sneak a quick overnighter in on a local pit. The pit in question is a good size and has good form for chucking up big Bream to Carp anglers but its also quite a difficult nut to crack. Ive tried and failed to get amongst the Bream there on several occasions and this occasion was no different!

I didnt get sniff of a fish all night, not even from a Roach which was surprising as i was fishing maggots on both rods. I saw a couple of slabs roll at massive range but that was it . The Carpers catch them on boilies over beds of trout pellets usually so next time i go i think ill do the same and ill take the baitboat along too.
Looks like my purple patch might have come to an end, for now........

Cold weather kills it

Sunday 2nd May

Headed out to Tamworth again today, again with Bream and Tench in mind. After the recent warm weather it came as a bit of a shock this mornng to go outside to a biting cold wind, even so i was still confident of a bite or two.
I got to the lake and seeing as i had the whole 14 acres to myself i spent 20 minutes scanning it for signs of fish. The wind was really cutting across towards me and bloody cold to boot. There was also some heavy looking rainclouds rolling in so, after seeing absolutely nothing, i headed for the opposite bank and hopefully a bit of shelter.


After a couple of hours with nothing to show for my efforts i decided to scale my end tackle down a notch to try and buy a bite. Shortly afterwards a fast take on the right hander saw me land a nice Tufted Duck of about 3lb, not a personal best but it put up a good scrap!
After this it was a couple of hours before i had a series of bleeps which developed into nothing so i put it down to a liner. A phone call from the wife told me there was a roast lamb dinner on the go back home so i decided to cut my losses and head back.
The trip wasnt in vain though, i learnt a little bit more about the place which is something i try to get from every session, even the blank ones. Its all part of the jigsaw which will hopefully be rewarded sooner or later.