Red Letter Days or Nights.

[Bob Hornegold]

Last year (2010) was not a Good Year, it started off cold, very cold, if you remember it snowed a lot and I live on a hill.

The first night of the snow saw 20 odd car's sliding into one another down my road, not only into other cars but into tree's and walls.

One bloke decided to leave his car at the top of the hill and walk the rest of the way home, an hour or so later his car, decide to turn into a sledge, and without warning started sliding across the road and into the front wall of a neighbours house.

So for a few weeks if I wanted to go anywhere it was by shankys pony as it was impossible to get up or down my road without sliding into something or someone ?

When the snow started to thaw, I was bursting to go fishing, but of course there was an a lot of Snow melt around and the Rivers and Canals were almost unfishable.

But never the less I headed for the Lea and a section I had fished many times over the previous year, it was a handy place to fish because you could Park your car right by the waters edge, which was useful in the freezing cold conditions.

It also held a decent head of silver fish, which could be caught in the edge on a whip without much trouble.

Unfortunately this proved harder than normal with all that snow melt around and I settled for a Lobworm in the edge on my Perch rod.

An hour or so into this trip and I realised it was hopeless on the Lea Navigation as the canal was almost overflowing the car par park and decided I should move.

But Where ?

I thought I would look at the River Stort at nearby Roydon, it's only a short drive and was soon driving past a River/Canal in Full Flood, not a chance of fishing it in such conditions.

Nature was also calling and I was looking for a Loo !!

Roydon Mills was then on the Ware Ticket and I headed towards the Park, fortunately the Loos were working and after a desperate attempt to open the door of the Loo I made it just in time

Roydon has a lake of some 30 odd acres, most of which was frozen, but looking down the end of the lake I noticed a small area of clear water with various water birds swimming about on it.

I thought I would drive down the service road and check it out, where I found a small area of clear water which is fed by a steam coming off the Stort Navigation.

I got the trotting rod out of the car and had a few trots into the area of clear water,.

The red tip of the Avon Float had only gone a a few yards, when it disappeared, I struck and a Small Roach spashed on the surface, I don't know who was most surprised, me or the Roach.

It went into my Bait Bucket.

For the next half hour I trotted down this little bit of clear water and ended up with a few Small baits.

I walked around the other side of this clear area of water and decided to give it a few hours and try for a Perch.

The Lake had a reputation for Big Perch, but the best I had ever had, was a two pounder, althought it did have a some decent Pike and some very large Carp in the water.

I decided to use my 13ft Harrison Power Float, with a Drennan Chubber Float and Paternoster set up, in conjunctions to Power Braid (a Fly Fishing PIKE Braid which incorporates a metal thread) and a single AFT hook, a very strong hook ideal for Livebait fishing where there are Pike about.

I got the rig sorted and cast it to the edge of the ice sheet, where the float sat motionless, I also set up a sunken float leger rig and cast it too my left and awaited events ?

Nothing happened, but it was nice to be out after almost two months without any fishing

My Live Bait Bucket hummed a happy tune as the small pump purred away and I thought that would be the most movement that was likely to happen that day.

The live bait must have been freezing and I thought back to school days when I would fish with a group of kids from school, we would often put two baits on the hook to create some movement.

So I wound in the Float Paternoster rod and put on two small Roach facing each other and held in place with a small piece of red elastic band.

I flicked out the whole lot into 15 feet of water and thought I would give it another hour before calling it best ?

I had been sitting there for a few minutes when I notice the red tip of the float move a slight bob, but I put it down to the two baits working against each other.

I also notice a van coming down the service road and wondered what sort of nutter would be coming out at dusk in these conditions.

I looked back to my float, there was definately something going on with those baits, the float was moving about, I should say that this lake has the worst Crayfish problem in the whole of the Lea valley and I suspected that that was the cause of my float bobbing up and down.

I was ingrossed in watching the antic's of my float when a voice, said "hello", I very nearly had a Heart attack ( prophetic words ), it turned out to be an old mate Gary Hodges owner of Fishing Wizard Baits.

What are you doing here on a day like this said Gary, I replied (none to politely), watching my Float mate !!

He had been looking for a bit of clear water to go Carp fishing ( they really are a barmy lot these Winter Carp Anglers ), when he saw my car at the end of the path and decided to see what I was up too ?

As we passed the time of day, my float was going under the water a couple of inches and coming back up, very odd I thought.

I said to Gary I was going to hit it the next time the float went down and held down and if it was Crays he could have the swim as I was packing up.

Well it went down and held down, I clicked in the Bale arm and wound down, the strike was met with a solid resistance, a jagged fight under the rod tip was taking place.

I kept the pressure on and asked Gary to get the net, then a very large Perch appeared on the surface, it dived again and Gary said, don't loose it mate it's a monster, I replied, I'm trying not too ?

I knew it was my long awaited Lea Valley Perch P. B. and played it carefully into the waiting net.

I was shaking like a leaf, who would have thought it, in these terrible conditions I would catch a Lifetimes dream

Gary did the honors with the Camera and the weighing, he asked me what I thought it went ?

I knew it was a very big 3 or even a low 4, but I just did not know for sure.

I wetted the sling, zeroed the Salter digital scales and watched as it read off the weight, it went between 4lbs 1ozs and 4lbs 2ozs, I called it 4lbs 1ozs.

For me a target weight Perch I had been trying to catch for 5 year and at last I had done it.

It was for me a Red Letter Day and one I remember every detail about.

Sadly the Lake has now been turned into a Marina with a No Fishing Rule !!

View image in gallery​

Bob

 

[syhaze]

lovely Perch Bob, really lovely

 

[The Sogster]

Nice one Bob

 

[Simon K]

It's funny how, on those rare Red Letter Days, all the details, especially the ones leading up to the event become etched in the memory.

When you think of those rare, really Big fish captures, how many times did you do something out of the norm, but by intuition that resulted in a Great Capture?

I can think of several for myself, walking along a dull, relatively featureless bit of the Lea Navigation and seeing a handful of bubbles over towards the far margin. Normally I'd think gas or swan mussels, but these appeared to be slowly moving and anyway, how easy is it to tell that at distance?
I settled into a swim about 20 yards upstream opposite a far bank overhanging tree and piled some particles and boilies to the branches and cast in just on dark.
Within an hour the bobbin on my backleaded line was being twitched up and down like a yo-yo and finally screamed off. What was obviously a large carp (my intended quarry) tore off downstream and after 5 minutes the hook pulled out.

Gutted, I re-cast to the spot and put the kettle on. Exactly an hour later the line peeled off again with another, or possibly the same, fish on. Playing with a little more "sympathy" on the braid mainline, I finally won the tussle and with aching arm slipped the fish into the net. When I tried in vain to lift it out of the water I had a fairer idea of what I'd caught!

I left it to recover in a sack at the waters edge, phoned Bob (our "Records Officer") and duly waited his arrival.

We weighed it at 36lb 6oz and identified it as the same Mirror Carp that Bob had caught on his chub gear about 2 weeks earlier and half a mile upstream. It had put on about a 1lb+ in weight through scoffing our "Highly Nutritional" offerings in the meantime.

All of that on the back of some 8 to 10 bubbles.

 

[Bob Hornegold]

It's funny how, on those rare Red Letter Days, all the details, especially the ones leading up to the event become etched in the memory.

When you think of those rare, really Big fish captures, how many times did you do something out of the norm, but by intuition that resulted in a Great Capture?

I can think of several for myself, walking along a dull, relatively featureless bit of the Lea Navigation and seeing a handful of bubbles over towards the far margin. Normally I'd think gas or swan mussels, but these appeared to be slowly moving and anyway, how easy is it to tell that at distance?
I settled into a swim about 20 yards upstream opposite a far bank overhanging tree and piled some particles and boilies to the branches and cast in just on dark.
Within an hour the bobbin on my backleaded line was being twitched up and down like a yo-yo and finally screamed off. What was obviously a large carp (my intended quarry) tore off downstream and after 5 minutes the hook pulled out.

Gutted, I re-cast to the spot and put the kettle on. Exactly an hour later the line peeled off again with another, or possibly the same, fish on. Playing with a little more "sympathy" on the braid mainline, I finally won the tussle and with aching arm slipped the fish into the net. When I tried in vain to lift it out of the water I had a fairer idea of what I'd caught!

I left it to recover in a sack at the waters edge, phoned Bob (our "Records Officer") and duly waited his arrival.

We weighed it at 36lb 6oz and identified it as the same Mirror Carp that Bob had caught on his chub gear about 2 weeks earlier and half a mile upstream. It had put on about a 1lb+ in weight through scoffing our "Highly Nutritional" offerings in the meantime.

All of that on the back of some 8 to 10 bubbles.

Simon,

Lovely mate.

Real stories about Real Fish, that mean a lot to us !!

Red Letter Days !!

Bob

 

[Fred Bonney]

If I may join in

My day had been taken up by a meeting with the rest of the Barbel Society committee in Worcester.
My Log note dated 17th August 2008 states;
A tough meeting at Callow End.
I remember it well, Callow End was a retreat run by nuns, we rented a room for meetings.
We damaged the peace and tranquility for a short while that day!
My tackle was in the car to fish the Severn, but we needed to get away from the place.

On the way home I dropped in on the middle Trent arriving at about 7:30pm, the river was up and running clear and it was warm and cloudy, a bit showery. The water temperature 18.6c.
It was the evening after the full moon, and the air pressure during the short session was about 1014 hph and rising.
I used keep a note of air pressure and moon phases, but have never put them to any scientific use, well not yet!
I decided to fish the big chunk of meat down the inside rather than pellets and set myself up with my Young's Barbel Travel rod, my Purist ll, 12lb Krystonite straight through to a size 4 barbless ESP T-6 raptor...no weight.
My method for the big meat is to cast out into the current and let my quarter a tin of garlic Spam drift round to fish the inside line, about 15/ 20 feet down stream.

15 minutes later my first barbel 10lb 11 ozs.I then proceeded to to hook and land 4 more barbel of 9lb 4ozs, 8lb 1oz,9lb 2ozs and a 9lb fish the last two caught on my last quarter halved.
Left well and truly chuffed at 11:30pm for my hour journey home .
So, four hours and 41lb2ozs of barbel all of which were caught in the first 90 minutes.

I have to say the 5 piece travel rod action is superb, and matched up with my centre pin it was my first attempt at catching barbel with the aid of the rod and a 'pin.
Certainly a red letter day for me in more ways than one, although a long day having left home for Worcester at 6am.

 

[Simon K]

Nice one Fred. Was that a swim you knew or never fished before?

 

[Fred Bonney]

I had fished it before, and picked the odd fish Simon, not using a big chunk though, so on the whole a totally unexpected short session.
All I had for bait was the one tin and some plastics.
The big chunk is now, where the river allows, my sleeper rod down the inside line.