What of the fishing then? well, since my last entry ive been a grand total of three times . The first was an evening Barbel session on the Trent and other than a tiny Chub the fish werent obliging whatsoever. The temperature plummeted as it got dark and the moon shone like a torch in the sky . Ive never paid too much attention to moon phases but even so, im never confident in a full moon which is why it got the blame for my crap session!
Great for werewolves, not so great for Barbelling (not for me anyway!)
My next trip out was another evening session, this time in pursuit of Zander for the first time this season. Again the Trent was my destination and i headed straight for my favourite area and had to beat out a peg in the himalayan balsam as it appeared that nobody had been up there so far this season. The action was a lot slower than i was expecting but it wasnt too long before i was doing battle with a jack of about 5lb. The lead got snagged in some boulders under my rod tip though and i ended up getting cut off. I hate leaving traces in Pike like that but i only use single barbless trebles when Zandering so hopefully the fish will manage to shed the rig without coming to much harm.
Around an hour later i hit into what felt like a big Zander on the rod in the central channel. I was convinced it was a Zander right up until a largish Pike of around 15lb sounded on the surface . At this point it woke up and behaved in a far more pike-like fashion, making short fast runs and tail-walking all over the place. As i went to net it i could clearly see my hook in the front edge of its bottom jaw. I reached out with the net and i couldnt believe it when a final defiant flare of its gills had the hook flying back at me! Its head was on the drawstring as it turned and slowly disappeared into the murky depths. Bugger! The Zander never played ball in the end either despite me stopping into darkness so i packed up on a blank.
The ubiquitous rod shot
My most recent trip was last Thursday and i went out for the afternoon on a stretch of my local Soar, target Perch. After walking the stretch there was a lot of Chub in evidence around some moored boats so i spent an hour or so chucking a light link leger at them baited with maggots. A string of small Chub to around 2lb fell to the tactic before i got itchy feet and headed to my fancied Perch area.
Livebaits werent hard to come by and every put-in with floatfished maggots resulted in a small Chublet so it wasnt long before i had a float paternoster bobbing about next to a likely looking bush.
In the dangerzone......
The bait was hit in less than a minute by a tiny perch with eyes bigger than it belly, in fact it was only a couple of inches longer than the Chublet it took! This swim proved to be full of these small fish and i was catching them as fast as i could catch baitfish to give to them!
Greedy bstard!
A move was called for and after doing so i quickly found the next spot wasnt much better! To be fair the fish were a little bigger although the fish pictured below was pretty much the biggest one i had.
Biggest of the day
Once again i moved, this time to a spot where ive good fish before . Bait catching was a bit of an issue here and i struggled for bites. It soon became apparent why the small fish were scarce in the swim though because once i did manage to catch a baitfish it was quickly mullered by the resident Pike (see the pic below). I couldnt raise any more action after that so i packed up pleased at catching a few fish albeit small ones .
Jacks were troublesome ....
No comments:
Post a Comment