How did you get on?

[mikench]

A quick look in the fridge revealed mushy tares and mushy hemp both of which were unhookable but which could be added to micros for added flavour! So a trip to a different venue for feeder fishing was on!

I set off early and arrived around 7.30 am with a pleasant day in prospect!





11 carp and the little fella in the pic made it a good day! The water was reputed to have barbel but I had never seen one let alone caught one and didn't know anyone else either who had seen one! Anecdotally there were supposedly to be quite a few to 3lb! I reckon this one was about that! A few other anglers wanted to see this mythical fish and I only had time to take a quick pic!

Dare I go for a full house; probably not!

 

[peter crabtree]

Fished the canal in town yesterday morning, only caught a tiny perch. Did see an Egyptian goose though...

Moved onto the Colne later and blanked ....

Today I went to a day ticket lake (probably the same one skippy fished earlier this week)

Like skippy I went for the perch as I’m still trying to frame in the challenge. Light bomb rod, little cage feeder to an 18 with single maggot.

Had plenty of finnicky bites and caught a perch along with some nice roach. As soon as the sun came out it went dead.

Sat virtually biteless for a few more hours and as I thought about packing up the tip went round, a nice bream.

 

[john step]

Back to my deep pond for some bites and a bit of sunbathing. Lots of small roach, perch and one rudd. Seven mirrors. Mostly red deads but I did try hemp and tares. Had a few roach on tares but deaduns worked better.

I stopped off to see a mate on our res. on the way back. He fished all day with only a couple of small roach. Its the place I blanked recently. Apparently about 40 of the black death were on the water a couple of weeks ago.
Very worrying.

 

[Pete Shears]

Another piking trip to the large reservoir before the deadbaiting stops on 28th Feb.Thick fog,2C not good conditions but at least no cold wind and not the right weather to launch a bait boat to have it disappear from view after about 30 yards.No runs whatsoever but when the sun broke through about 11am it turned into a very pleasant day to be out and about.

 

[Hugh Bailey]

a nice bream

An oxymoron if ever there was one!

 

[steve2]

Another piking trip to the large reservoir before the deadbaiting stops on 28th Feb.

Stops. Why?

 

[Tee-Cee]

Yet another outing after roach, yet another outing not even close.....

I expected more of the weather yesterday with perhaps a little sunshine, watery or otherwise, but instead I had two hours of cold, heavy mist (with a slight cooling breeze) before it lifted at 9am to give an overcast morning. Had I any sense at all I would've turned around upon arrival and headed off home, but then I thought of outstanding or unfinished jobs.......

Nothing for the first hour when the float dithered a couple of times without performing any form of disappearing trick, so I took this to be carp brushing the line and this confirmed when I struck into the only worthwhile bite of the session and found,myself attached, yet again, to a silly carp which looked to be 4/5lbs or so. It succeeded in wetting the net and ruining a hook length and the only thing in its favour was the lovely colouring.

I tried maggots various, caster, hemp, tares, worm and punched bread over the five hours in water ranging from 5 to 10' deep and down the slope from one depth to the other. At 11.30 (I had plenty of time to check my watch!) when fishing 6" off bottom, I had a single dip of the float which looked promising, but it didn't develop so probably another 'brusher'..

Obviously I shall keep trying, with 2/3 outings planned for next week, but at the moment it is in the lap of the Gods as to when the roach might begin feeding, at least in the swims I'm trying (a different one yesterday). What I don't quite understand is that the conditions look fairly settled and have been for a while (all things considered) AND the water temperature is on the rise, and although 46 degrees not great, I have caught roach at this temperature and from this water, in the past................

On my way back to the car I passed an ancient (older than me!) fishing with a 10' cane rod of sorts and he too was biteless, but at least he was sitting in the weak sunshine that came out for the first time just as i was packing up. Where the promised 13/15 degrees came from I have no idea as my car showed 10 degrees - with the sunshine!!

Today, I'm the hired help in my wife's garden...........................

 

[peter crabtree]

By the time the mist cleared, I’d set up my pole and the sun peeked through, caught a few nice roach on punch as well.
Time for a pain au chocolat and a hot cuppa....

My neighbour couldn’t buy a bite on his flake and waggler approach, I was getting one a chuck.

The canalised river Gade wasn’t flowing as fast as usual and I wondered whether that explained why I was only getting roach to 3oz? There are proper ones in here but they didn’t show today?
I tried laying on with caster in an attempt to get my elastic stretched, to no avail. Single maggot just kept the small ones coming.
A pike kept rattling my keepnet trying to snaffle my roach, thankfully it didn’t grab any as I landed them.

Neighbour went home and left me to it around midday, I stayed another hour vainly trying to catch something that pulled back.
Didn’t happen...

 

[103841]

With this ridiculous February weather I felt compelled to pay a visit to the sea. I wasn’t expecting to catch anything, the locals tell me I won’t catch any bass on lures until May, but with the sun bearing down having burned off the early morning fog resistance was futile. I wanted to trial some new braid and test a few lures anyway.

Pleased to say they all done the job (apart from catching fish) admirably.

After a good few days of little wind I thought the water may have a bit of clarity but it was full of colour, a nice shade of North Sea brown.

It was more like a summer day with people promenading, wretched jet skis spoiling the calm and one nutter doing a bit of open water training.

Nice way to spend a couple of hours, hopefully not too long before I’m back here in shorts with plenty of factor fifty.

 

[108831]

Me and a mate fished the deep lake mentioned before yesterday,lovely mild day,with 14ft plus at twenty metres,started at just after 8am,never had a bite on the slider till 2.50pm,caught just after 3pm and ended up with 43 roach to around 6ozs,where are all the good roach,my mate only had 8 little roach,with one decent pike caught by a catfish angler,the lake was full of cat and carp anglers believing that a few day's nice weather would allow them to fish the middle of the lake with a kilo of bait,idiots....

 

[The Runner]

Not going back up home until tomorrow, but decided against club match on the Slough Arm today, largely as haven't got pole rigs sorted since my move . Good decision...

 

[The Runner]

Oops, internet connection back now...
Anyway, took a walk there for last hour and a bit, a few pegs already vacated, two or three anglers walking about and most of the rest fishing worm on a topkit next to the keepnet..
View attachment 6406

Canal a bit coloured which counterintuitively often makes it hard here, but not this hard.
Only four caught, Derek getting the best part of 100 roach on waggler and pinkie for 10-9 , rest of his section of seven all blanked, then three in the middle of the other section finding a few, and I mean a few, little perch with Brian (pictured above) second with 0-8-8, followed by 0-4 and 0-3.

One of the stranger results we've had there over the years.

 

[Pete Shears]

In reply to Steve2 re deadbaiting ceasing on 28th Feb - Anglian water rules,has been that for years apparently,luckily I have other venues to try not to blank on.

 

[peter crabtree]

Club fixture today on a commercial in Royal Berkshire, not my favourite fishing but I fancied a change. With 22 fishing we had one whole lake and one bank of the middle lake. I drew the latter.
With a tree hanging over me put paid to casting a feeder or waggler so I set up pole only. An island to my right and another to my left left me baffled, where do I fish it?
Set up a topkit for both island margins and a positive rig for halfway between the two. About 5’ deep I started on the open water between the islands, potted in one ball of fishmeal groundbait @11m with some loose damp micros. 0:50gr float to a 16 Drennan red maggot hook.
Double maggot at dead depth and first put in a small F1, well this went on for 5 hours, all on the same rig and position, no fish bigger than 3lb, most about a pound.
The last hour was much slower, being absolutely shattered I was quite relieved as I could almost relax for an hour.
At the scales I had 56lb:7oz for an unexpected win and a 3figure payout.. Happy days...

2nd and 3rd both had 24lb.

 

[nottskev]

Saturday, couldn't decide whether or where to fish. I've caught more than enough roach lately... who knows if I'd get a bite on the river....I took a long shot the warm spell had woken up the tench lake. Well. you can catch a few in March; anyway, the worst that could happen is that I wouldn't get a bite. Which is exactly what happened.




Never mind. Today I watched the Man U/Liverpool match, then nipped out for an hour on a small local river. I don't fret if I don't catch - but I usually feel the urge to go and catch something so it's not the last thing that happened.

The swims are a bit tight on the stretch I went to. As I've said before, this is not your Hampshire Avon.



The fish on this little river, with various predators on their tails, don't go far from tree cover, and getting your bait in the water 10m downstream is the first problem, followed, if you're lucky by the second problem of getting the fish out.

The first one was a typical chub for the river



You don't tend to catch two in any swim, but the light was starting to go, so I put the fish back a short walk away, fed a bit of liquidised bread and had a snoop around for other possible spots for 15 minutes.
When I came back, I managed to get the bait past the tree and down, and the chub that grabbed it was the biggest I've seen from this river. The picture doesn't really show it, but it was a fat, thickset fish.



If Saturday was long and dull, this was short and sweet - 3 casts and two chub.

 

[john step]

Club fixture today on a commercial in Royal Berkshire, not my favourite fishing but I fancied a change.[/img]

Just goes to show. Those canals are hard taskmasters and tone up angling skills.

 

[john step]

I had an hour or so yesterday to have a quick look at the res. where the black death have been seen lately.
I thought it would be rude not to take my light lure kit.

Brilliant sunny afternoon for a walk anyway.

Only one small perch but several follows spotted with the poloroids so there are still some in there! They are just being lazy in the cold water?

 

[103841]

I had an hour or so yesterday to have a quick look at the res. where the black death have been seen lately.
I thought it would be rude not to take my light lure kit.

Brilliant sunny afternoon for a walk anyway.

Only one small perch but several follows spotted with the poloroids so there are still some in there! They are just being lazy in the cold water?

Not lazy, just conserving energy until the water warms up a bit.

 

[jon atkinson]

My original plan was to have another stab on the Alt but a different stretch to previously on the Kirkby-Fazakerley border, but in truth I was feeling like sh!t, so I slept in & then walked the dogs, but thereafter my beloved insisted that I go fishing as she didn't want me moping around [I always knew that she was a keeper] so I headed out for this new stretch, but some how I knew that it wouldn't be for me which is why I threw my still water gear on the van as well!

The Alt was too clear / shallow / full of shyte at this juncture so I bailed to Ince Blundell, my nearest day ticket venue in search of roach.

A short session on the road side pit, but enjoyable none-the-less; I didn't catch many, but all warranted the net with the best three or so of this sort of stamp.

A couple of rudd thrown into the mix & I came away happy. Work party next week then up to the Ribble with Thomo the following Sunday - onwards & upwards...

 

[neil1970]

Ruffe or Gudgeon were the target yesterday. Gudgeon won. Only my 4th on the lure and a bit smaller than than the other ones, but still a pleasure. One BB, Berkley Fish Fry on a no.14 hook. Splitshot rig.