How did you get on?

[Redeemed]

Another trip to Barlow lakes, lad couldn't get out of bed so we stayed local-ish.
I went on the feeder from the start and pulled a few nice crucian, skimmers, few good roach.
What i did notice was smaller is better today, and a natural or standard carp pellet on the hooklength worked better than wafters and their bright colours.

I did have 4 (!) behemoths snap me at different stages of the fight.
1st took me into nearby lilypads (I was fishing close in) and buried itself in weeds - snapped and a feeder down.

2nd - snapped the hooklength on the strike - 7lb hooklength.

3rd - I turned my back briefly, fish struck and went, dragged the rod off the back rest and snapped the line.

4th I got to within 2 yards of the bank, son estimated it to be in double figures. I gave it as much as I dare, the line was singing it's socks off and when trying to keep it from further ingress into the lilypads it gave way.

8lb mainine, 9lb hooklength. I will be going back loaded for bear.

Two funnier moments though:

1st a John Candy look-alike, a big lad, was fishing an adjacent bank when suddenly we hear a crash followed by "I'm okay, I'm okay, that'll teach me to shop at B&M bargains". His folding deckchair literally did that in ways it wasn't designed for.

2nd we had a dog running round the fishery for the last couple of hours. everyone assumed it belonged to someone else which it didn't. the bailiff was just putting his sunday dinner out on the benches outside the cafe and went back in for the gravy. comes out and said dog was halfway through the dinner mg:
turns out it belonged to nobody so he set it loose and off it trotted to pastures and perhaps dinners new!

 

[peter crabtree]

Club match today on the river Colne, drew a peg which isn't usually in. A bend in the river with fast water just a foot deep ending up with a weir.
I almost went home when I saw it but thought I best give it a go for a few hours and if it was no good pack up and go. My thoughts were I'd catch what's there but wouldn't have any fish to draw up into the peg because of the weir, a dead end in effect.

Flowing from right to left, the above pic is the view upstream.

And that's the downstream. The weir is under the leaning tree. Set up a 4bb stick float with the bulk directly under it, then 3 no8 droppers to a 20 red maggot hook. At the start it was tiny chublets and small roach on my double maggot, at least I was getting bites. Feeding loose maggots every run down I soon found some bigger roach and a couple of chunky perch. The bigger roach were right in the edge under the overhanging bushes on the left hand bank in 6" of water, at one point I hooked a big chub which leapt out of the shallows and snapped my Hooklink.
I sat it out for the entire 6hours and put together what I consider a fair netful for the peg.

I even won my section.
Winner 16lb
2nd. 9:7
3rd 8lb

Me 7:6:8.

17 fished.

 

[S-Kippy]

Simon....that is an outstanding return from such an unpromising peg. Well done mate !

 

[Tee-Cee]

Yes, that really is a great catch with some lovely looking roach in the net. That lost chub though...Grrrrr

I think I would have gone home....................

 

[Roger Johnson 2]

Here in SW France temps have dropped from high 30s to a comfortable 31! Had a day off from house renovation today and wife, dog and myself decided to canoe downstream to the next road bridge, not as picturesque as the river upstream of us, but lovely all the same, spotted my first perch in the river in addition to the odd chub , and a couple of barbel, add in kingfishers, grass snakes, dippers, and sparrow sized dragonflies , it was quite a good afternoon for wildlife.
Highlight though was the georgeous bikini clad girl wielding a spinning rod, I would have gone for a photo but with the wife in the boat with me I thought better of it.
2 hours down in the boat, 10 minutes back by car.
Have blanked the last couple of evenings as gone back to trotting in some new swims.
PS we have a special oar for the dog.......it’s a doggie paddle!

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[Roger Johnson 2]

It's a (bloody) minnow.

Sorry to wade in late on the minnow debate, but how can you not love a fish that nibbles the hairs on your legs and if you take the trouble to look are stunning in detail. I caught the fish in the picture from the bottom of the garden on a nymph....... however a) at the time I would have preferred a trout or grayling and b) after about 20 of them I too start thinking about bait!

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[sam vimes]

Sorry to wade in late on the minnow debate, but how can you not love a fish that nibbles the hairs on your legs and if you take the trouble to look are stunning in detail.

There's no doubt that they are bonny little things that show a fair variety of coloration. However, when you get treated to several hundred of them every session, then catching them starts to pale somewhat.

 

[S-Kippy]

Shame they dont grow to about 3-4 lb. What handsome fish they would be. Not much beats s pristine bull minnow for looks except perhaps a salmon parr or a tiny little beck caught brownie.

 

[Jelster]

Shame they dont grow to about 3-4 lb. What handsome fish they would be. Not much beats s pristine bull minnow for looks except perhaps a salmon parr or a tiny little beck caught brownie.

One of the baby Carp I caught recently was a fully scaled Mirror, such a pristine, beautiful fish. Some of the Gudgeon that I have recently had out of the Colne have had wonderful colours.

I sometimes think we forget how pretty some of our fish really are.

 

[theartist]

Talking of small and wonderful fish I was willing to settle for anything on a new river at the weekend especially given it was in an an area of the country where the rivers are almost devoid of fish or so some say. On arrival it was clear that the river I had mapped out and researched yet found out very little about was no more than a tiny stream, hoping it would hold fish I got the gear out of the boot only after spotting some small dace under a tree. Freelining maggot in a shallow riffle saw the dace oblige and I had bagged another new river for the books.

A quick exploration downstream saw the shallow water almost barren save for a few small dace visible until I found an undercut hole under another tree, all roots and darkness where it must have been over a foot deep, real fern gully stuff. A trickle of maggots saw nothing take them however the missus was now in full deckchair and reading mode so I gave it a few casts. My freelined maggot soon disappeared into the abyss and out of sight before the line straightened and my rod bent into quite a chunky perch which had the most vivid red fins.


After that I attached the old matchstick for bite indication and there must have been dozens of fish in the tiny hole as I had twenty dace and perch there before having a peek before I left to wonder where the were, I gave myself the captain stealth award for managing not to catch on the overhanging tree at all during my stay which is unlike me.

Moving on after the 'swim' understandably went dead I encountered the usual "Are there fish in here?" questions from Joe public and one guy who said there's no fish upstream, so upstream I went There were fish up there but it was a different river above a small weir, much deeper but hardly moving, here I had only large dace actually using a proper float, shot'n all. Something I've found about dace in rivers around the country is they can thrive in such surprisingly slow water and here was no exception.

This water was still and full of minnow but two dace in two casts made a nice end to the trip. Tonker dace which looked absolutely huge in the clear water, had I lost one I would have said it was a 1lb'er all day long but once in the net probably round the 12oz mark. The difference between them and pound dace is just the belly, my thoughts roamed to whether I should take a ruler and measure these fish in future, if only to give the dace that aren't fat on pellets a chance of glory on the other rivers. These old dace must have been passing through as it was soon all minnow again

The bars of silver were returned unmeasured and unweighed and I returned home happy, can't explain why I love this style of fishing so much but I do

 

[neil1970]

Back at work after a lovely week in Teignmouth.
House on the beach, LRF spot 30 secs away and the chance of mackerel, scad and bass only a 5 minute walk.
No bass, but we all enjoyed it

 

[mikench]

I went light to a local river with just a rod and reel and some maggots! It was difficult and I felt like someone going cold turkey! The river , more like a stream ,looked decidedly unpromising and so it proved! The clubs directions were inaccurate and the water looked like industrial effluent! A quick trip to a local Stillwater brought some sanity and about 6 roach to 8oz in about an hour!

It was better than working , just!

 

[thecrow]

Disaster for me today, spent 3 hours tempting Carp into the margins, sitting well back from the waters edge, keeping movement to a minimum, saw the large common in my swim again along with 4 more fish, float that was laid flat was twitching I was so on edge waiting for the rod to pull round when matey appears behind me standing in full view asking if I had caught anything, you can guess the rest

Next time eh, I am determined to get one out of the margins on a pin.

 

[103841]

A double header today, river in the morning, sea this evening.

Another couple of hours spent trotting maggots on the Stour through Canterbury, hard work with just a handful of dace and a solitary perch. A few chub around but they weren’t feeding, realised towards the end of the session that a pike was lurking close by which may not have helped matters.

Returned home for our yearly meeting with our IFA who showed me graphs and pretty pictures of financial models that I haven’t a scoobie about and it wasn’t long before my mind was wandering and wondering where to go later.

With very little breeze, warm and overcast with a high tide at 8pm I drove to Westgate to have an hour of the uptide and fish the turn til dark. Second cast produced a small bass first I’ve had from this area and over the next ninety minutes had two more using a variety of metal and plastic lures.

I was pleased that I’ve cured the problem of losing lures over the rockpools by placing a very light split ring with a 10lb bs between hook and lure, losing a hook is a lot less costly that losing a lure!

The last snagged lure of the evening wasn’t a snag at all, I finally had a decent fish on, I’m assuming a Bass, a very nice bend in the rod which I hadn’t experienced before and the adrenalin was rising, didn’t last long though as it bumped off the hook half way inmg:

I’m starting to question my decision to change the trebles on some of my lures to barbless singles, I appreciate I will lose more fish but when you’re only catching a few and blanking often it’s hard to take.

The three I did catch would have been a very decent weight for the dace I was looking for several hours earlier!

I put my rod down for five minutes to marvel at another glorious sunset, simply stunning

.

 

[O.C.F.Disorder]

S63, I rigged a few mepps spinners with singles and my hook up ratio suffered so much! It was far more satisfying catching them on a single but I have switched back to trebles now.. It hurt too much pulling the spinner out of their mouths every other strike

 

[jon atkinson]

Managed a short afternoon session at Blackbrook basin yesterday - only one other guy fishing when I arrived & a pump was churning out water furiously at the wide end which didn't bode well. I picked a peg towards the narrower end a noted that large amounts of Hornwort had been dredged out along the length of the bank so I needn't have bothered bringing the rake after all. I started on maggot & had a few small but respectable roach followed by a couple of snigs which prompted me to switch to caster! Continued to catch the occasional redfin, but it was relatively hard going - hopefully the pumping will have improved the oxygen levels going forward. Blokey wandering round told me that having fished there regularly he'd had his first ever blank on Thursday - 6 hours without so much as a nibble - I took some consolation from that...

 

[Another Dave]

snigs = bootlaces?

 

[john step]

Nice day back on my syndi res. I had 3 small mirrors about 7 or 8 lb. on the dreaded boilie and bolt. Its got very weedy on the bottom so I have been reading up on the chod rig which seems to work.
It is all new to me but probably not to most others. Nice experimenting.

I had a few fish on the float namely rudd and roach and two perch of modest size on a piece of rudd deadbait.

I would love to spend a couple of days there as a mini holiday but am put off by the distance from the car with all the rubbish I take.

Perhaps my local club water will have to do until the rivers get some more water.

 

[john step]

Back at work after a lovely week in Teignmouth.
House on the beach, LRF spot 30 secs away and the chance of mackerel, scad and bass only a 5 minute walk.
No bass, but we all enjoyed it

Neil. Is that a blenny with the lure that looks nearly as long as the fish? Surprising what big gobs they have!

 

[markcw]

snigs = bootlaces?

Yep us northerners have funny sayings :wh