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!