A belated update

Ive just realised that my blog is becoming somewhat neglected at the minute . This is due to several reasons but thats not to say that i havent been fishing, far from it in fact. Ive been out a few times and caught a good few fish, nothing spectacular but its been enjoyable.

I had a trip to the Derbyshire Derwent with the lure rod one evening and, after catching several small perch, i hit a nice Pike only to have it spit my lure back at me after a brief tussle. A change of lure saw me get another pull shortly afterwards which resulted in a fish of around 11-12lb.

A Bream trip on a local club lake proved to be an interesting day out . The bream werent obliging in the slightest but i did end up catching a shed load of perch thanks to a bit of opportunistic angling.  In front of me I saw loads of Perch in the margins and everytime i threw in a few maggots they were on them like piranhas. Firstly there was about a half a dozen tiddlers and after half an hour or so i had 20-30 better fish competing for the maggots. It was fascinating stuff watching the swim build before my eyes!

I didnt have any float gear so i locked a flouro pop-up on the line with some leger stops and tied a size 18 to a length of 2lb line. Two maggots were put on the hook and the rig was lowered in amongst the shoal. Within seconds a fish grabbed the bait and when i got it out i was surprised because it was way bigger than it looked in the water. I put it at about 2-3oz as it approached the bait but in my hand it was about 6! I went on to catch one after another for the next half hour including one which i caught, put back and then watched it swim up to the bait and take it again imediately!! The biggest i landed was about a pound or so.
Strange as it may sound, i could tell which ones were going to take the bait because they approached it in a completely different manner to the ones which would swim up and inspect it before ignoring it. I added a tiny shot to the line to make it sink a bit quicker but after this the bait was completely ignored, once i took it off i started catching again.
One or two roach made an appearance but they were very shy compared to the perch and tended to shoot in out of nowhere before disappearing again just as quickly.
The water was deceptively deep, i was fishing about 2ft and the fish were swimming up vertically off the bottom. I plumbed it at 6ft yet it didnt look much more than 3ft!

A couple of trips to the Trent quivertipping lobworms and bread followed and once again a lot of Perch were caught aswell as some decent Chub and Roach. The god awful weed is still bad but everything is starting to turn towards winter now so hopefully it wont be around for too much longer.

Im looking forward to next week as, inspired by Jeffs, Keiths and Lees antics in their blogs (see the list to the right) i decided to book onto Blenhiem palace lake before the weather turns too cold. Ive fished it before but only when its been really cold and ive struggled somewhat, lets hope its a bit better this time around .......