Monday 6 May 2013

No light at the end of the tunnel, yet

These blog posts are getting all too infrequent these days although to be fair I've not had anything of interest to blog about. Since my last entry I've had four trips to my new Bream water and apart from losing one three trips in, I'm yet to bank a fish of any description from there. Nobody else is on the pit so I can't gage my results against those of other anglers and the fish hardly seem to even show themselves so confidence is becoming a real issue for me.

I'm fishing the unknown and all I have to on is the word of a good mate who discovered the water a couple of years ago and some tantalising pictures of what he caught. Theres nothing whatsover on the internet about the lake and even the locals who fish a couple of ponds nearby swear blind the lake is barren of fish and not worth bothering with. The fact I've had the whole pit to myself on every visit so far despite the warm conditions speaks volumes and The whole thing has been made ever more difficult due the fact that other waters are switching on good and proper now with some great catches coming from all over the place. The temptations there to go elsewhere but all my efforts so far will have been in vain if I do that so I need to focus on the job at hand.

Because of the lakes remoteness there is never a shortage of wildlife to look out for down there but I did spot something unusual the other day. There was a black shape swimming right across the middle of the lake and the geese seemed very agitated by it. There were all following it about twenty yards behind making a hell of a racket, at first I thought it was an Otter but it seemed a bit too small and I can only conclude instead that it was a large Mink. It was right out in the middle of the lake and I had to use the camera on full zoom to get any kind if picture. It was strange because I've never seen one swim across such a distance of open water like that before.


Spotted at 90 yards, Is it a Mink or the Loch Ness monster?
 
The lake has also given me several encounters of the tufted kind aswell and the one in the pic below really had me thinking I'd hooked a bream until it surfaced at my feet. The bloody things must have gills considering the amount of time they can stay underwater!
 
These have been a bit of a pain lately!
 
Before moving on its worth mentioning a new bit of kit I've recently discovered from the Nash stable. It's called the Nash Deliverance ball maker and I've acquired the 40mm version, it takes loads of hassle out of making 'jaffas' to ball in when baiting up and because it makes them all the same size it's easier to group the balls into a tight area with catapult, very useful indeed.
 

Trouble free balls!

For my most recent session I was given a pass to night fish and seeing as nights aren't allowed on my new water I decided to fish a lake on my club ticket. Upon arriving though it was bivvy city as every man and his dog were out taking advantage of the great bank holiday weather. The lake next door was completely free however and after being joined by Phil we opted to fish there instead. Some good bags of bream have been caught in the past there yet its very very underfished and is another water which has a reputation for holding very little, a reputation that's thoroughly undeserved I feel.
I opted for a boilie approach over my usual maggot one because there are quite a few small roach and perch in there and I didn't want to be winding those in at 3am!
Fish began to show in numbers as soon as the light began to go and there looked to be one or two nice Tench amongst the Bream aswell. It wasn't long before I began to get some really strong liners and some actually pulled line off the baitrunner and had me striking at thin air. I really had to sit on my hands and a proper bite finally occurred at around 10pm which resulted in a Bream of around 4-5lb.
The liners continued and kept me awake most of the night until i lost a fish to a snag in the very early hours after which they seemed to tail off a bit. I did eventually manage to get a little sleep but was soon awoken at first light by a turbo charged Tench which was more fin than fish and would've struggled to go much more than 3lb but it was in great condition though.
 
Paddles!
 
After that I noticed the Bream were rolling much further up the lake and some them looked quite sizeable. I didn't hold out much hope for any more bites so I had a pot noodle and went back to bed. The sun was well up by the time I was jolted back to reality by another bite. A slightly better bream of 6-7lb was soon landed and brought my session to a close. After my struggles on the other pit it was nice to see the bobbins moving again anyway, back to reality next week though, bring it on!
 
Nowt wrong with a bit of advertising!

 

1 comment:

  1. Hi Leo, it does speak volumes when any type of water is barren of fisherman, usually if they are fish to be caught the banks will be lined. However it may just be a little difficult, I hope you are rewarded with a fish after all your effort, tight lines

    Darren

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