Late November - A Storm Hits

Sun. 25th November 2012

It's been a hell of a week, weather-wise.  Last weekend and the start of the week, we had a load of steady, persistent rain.  Then on Thursday, still reasonably mild, a storm blew in from the south-west on winds gusting up to 60mph, with a lot more rain.  Saturday the 24th it began raining around lunchtime and didn't stop until the small hours of the morning.

After having breakfast with my little-one, I set off for the pond on what was to become an interesting journey.  I grabbed some maggots on the way and began dodging puddles.  Halfway there and I had to cross what looked like a ford, but was in reality just a flooded road.  Hairy.  As I approached the pond, I began descending a long hill through wooded farm land.  The place looked like a bomb had hit, with branches all over the road, piles of leaves gathered up where torrents of water had gushed downhill, even mud and gravel had been deposited onto the road!

Safely at the car park, the short walk up hill is normally along a path which is covered in leaves.  This time it was more like a brook, the water had carved a path through the mud and leaves and was meandering down the hill.  As I neared the pond, the sound of the outflow pipe sounded louder than normal, and little wonder!  The pool had approximately 18 inches of extra, coloured water and the peg I normally fished was under water.  The pond is spring-fed so it shouldn't be surprising, but the character of the place really altered.  Having spent several years fishing the Severn I suppose I should be used to such a dynamic venue.

Anyhow, the trees no longer had their leaves, the mid-week winds had seen to that.  And the place felt much more wintery.  Though the temperature wasn't as cold as it has been on previous sessions, for some reason it felt colder.  This was the first time I'd felt the cold.  Perhaps it was in my mind, or maybe it was the wet.

Right, the fishing, well nothing much to report, but loads of observations.  Let's be frank - I caught plenty of bait fish, they were really up for it and feeding with abandon.  But I didn't get any bites from the perch.

My first observation was that there was a lot more silver fish activity visible on the surface, and the activity was well spread across the lake. This is in contrast to previous observations when the water has been clearer, where little surface activity is observed, and the bait fish can only be caught in localised areas.

Second observation following on from the first, was that I saw a rare perch strike, but it was exactly in the middle of the pond.  I looked up to see a small roach fling itself a foot or so clear of the surface, then a perch  harried it when it landed.

The carp were particularly active, swimming into my rigs, cruising the surface, tight in the margins. But not a single one stuck it's head out, which in previous weeks was a regular occurrence.

Ok, those are the main observations.  So what do I think was going on?  Well, I have some ideas but will probably never know for sure.

1. The roach were much happier in the coloured water, and so spread out and fed well.
2. This could have meant that the perch were also spread out, rather than grouped up in one or two obvious areas.
3. It follows that if the roach are confident, it may be because the main predator - the perch - weren't giving them grief.  Maybe the perch were less happy in the coloured water, at least perhaps they weren't interested in chasing roach.
4. A more successful approach could have been either to fish to open water with very heavy baiting in attempt to group the silver fish up tightly.  Or, to revert to worm and caster or prawn / deadbait methods.
5.  Depth / light intensity.  Maybe feeding perch were in shallower water feeding near the surface?  The bait fish were certainly happy to take maggots as they hit the surface.

Not making excuses, just analysing and trying to make sense of the situation, so as to try to think of alternative approaches next time.  I will take some prawns and worms along next time as a back up.

Hopefully the pond has cleared up a bit next time, as after losing that big fish a couple of weeks ago, I really want another shot at it before too long!  Time is ticking, I shall be concentrating on the river in the new year...


Hope you catch a whacker!

Mid-November Update - Silly Fool

Sat. 17th November 2012

I hadn't intended on writing a post until the end of November, but I have forced myself in order to serve as a reminder of how catastrophically wrong I got it.

Well, maybe that's being a little dramatic...

Over night we had some heavy rain.  It had been mild all week, fairly dry, but the heavens opened on Friday evening as I was watching some fishing on TV trying to decide whether to go in the morning.  I couldn't fish the pond so it would have to be the river.

The first mistake.  I decided against spending the day having a good plumb in order to get to know the stretch of river better, and talked myself into fishing proper.

The second mistake.  I assumed that I would be able to catch some live-baits so took only a pint of maggots.

The third mistake.  On the way to the tackle shop a speed camera flashed as I went through.  I wasn't over the limit, but it made me paranoid the whole day.  I can be neurotic at times, this put me in the wrong frame of mind.  Silly I know!

I arrived and the weir pool was a swirling torrent of foam and debris.  Well, that's a little dramatic.  But it certainly wasn't giving me it's bleak or dace for bait.  Neither was the rest of the stretch.  It doesn't help that I'm not the best float angler.

I decided to feeder-fish with maggots.  The bank-side foliage had died back and not knowing the bottom contours, I could have been miles from any fish for all I knew.

The river was rising.

I packed up after an hour or two, kicking myself for all of the above.

I did learn some lessons though.

1. Assume that I can't catch live's on the river and take worms etc. as a backup or even as the main approach.
2. Prioritise plumbing, a session spent searching the depths will surely pay dividends in future.
3. If the conditions look better for another species, have a break from my obsession and fish to the conditions.
4. If my instinct is telling me not to bother, don't bother, I'm in the wrong frame of mind from the start.

Trouble is, now I can't decide whether to go back to the pond next weekend, or refuse to let the river beat me and give it a go with worm and caster.

No, I'll stick with the pond until New Year, then fish the river back-end of the season, once I've had chance to plumb the stretch.  Then back to the pond late March.

Early November Update - Has something just clicked?

Sunday 4th Nov. 2012


Well, the weather has chilled off nicely, with some frosts overnight. The trees are holding on to their few remaining leaves and autumn is starting to feel distinctly wintery.  It's a cold, grey day, with some drizzle in the air.  Overnight it went quite chilly.

Decided to fish to open water to see if the 'above surface' features just held perch which are smaller than my target 3lb+.  Love catching perch of all sizes.  There's just something interesting about trying to crack the puzzle.

Chose peg 13 which is between two trees.  The margins slopes down, 2 foot, 3 foot, 4 foot, 5 foot, 6 foot, under the rod tip.  Then it's a uniform 6ft.  Very uniform indeed.  Makes me think the main feature is the marginal shelf.

So, with my shiney (well, actually they are a stylish matte finish) pair of new rods, I cast a maggot feeder filled with flavoured red maggots around, with a prawn hookbait, roving it trying to seek out any wandering big perch.  The other rod was a sunk-float paternostered roach to the bottom of the shelf.

First thing to note is that 'the bait swim' isn't the only swim to produce bait fish - this one is pretty good too.  Also the bottom here is carpeted with what I believe is rotting leaves.  Either way the feeder wasn't landing with the same donk as the lead does in the bait swim.

I also decided to feed quite heavily, armed with at least four pints of red 'feeder bait' (old maggots the shop was selling cheap).  It's open water, I thought creating a swim full of feeding silvers would be an ideal plan.

Half-hour in to the session and the bobbin on the livebait rod started lifting, but the strike missed.  Later on, with feeder cast to bottom of the shelf, I hooked a couple of carp.  But there was no further perch action despite the conditions looking good.



Sunday 11th Nov. 2012

Due to family commitments it was another Sunday session.  I don't mind fishing Sundays, it's just the weather was bright and blue, not stereotypical perch conditions.  To make matters worse, the water was as clear as I've seen it since I started fishing the place.  None-the-less I fished on - after having a good plumb around.

I decided that, having found that the bait swim has some interesting features, as well as being the deepest area of the lake, I would fish there.  The lilies are still lingering, but they are starting to die off now.  They do still offer some cover to the fish, so that was enough for me.

After catching one bait-size roach and casting that out, I continued to try to catch bait fish for the other rod.  I caught plenty of roach/bream hybrids and some lovely roach to about 1lb, I couldn't catch anything the right size.  Eventually I figured out that I was fishing too far out - the small roach were at the bottom of the marginal drop-off.

I had my right-hand rod to deeper water, and my left-hand rod to the base of the shelf.  Less than a cup of coffee later and the left-hand bobbin started lifting and kept going.  A firm strike, nice scrap, perch in the net, a good one but not a monster.  I estimated around 1.5 - 2lb and slipped the fish back.

The right hand rod in deeper water wasn't showing any signs of interest, so I positioned that a little further up the shelf so it was shallower than the left-hand rod, tight to the lilies.

Less than an hour later, the left-hand bobbin was off again, and a repeat performance put a fish of between 1 - 1.5lb in the net.  Beautiful, I was expecting a blank so to catch two from the same swim was a treat.  I noted that instead of feeding maggots heavily, trickling them in as if I was catching bait seemed to keep the interest from the perch up.

Despite the bobbins showing some activity, it was another hour and half before any other action materialised.  The left-hand bobbin was getting excited and I felt sure of another bite, but it was the right-hand bobbin that darted upwards from nowhere!

Better fish, definitely a better fish, this one wasn't letting me bully it, taking line and making for the middle, before turning round and... oh no... it swam through my other line.  And came off.  I reeled in and in my bewilderment, it took me a while to realise that the fish had some how shed the hook... onto my other rods hook!  Both rigs were in a right old state and I was in no mind to re-tie them.  By the time I'd have had that lot sorted it would be dark.  So I packed up in a huff.

Three lessons:

1. Don't assume the conditions aren't worth fishing
2. Trickle the maggots in
3. Fish with the rods a bit further apart and don't muck around!

What an idiot.

Worst thing is there's a match on next week, so I can't get back there for a fortnight.  Oh well, I'll have no choice but to fish the river, which is no bad thing.

Catch a whacker!