I mentioned last time that the lake I have been fishing this year closes to us at the end of September and so if I was going to fish it before the deadline I had better get on with it! I loaded everything into the car on a nice sunny day. It was still chilly and a bit windy so I took extra clothing but in the end I didn’t need it as the swim was sheltered from the wind and I sat in my T shirt all day.
I took just about all my tackle and my barrow as the lake is about a quarter of a mile from the car park. Actually, it is a series of lakes but the one I like to fish is the furthest from the car! This means that it is very quiet and I can go all day without seeing another soul. The water was very still, the shelterbelt of trees was doing its job and when I got my breath back I unloaded my gear and set up. I was planning to float fish for a while and put my feeder rod out to see what I could catch on the bottom. I would bait up a section and put my carp rod out later.
My float was soon bobbing under and I was into a small roach and this continued for a while with me getting almost a bite a cast. The red maggots were certainly attracting the smaller fish but I thought that I would change baits in the hope of catching something bigger. A piece of bread moulded round the hook was the change and things went quiet. There were several knocks on the float which I think were small fish then a more decisive bite, which turned out to be a better roach. I moulded on another piece of bread and it went quiet. I was sitting enjoying the peace when the feeder rod tip bent round and the rod started jiggling in its rest. I picked it up and could immediately feel a fish, it wasn’t putting up too much of a fight so I brought it in to the bank and netted a bream of about one and a half pounds. I re-cast then went back to float fishing, I waited a while but there were no more bites so I switched to sweetcorn. I don’t know why but I never seem to have any luck with sweetcorn and so after a while I went back to maggots and was catching a fish a cast once more.
The best roach of the session
Knowing that the roach were there I thought that I would give my newly bought whip its first outing. I unwound the rig and found that it was about twice the length of the whip so when I raised the tip of the whip the float was still on the ground. I quickly reduced the rig to a more manageable size. I lowered the rig into the water and immediately realised that what seemed long in my living room, seemed much shorter when pushed out over a lake! Anyway the fish didn’t mind as I was soon into my first whip fish, another small roach which was quickly unhooked and returned to the water. I continued catching roach and getting used to the whip for a little while until I had enough and packed it away. It worked well enough, my only question is, is it long enough for my little river, should I have bought an even longer pole?
I had been keeping my eye out for carp and as it neared mid-day I began to see one or two cruising just under the surface and decided to put my carp rod out and also throw out some floating pellets to see if I could get them feeding off the top. As my feeder rod was sitting over the baited area I cast across the lake to the far side. I had just put the rod down and was setting up the alarm when line started being taken off the reel. It took me a second or two to realise what was happening then I picked up the rod and could feel a powerful fish. It was still taking line as fast as I could wind so I tightened up the clutch but before I had finished the line had seized solid. The fish had got in amongst the tree roots and there was no moving it. I thought that I would leave it and see if it would come free while I had some lunch. I left some line free so that the fish couldn’t feel the tension and tucked into my peanut butter sandwiches.
There was no movement during my lunch so I decided to pick up the rod and put some pressure on. The only thing that happened was that the hook length broke so I found a new one and attached it, brought in my feeder rod and cast the carp rod into the pre- baited area. I then reached for my stalking rod and cast out a piece of bread crust to the fish which were now feeding on the surface. I have mentioned before how difficult these carp are to catch on the surface but I thought my luck had changed as the fish first came to investigate my Interceptor float and then looked at my bread. They were undecided until one fish sucked down my bait right off the hook and swam away freely, very frustrating! I tried again a few times but I couldn’t get them interested and they eventually disappeared so I went back to the feeder rod.
After all the action of the morning the afternoon past quietly until a buzzer sounded and I was into a fish, was it a carp? As soon as I picked the rod up I knew that it wasn’t, the fight just wasn’t there, it was another bream which weighed in a two and a half pounds. I had no further bites and as I had to get home for dinner I packed up while reflecting on the day. I had landed around twenty fish, mostly roach but a few rudd in the afternoon, a small perch on the whip and a couple of bream. Not a bad session only spoilt by the one that got away, probably a carp but I wonder if it could have been a large eel. I know that we have them and it reminded me of another time on a different lake last year where I lost a fish as it swam towards me and got stuck in the tree roots and wouldn’t come out, I guess that I will never know! Next time it is back to the small river to try and tease out some fish using my whip.
A nice enough bream!
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