Better than fishing for 'Fish'

I’m thinking of starting a new craze by reshaping my hobby a tad. I was fishing a freshwater lake yesterday of 55 acres. It was quite windy and I was situated on a beach, the waves were crashing and although I was some 6 feet away, I still managed to get ocean spray every few seconds. Locating fish was a complete nightmare due to the size of waves and looking for feeding bubbles and fish surfacing was beyond impossible. However, I did manage to attract the ducks. At one point I had 24 in my swim, including the young. On closer investigation, I noticed that if I threw in pieces of bread, the ducks would eat them. On closer investigation still, I learnt that if I moved up the bank five yards and put more bread out that they would follow and continue feeding. I continued to do this for about an hour or so and also found out that these creatures enjoy particles too and pretty much everything else I had to offer. On that note, I had established the feeding habits and patterns of the ducks which I duly noted for future reference. What also soon became apparent, was that these birds usually feed in the daytime only. Which for me would allow me to knock the nights on the head if I target ducks instead of fish. With all this new-found knowledge, I’m contemplating a new craze in fishing for ducks. The benefits are endless: 1. being able to see your bait being taken 2. being able to hear your target before a take, so no need for buzzers etc. 3. Being able to visually note and establish feeding habits. 4. an active swim at all times….I could go on! I’m still trying to get my head around an appropriate landing net for the job and I’m currently considering a remote control version for ‘airborn’ landings! What do you think? Shall we start a specimen club? Can you think of anymore advantages?

Yeah, but if you start using bread on the hook, you'll be pestered by all those fish that manage to get to the bait before the ducks do..................!!!

You could always go for on of these

Your biggest problem is naming them, as all the best carp fishermen do, as they do not have much in the way of identifying features. The main advantages over coarse fish is that they taste better with chips, peas and gravy and cormorant's don't bother them.

Wouldn't you have to have a longer than normal landing net that you could hold vertically in case they took off once hooked? Also, the possibility of a 2,000 mile run (during migration) might be on the cards too if manage to hook one just before it took off.

You might laugh now, but just wait until you hook one.... You can bet your life everyone and their little kid will be near you frowning...

Thats a fair point Adrian on the 2,000 mile run. But as you'd expect, I'm already patenting a bird runner reel for the job! Still struggling with the pop-ups at the moment though, as for life nor money I can't seem to get the helium balance right! Any advice?

Not sure about weighing them either, been looking into the new electronic scales and they just don't seem to work! And you just wouldn't believe the agro I'm having with getting them in the keepnets! The bllody things keep coming up for air which continously lifts out the bank sticks. I'll let you know how I get on, but I'm looking at building a kite net, which once mastered should do the trick!

I now going to concentrate on the bait side of things and to tell you the truth it aint easy. Trill don't roll easy for starters and replacing fishmeal with birdmeal is extremely difficult. Although ground up KFC is doing well at the moment!

I'm also getting problems from diving carp giving me drop backs - whats that all about? One consolation so far is that my casting has improved dramitically, instead of trying to get my baits just in front of the islands, I'm now geting them bang on!

I was having a nightmare with applying 'carp Gel' to the mouths too, so opted for water proof plasters instead. Of course to stick propoerly I'll have to pluck a few feathers to create a skin like surface and this could also be how we get around the naming side of things, we could tattoo a number and the FM logo on it!

You could always look at the tunnel keep net. Apparently made out of steel mesh, they will not lift out of the water no matterhow hard you flap.

As for the pop ups, I always go by the formula of 1 part helium to 2 parts voice. That way, you can really get the "duck" vocals spot on. So I've heard it said, this yields more takes than any popped up bait that may be around.

Actually I think I've heard of these Adrian, but let me put you straight now mate, if it don't say 'FOX' then we can't use it.

U aint well.

Go see a Quack!!!!!!!!!!!!

Lmao @ you lot )

Hello Wol, I caught one of your slimey's yestaerday after being in hot pursuit of a 31 lb fully feathered mallard! I had old 'two-tone' the grebe out though, but as you know I specialise in real ducks and find Grebes to be nuisance birds! I hate those foreign imports too don't you? Walker certainly wouldn't be impressed with all the migrate ducks you get these days mate!

Hey, that's a point. If a foreign bird is caught on an English water and breaks an English record and then flies off back to it's homeland. where do you stand with contesting the current record?

Will it still count or will it be all up in the air????

F*** it. U lot aint well.

I'm going to the pub.

Know doubt by the time i return you lot will have formed the B.R.D.C.!!!
With Stu as Big bird. And no arguing about the pecking order.

As stated in my first post Adrian, I'm looking at setting up a specimen group and through the committee we will be discussing the rules and regulations regarding records and the like. I will of course post on here once we've officially formed the group. Knowing full-well how popular this will be and you lot all bashing my door down to join, let me sort it all out first and then you can start forming an orderly queue. As with all syndicates etc, you will only get in if (a) you give the Chairman a back-hander, (b) you are able to be bitch and feel part of a ‘clicky’ group, (c) you can be rude and look down your nose at those who walk past asking innocent and polite questions. But be warned, no way on earth will you be able to join this syndicate (as with all syndicates) if you just put your name on the list and wait!!, cos quite simply that doesn’t work does it?

Fishing 4 Ducks-Chuk’s

I’ll be exchanging my lead with cuttlefish, and will soon be replacing my swivels with little bells and a mirror. I’m also thinking (and feel free to help me out here at any time) that to help the aid of playing these new specimens that we could somehow insert a little wooden perch like attachment to the hair, so once you’ve hooked it, it can sit comfortably on the retreat. In moving forward, I would hope Carp Angler (or should I say Coot Angler) could demonstrate my new rig theory in the rig sections.

Also it might be an idea to get the pike anglers involved with this concept as they tend to use decoy DUCK bait boats when piking. We could perhaps pick their brains and ask how best we could turn this on its head and look at constructing a decoy ‘PIKE bait submarine’. I think this is where we should be looking for input as to what fish we should mould this on? Any ideas?
And what about ground bait? Should we be looking to exchange to ‘Air-Bait’?

As with all runs from Duck's, this is really starting to take off! As they say, its the simple things in life that work best and with the overwhelming support of this thread, I really think we can get this new hobby 'off the ground'!