One of the great things about being retired is that if you don’t have a medical appointment and there is nothing else pressing then you can decide to go fishing! So it was with me this morning. I woke late, had a cuppa in bed and was downstairs eating my cereal and looking out of the window at the windy, grey day and wondering what to do with myself so I decided to check the weather for the week. Well, today was going to be dry and mild and it was going to rain and get colder later in the week so if I was going to go fishing then today was the day.
I decided to keep my promise to myself and go to a different lake which is well stocked and where I had the chance to catch some fish. If I couldn’t catch there then I might as well give up! I arrived just before midday and walked around the water. I noticed several things, firstly, no-one else was there, secondly the trees around the lake were sheltering it from the wind and lastly, there were a couple of carp hanging just below the surface in one corner of the lake. I decided to fish near there and got my gear and before setting up the rod I threw some bread towards the fish, they ignored it! More bread went in and seemed to attract a few more carp so I baited my surface rig with bread and cast in. One or two fish came and sucked the bread and I wondered whether it had come off the rig but was patient for a minute or two longer and was rewarded by a fish sucking down the bait and I was in! It wasn’t the biggest fish I have ever caught and weighed in at 6lb but it started the session off on a good note! I was also getting warm by now so stripped off a few layers and was fishing in just a T shirt and jeans towards the end of October!
As the carp had made themselves scarce I got out my other rod with a method feeder and cast out then got my feeder rod out of the bag and decided to fish close in for silverfish with the quivertip. Leaving my rods set up means that I can quickly get fishing so with the addition of a couple of maggots on the hook I was away. I didn’t have long to wait and the quiver tip was twitching and I was soon landing roach, nothing special but I was catching fish! Soon it was lunchtime and it was one of those times where I had to take the feeder rod out of the water for a few minutes in order to eat my sandwiches without interruption!
Lunch over and I was catching regularly on the feeder rod but nothing but line bites on the carp rod but at least I knew that my new alarm was working! I changed the boilie for a smaller hemp flavoured one and cast into a different place but still only line bites. My feeder rod was still catching and I was getting fed up with small roach and as I had a small hair rig on I switched to sweetcorn and cast out just a bit further. Pretty soon I had a bite, a small carp of about a pound. I thought that as I wasn’t having any luck with the carp rod fishing further out I could try adding sweetcorn to the boilie and fishing closer in. This seemed to generate a lot of half bites over the next half an hour or so, when the buzzer would sound a few times but never develop into a full scale bite. It went a bit quiet on the feeder rod so I went back to maggots and caught more roach and a gudgeon. Then came the tangle. For some unknown reason the line went round and round the rod tip in a right mess. The only thing to do was to cut the line and start again!
Even after trying it for a season now I still don’t feel comfortable using a quivertip and so decided to change to a swing tip which was in a job lot of tackle I got from ebay and which I have never used before. I also thought that I didn’t need a feeder as the fish seemed to be everywhere in the swim so just added a bomb and a smaller plain hook. The next hour or so was spent learning how the fish the swing tip and I managed to land more roach, another gudgeon and a tench. The tench was quite unusual as it was a silver colour and different to any other tench that I have caught. I didn’t neglect the carp rod and as the sweet corn was generating some interest I decided to cast back out a bit further away. The buzzer sounded off and on and I was just waiting for a take and a continuous alarm but it didn’t happen. After a few minutes I decided to reel in and refill the method feeder and found that I had a fish. He came quite quietly at first but as I got him near the net he seemed to wake up and started to fight. As he was not enormous it didn’t take long to net him and he weighed in at seven and a half pounds. My first carp I have landed on the method feeder this season, what a relief! I couldn’t work out when he got hooked though, was it all the noise on the alarm which didn’t develop or did I hook him just as I was reeling in? I will never know!
It was getting on in the afternoon and after a quick text message home I was given a bit longer to fish and proceeded to catch some more roach! The final tally for the day was, three carp, one tench, two gudgeon and twenty roach! At last I seem to have put my lean spell behind me and would have landed more fish if I had recognised all the bites on the swing tip. Time to watch some YouTube videos I think!
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