Bank holiday bagging

The bank holiday weekend was upon us I was stuck for somewhere to fish. I fancied a day out catching quantities of fish as opposed to quality ones but really didn't fancy catching loads of carp. I have three regular tench bagging waters but for one reason or other they weren't fishable on this occasion so I needed to find somewhere else. A quick Facebook appeal and internet search gave me a few ideas and I eventually settled on a reservoir on the outskirts of Rugby which, to be honest, I'd never even heard of before let alone fished.

A little digging and some good advice from friends who had fished it gave me a solid platform to start from and I was pretty confident of a good day. Phil joined me and although neither of us knew what to expect we were both looking forward to fishing a new water.

We arrived nice and early at the lake to find a few carp anglers bivvied up in the popular areas so we headed up to the other end which was empty. My chosen swim gave me an easy chuck to some reedy bays which screamed fish and soon enough I had a couple of method feeders in position, one baited with maggots, the other with mini boilies.

The first couple of hours were fairly uneventful apart from a couple of liners and a bumped fish on the maggot rod. To be honest it didn't look great, bright sunshine, clear water, no fish showing, the only saving grace was the healthy ripple on the waters surface. News filtered around the lake that everybody was struggling so I decided a change of tack might be called for because this wasn't anywhere near as prolific as I'd convinced myself it would be!

I'd had a tipoff about using dog biscuits as a bait there and fortunately I'd had a pot of them glugged in dynamite baits source liquid since last year, this was a good opportunity to try them out. After a little thought about how I was going to present them I opted for a kind of scaled down naked chod-rig. Once tied it looked the part and seeing as the reeds hadn't produced, I belted it out into open water where it was a little deeper.

It didn't take long to get a bit of interest and a searing run resulted in a lively little tench which pulled well above what it's actual size indicated!

Two more fish in quick succession had me setting up another mini chod and putting it in the same area as the first. The action really began to heat up from then on and even though I lost a couple, my tally really started to mount up.

Going into the afternoon The action continued and I even had a couple of double hits, landing a fish on each rod at the same time. The fish in there must have soft mouths because I lost a fair few to hookpulls despite changing my rigs for fresh ones after every couple of hookups.

Eventually by late afternoon the tench action had slowed to non existent. This wasn't the end of it though because the bream had arrived in place of the tench and the bobbins continued to fly albeit mostly from liners!

By the time I packed up I'd lost count of how many fish I'd had but my aching shoulder was a good sign that I'd had a good few! The day had passed as a blur of hauling fish, baiting up and tying rigs, I was knackered! Rightly or wrongly I'd retained a few of the later fish in a keepnet to photograph for posterity and was quite surprised how many I'd caught, certainly a venue I will visit again next time I need a bagging session!

 

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