Hi folks,
I haven't posted in a while as been busy either fishing or doing other sh*te.
I missed the last day of the river season, so yesterday headed down to my folks to fish one of the stillwaters me and my dad belong to. Boy was it a day of mixed emotions. Let me explain...
We've both belonged to this little club for a while and a couple of weeks back a one line email was sent stating that's it, it's closing. No one seems to know why, whether it's for good or not, all very mysterious. There are rumours of building work, flats, who knows what. I feel in my bones it'll be gone for good or will return as an "exclusive" (i.e. ££££) club.
So 7am off we went. It's a funny old place really, two small lakes at the back of an ancient (crumbling brick) industrial estate. The weather was OK in the morning, not too cold, cloudy but not raining. The only problem was the wind which was gusting and made float fishing a bit of a pain (lost a favourite in a tree but managed to get it back with the landing net).
We set up in the far corner swim which is one of the bigger ones and easily accommodates two:
We were both using similar tactics, leger or method near features (sunken trees, deep spots etc) and float fishing for silvers in the margins. The silvers were fairly quiet although we both had a dozen or so smallish roach each. After a while my margin swim went dead before my float sailed off sideways and I hooked into something more substantial. After a few worrying minutes of my float rod looking like an umbrella handle I finally netted a very battle-scarred tench, about 2-3lbs. Despite the scarring he was lively enough.
There's no pike in the lake but there is a resident heron who is probably the culprit
Legering was a bit more successful producing a few decent commons and mirrors, the biggest of which was a mirror just under 13lbs:
Afternoon saw the sun come up and it turned into a beautiful day. We packed up around 5:30 and as we trudged back to the car reminiscing of the days we've spent on this lake and realising this would probably be the last time fishing it, I took one final look before heading home