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!
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