Ok I know my blog has been a bit neglected of late but I've had a lot on of late and simply not had time to update. That's not to say I've not been out on the bank though and although the fishing hasn't exactly been spectacular, I've not blanked at least.
I've not been out with the lure gear since my last post, instead I've been doing a spot of bream and carp fishing on some local pits. In mid April I found myself on the banks of a water I'd not fished for a couple of years and although I'd had bream there before I'd never had one of the doubles I know it contains.
To be honest my mind wasn't 100% on the fishing as my recently purchased 4x4 had been making some funny noises on the journey there and I was a bit concerned as to whether I'd make it home! I was there however and there were fish to be caught so I got setup.
The first thing that struck me was the blanket weed which seemed to cover every inch of the bottom, I simply couldn't get through it. After spending the morning fannying about recasting and not settling I decided to pop my maggot hook bait straight off the lead by substituting one of the three on the hook for a piece of foam cut to look like a maggot.
This seemed to do the trick and half an hour later I had my first bite of the session and struck into a heavy fish. I was chuffed to see a large bream nodding it's head on the end of my line in the clear water and even more chuffed when I banked it and recorded a weight of 10lb4oz, result!
Bites weren't exactly forthcoming after that and I only managed a couple of roach to add to the scoresheet but I went home happy at finally getting a double from that lake. The car did make it home by the way and a trip to the garage the following week told me a bearing in the rear diff had broken up causing a fair bit of damage.
This meant I was a bit limited for fishing for a couple of weeks until it got sorted so I decided I would stay much more local. A night session on a large pit at shardlow gave me four small bream in the 4-6lb class but it was pretty cold so I couldn't have hoped for much more from there to be honest. One thing I did get from the session though was that mini boilies out fished the maggots by four to zero!
I decided to continue the boilie theme into my next trip which was to another local pool situated within a housing estate. I fished method feeders with short hook links and 10mm source bottom baits, both rods fished to a known spot at about 60yards range.
Once again the action was pretty slow and in the event I only had three bites all day and fortunately I managed to land all three fish with the biggest going 8lb8oz.
I gotta say I hardly saw any sign of fish showing all day which a little strange but again, it wasn't exactly red hot weather wise.
After hearing of some carp being caught from one of our club waters to an interesting size I decided a morning chasing them might be somewhat worthwhile . This is the same water I wrote about on here back in 2010 in a post called 'acorns from the ashes' and in those intervening years the carp have grown somewhat and now 20lbers are being caught with some regularity.
The water is mostly margin work and it didn't take long to get a take, in fact I hooked into a nice fish before I'd even cast my second rod out! It didn't look overly big in the water but when I lifted her out I knew I'd caught what I went there for. The needle recorded a very satisfying 20lb4oz and I was really chuffed not just because it was my first 20 from the lake but also because I remember when the fish were stocked at 3-4lb apiece five years previously.
I went on to catch one of the more recent stockies at around 3lb before packing up at lunchtime. I will certainly be headed back to that water very soon because the biggest from that first stocking have been caught to mid twenty now and are worthy opponents indeed!
That pretty much brings me up to date and already we are well into the middle of the closed season. Not too much longer to wait!
Posted with Blogsy
Nice fishing.
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