Didn't get out last weekend due to wifey's BIG birthday & Rotary commitments & I was in work on Saturday so I was really looking forward to hitting the bank yesterday. Wifey asked on Saturday would I be fishing & I replied that yes I hoped so - she didn't say anything at the time, but it came to light shortly afterwards that I had forgotten that yesterday was our wedding anniversary
mg:
To be fair it's the first time that this has happened & in my 'defense' I have been rather pre-occupied with her Birthday last weekend & a trip that I'm taking her on in a few weeks to celebrate :wh however, her allowing me to go anyway just confirms what I already knew about her being a 'keeper'!
Totally unpredictable weather forecast so I booked onto Brookfield, a lovely, fairly sheltered, day ticket water that I really like, but tend not to fish in the summer as it's a small water with just 7 pegs that gets quite busy. No worries on that front today as I had the place to myself
I put a maggot feeder out to my right with twin caster on the hook & had an almost instant take - only a small roach, but a promising start none-the-less. A few minutes later & the tip went again - a little larger but it slipped the hook before I could see what it was. Then nothing! So I set up the waggler rod with a #18 & double red. I started getting finicky, twitchy bites straight away, mostly on the drop but I wasn't hitting anything so I moved some shot further down to hopefully drag the bait down through what I suspected was a school of very small roach.
This seemed to work & a caught a steady stream of small roach. I switched to caster to see if that would weadle out some better fish, but no, all roach & nothing more than maybe 3oz. [I'm increasingly coming to the conclusion that the theory that casters induce a better stamp of fish is an urban myth, certainly based on my recent exploits!].
I tried corn - nothing, soft pellet got a few tentative nibbles but nothing that I could hit
It was starting to look like one of those days - possibly the drop in temperature? At least the resident kingfisher put in an appearance - those little beauties always raise my spirits.
Whilst focusing my efforts on the waggler set up, the sleeper [feeder] road had seemingly gone to sleep. Brookfield is a small oval pool up to 8' deep - I was fishing the shallow end as it was the most sheltered on what was proving to be quite a gusty day, but I decided to reposition the feeder in the deeper water, pretty much straight out in front using a bobbin for indication. I also put on a slightly longer hooklength with 3 casters on a #14. I let it settle & went back to more small roach on the waggler.
Out of nowhere the bobbin on the feeder rod was yanked into life & the spool [on the fightin' drag setting] started spinning away. A strike was met with some spirited resistance & I decided that a smallish carp was the likely candidate but as it gradually came toward the net I'm sure my heart skipped a beat...
Just a couple of ounces shy of the magic 3lb but I wasn't complaining - this was almost 2lb better than my previous pb.
I then managed a couple of small bream around the 2lb mark, both of which kept their heads down right to the point of netting! Beyond that it was just more small roach. I packed up relatively early although you could sense that darkness wasn't going to be too far behind
& went home for some celebratory Bollinger - a double celebration from my point of view :w.