Member or not, anyone angling this weekend?

I trust a few of us will be on the banks this weekend.
I was planning to fish a club match on the river Thame which is running low and gin clear then got an invite to a match down in Sussex on a commie. Still undecided, but in current conditions I'm leaning towards the more difficult venue?

Anyone else fishing this weekend?

I hope to get out fishing this Saturday , few hours at a local pond

On a local stream for a change Friday Simon, no zoo monsters in residence but can be great fun on light gear - I'll report after - for better of worse............

Day off from fishing tomorrow, I'm off beating instead. Superb timing given the weather forecast. Whether I fish on Friday, Saturday or Sunday will depend on the wind and how much rain comes along.

Yes, probably Saturday for a few hours fishing at range with a zoomer type float,but not loaded, as a slider, after roach...on a Stillwater, but this only if it's not bl$$dy freezing!!

Fished three days already this week purely because the weather has been fair and it's unlikely to last. Caught a few, but spasmodic for some reason (groan)

Some of those caught by fishing a Stillwater Blue with a single maggot on an 18 with the maggot fished 'handlebar fashion.......always worth a try casting into pre-delivered mags with a slow drop set-up.

ps Not fishing tomorrow as it's my turn to do the washing and ironing....Oh, the joys of married life...

I fished on Monday and again today. The plan was to target zander before the season closes at the end of December. I'm a total novice to the species and so stuck to well used tactics of putting a small dead roach on the bottom in a deep channel running out of a small bay where I'd seen zander earlier in the year. Unfortunately the weather forecast was hopelessly wrong and the promised cloud cover never materialised;



This is the second swim I tried. This one is at the dam end of a section of a large lake; a sort of annex to the main basin. I had two deadbaits nailed to the bottom and a third suspended under a float just off the bottom. No bites or signs of fish all day.

Today, the forecast was for westerlies overnight making a change from the north-east winds we've had for over a fortnight. This morning there was plenty of cloud cover and a light drizzle so I thought that I'd be in with a chance. I fished about 100 metres from Monday's second swim, a sandbar running at around 45 degrees to the shoreline and a banker of a swim where I regularly catch roach to a pound, bream three times that weight and a few bonus carp into the low twenties.



I put two deadbaits out, one on the deck and one popped up. Both were fished using large wire cage feeders filled with mashed roach and carp mixed with breadcrumbs. I also fished for roach alongside using standard sliding float tactics with a single grain of sweetcorn over a bed of chopped maize, hemp, wheat and chicken pellets.

After a couple of hours of diddly-squat I put a large maize stack on one of the deadbait rods and then tried it popped up and even a zig-rig. never saw a sign of a fish or a bite. The only thing that came into the swim was this ragoudin



With the weather reverting to bright, clear and cold over the next ten days I reckon that I'll catch up an a few jobs around the house and wait for a bit of warm overcast stuff before venturing out again.

Are Zander very prolific there? Parts of France that I've visited, they generally seem to only get caught the once.

Hugh Bailey said:

Are Zander very prolific there? Parts of France that I've visited, they generally seem to only get caught the once.

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I'm new to zander fishing as they hadn't made it into Yorkshire where I used to live. I've only caught a few small ones by accident when I visited the Huntingdon area. I'm not obsessed with them. I'd just like to catch a few to see what the fuss is about. I had hoped to encounter a few while spinning the river on a summer evening, but all I got was catfish and chub.

Over here there seems to be a lot of anglers spinning jelly tail lures around the shallows in Spring when the season opens. After that I don't see many fishing for predators until the water levels in the two big lakes are well down around October. Then a few fish small deadbaits in the deepest water. I suspect that there isn't much catch and release.

Nicepix, I notice you still have trees with leaves on down there. what are your daytime temps?.
Oh-- and what are the two cork handled rods youre showing on the first picture -- they look nice.
Original optonics too!

I decided against stalking the stream for chub today as it was very low and the sun was bright. I thought I’d carry on to the river a few hundred yards away as I had a tub of lobs and, although conditions were far from ideal, I decided to give it a go on a couple of the snaggy swims for some perch. Travelled light with just the bait/bucket, rod and net I was hopeful as the forecast was to cloud over in the afternoon. Talk about hard work, not a touch for over three hours then thankfully it clouded over with the light level quite low by early afternoon. A few cheeky scrappers and two decent fish to about this size.

That’s it until after the weekend and, with a pretty settled forecast of day night temperatures of 11C/5C and a light southerly, hopefully a couple of session next week.
PS Still haven’t got the hang of the photo lark, forgot to stick the forceps in again...

BBB . that looks exactly like a stretch of the river idle that I use from time to time-- lovely.

flightliner said:

Nicepix, I notice you still have trees with leaves on down there. what are your daytime temps?.
Oh-- and what are the two cork handled rods youre showing on the first picture -- they look nice.

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Yes Flight, there are still plenty of leaves on many of the trees in the woods and coppices. A lot of the oaks are still holding them well as are the chestnuts. We have a liquid amber in the garden and that dropped about half in one go the other night when it got down to minus 4C. The others are just about bare though.



It's usually hovering around zero most nights. During the day we are averaging 8 or 9 degrees C with bright sunshine, little or no clouds or wind. This is the weather that is traditionally experienced from November right through to the end of January when it usually drops to minus 10 C for a week or two. The last two winters though have been much wetter and the February drop got down to minus 17 C. Strange thing is, two days after we had suffered a fortnight of minus 17 to minus 20C temp's the sun came out and frogs started spawning.

A friend who owns a 6.5 acre lake is spending the winter months in Spain and has asked me to look after the lake while he is away. Apparently last year the leaves didn't drop fully until after he'd gone in mid-December and they blocked his sluice causing it to wash away. I'll be raking them away this year.

Those rods on Monday would have been a Fox Stalker 2.25lb tc and either a Greys Specimen Twin Tip with the 1.75 tc tip on or a Shimano Purist 2lb tc Avon (I can't remember which I used). I swapped to a pair of 2.75lb tc rods today as I intended using heavy cage feeders along with the deadbaits. Most of my rods are cork handled. It's only the beefier ones that are lacking wood. I prefer cork as it gets the groundbait off my hands better than Duplon

It's been pretty mild down here, still got some of the geraniums in flower on the patio.....

We had high winds and snow showers yesterday, needless to say I stayed at home.

Not this weekend, but I'm going Monday 1pm til an hour after dark on my mates club's commie for roach and perch. Looking forward to it.

Good luck all.