Catching Again!

After last week’s blank at the irrigation reservoir, I decided to pay a second visit to a water nearer home where I had some success last year and wrote about it in my Blog on 6^th February about fishing next to four year old Ben. The weather was still unseasonably cold with showers and wind but the morning started off sunny and still with showers forecast and when I arrived at the venue there was no-one else there and I continued to have the place to myself all day.

I decided to start by walking around the lake, taking the advice of anglers on YouTube and the book that my wife bought me for my birthday and found a few fish on the surface but when I got to the other side I came across a group of about twenty carp just lying under the surface soaking up the sun. A few yards along there was another group and then another one, I reckoned that there were over fifty fish altogether. I decided that I would try and catch a fish on the surface and so tackled up with a bubble float and a size ten hook, put some bread on and cast out. At first the fish took no notice and were not spooked by the float but then one sucked on the bread and pulled it off the hook. This happened a couple of times more before the float started to drift away and I struck and was into a fish. A few minutes fight and it was into the net and landed, my best fish so far this year and the first one ever caught from the surface! I decided to weigh it and it came to 9.68. 9.68 what, I don’t know. In the hurry to get it done I couldn’t work out how to switch from kg to lb and it didn’t seem to tell me! So much for digital scales! Next on the shopping list is a pair of simple spring scales which don’t require batteries or adjusting in any way!

Then it started to rain, so I quickly put the brolly up and gathered all my gear under it, it just fits but there isn’t room to do anything under it if you haven’t got a rod out so I passed the time by throwing in some groundbait where I was going to put the feeder rod out and texting a picture of my carp to my wife. After about twenty minutes it stopped raining so I got my feeder rod in with maggots and got out my other carp rod with the adjustable zig rig and cast out to where the carp were showing in the middle of the lake. In the meantime I put some particles in my swim and some well soaked muesli and Tesco small dog mixer, which floated. There followed a period of quiet reflection until the carp started showing up in my swim again eating the dog mixer so I brought the rig in closer. Still no luck so I went back to the surface rig and watched the carp cruise slowly by and ignore the bread until one slowly took it and I was in again! Another nice fish landed proving that it wasn’t just a fluke!

Lunchtime passed quietly and although I was getting knocks on the feeder rod I wasn’t getting any fish. Just as I thought that I was getting the hang of it I don’t seem to be able to catch anything, well not much as I did bag a fairly small roach. After lunch I decided to have a walk along the bank and spotted a number of carp cruising in the far corner where the wind was now blowing so decided to relocate there. Over the next hour I caught four more carp off the surface to make a grand total of six for the day, my best ever! It looked like rain again and time was getting on so I decided to call it a day and gathered everything together in no kind of order which meant two trips to the car and back, will I never learn?

So, an interesting day, taking the advice to look for fish and adapt my tactics paid off with half a dozen carp caught from the surface, the first time I have ever tried this technique. I will have to look up how to get bread to stay on a hook though as it sometimes came off when casting, perhaps Tesco’s cheapest isn’t the best to use! I was a bit disappointed about the lack of silverfish on the feeder though but you can’t have it all! I am just hoping that the weather picks up and the fish get more active as I reckon I could have had a lot more if they hadn’t been so sluggish!