Well, no thunder, lightening, wind or rain to write about today! I did get to work up a good sweat helping with the working party to remove a lot of the self seeded trees that have started to take over around the new lake. It's amazing what three chainsaws and a few people moving the rest away can do, and it'll benefit the lake in the long run too, allowing extra light and air movement to the water.
Once the draw queue assembled I took my customary late place in the line, and lifted out peg 14, which I was pretty happy with. It's been in decent form, plus it has a nice long margin to draw fish from too.
My first job was to plumb up at 16m to the island, and after a while I realised it could cause a bit of a problem, as it was a sheer 3-3.5ft tight against the bank. Great for winter, not so good in summer! I decided to fish shallow against the bank as fishing on the bottom against features in that depth this time of year tends to lead to frustrating days with liners and foul hookers. I had two rigs up, one for 2ft (a Nick Gilbert Ghandi) and one for 1ft (using a Nick Gilbert Extra Tough Dibber). Both were on .17 line to a .15 hook-link and armed with a size 18 Fox Series 2 hook, matched to Preston 15h lakky. Incidentally, 1ft is as shallow as you can fish on the lake, so it was measured out to make sure it was exactly that. I also had a rig up for 5m (sure you know what that will have been), and a margin rig for 11m along to my left. In 2ft of water the float was a .2gr Nick Gilbert XTM on .19 to .17 and a size 16 Fox Series 2 hook, with the lakky being 17h.
Typically, I wasn't ready on the whistle (seems a theme as of late, even though all my rigs were tied at home), but I fed the 5m line with a whole pot of hemp, and a whole pot of meat and corn. I was going to try and force this line on the day in an attempt to make it work, and if not it's going to get a change as to how I approach the deep water on the new lake. Given that the peg is also a noted margin peg, I also fed the margin from the off, feeding it with a pot of meat, hemp and corn. While finishing setting up, I also started pinging a few pellets across with the catty.
It was ten minutes in when I was ready to go, and just as I slipped the first pellet in the band I could see peg 17 in to a fish. I started to get odd liners so was soon on the shallower rig across, but I couldn't get a proper bite on a pellet, so forty five minutes in I decided on a change to fishing double caster on the hook, while still feeding pellet. This had the instant effect I was hoping for as the odd dig on the float turned in to an elastic pulling bite within thirty seconds! Not the biggest of fish at about 3lb, but off the mark none-the-less.
The first carp was quite quickly followed by his twin brother, probably no more than five minutes later. The change had definitely got much more positive bites, although I'm sure some of the ones missed were from small fish. The next bite was a little slower in coming (I'd topped up the margin on the hour via the cup, and was feeding the 5m line heavily by hand) but it was a bigger fish as a common of about 5lb took me in to double figures.
The flurry of fish seemed to fade away after, but I did add a fourth carp about twenty minutes later, after moving all the shot under the float and letting the bait fall naturally, but the drifting scum didn't make that possible a lot of the time. There were still a few fish drifting about, but I couldn't trick one. I tried varying the feed pattern with the catty but that didn't work. I'm sure I could have mugged an odd extra fish had I gone shallower, but rules are rules so I plugged away 12in! Nobody I could see was pulling away too far from me, with peg 17 having five the most from those I could see, but smallish fish like three of the four I had. My one bigger one meant I wouldn't be far behind, if at all.
The next hour was pretty slow, so I started to up the frequency of feeding the margins to half a pot every thirty minutes. I could get an odd liner at 5m, but nothing settled there and I never had a proper bite. I had a crafty drop in the margins on meat and missed a bite, but didn't want to push it so left it alone. The rest got me an instant fish on the shallowest rig again, a mirror of about 4lb. No more bites followed so I dropped the rig in away from the feed and had an instant bite which gave me a crucian of nudging 2lb! It didn't work again though.
With two hours exactly to go it was time to start plundering the margins, hopefully! My first drop saw me miss a bite, but I didn't miss the next one, but it gave me the smallest carp of the day at about 2lb. No more followed so it was a case of a whole pot to pull some fish in. A quick try on the 5m line gave me a flurry of liners, both on meat and corn, but I couldn't get a proper bite there. A quick drop across again tricked a fish that had been having a free meal with no pole over it's head, but again no more.
Back in the margins and I started to get more indications, and while I was missing as many bites as I was hitting I started to nick an odd fish. Not huge margin lumps, but at around 4lb a piece bigger than the average fish across, leaving me with ten fish with an hour to go. It was frustrating going though, with no pattern to the bites - sometimes having to put a whole pot in after a missed bite, sometimes just a toss-pot would do.
With just fifty minutes to go I hit somewhat a purple patch in the edge, with three fish in twenty minutes. The first a ghostie of about 5lb, before a mirror of about 6lb and then a right lump of a common that was easily a double! Each fish falling to double meat over a large toss-pot of corn. When the indications faded I fed half a pot hoping to bring fish back, but it never went quite as smooth again. I was missing odd bites, before putting a common of about 6lb in the net. That proved to be the last fish, with just one more bite which I missed just before the whistle!
The people walking past while I was packing away were giving tales of struggles, and some people had only three or four fish. Peg 23 was admitting to twelve carp and a bream, so my fourteen were looking quite good! When the scales got to me 28lb was top weight, which I comfortably topped. My crucian went 1lb 15oz on the scales, and with the carp I totalled 68lb 14oz. I followed the scales round to peg 23, who put 59lb 12oz on the scales, and once I knew they had fallen short I returned to my peg to put my nets away.
I was surprised after last week that it had fished hard, and given the steady weather during the week I was expecting it to be just as good. I'm not sure really why it wasn't, but one or two people did comment that they saw grouped fish together chasing as if they wanted to spawn again! Perhaps they had other things on there minds then?
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