Saturday 25 September 2010

still a headbanger

I had a band to go and see this evening, but still squeezed in a sub-optimal daytime session, starting at about lunchtime. Each evening for the last two days I have stepped up the prebait to 5kg of mixed corn, 1.5kg of hemp and a kilo of sweetcorn (aka a bucketfull), I had another identical bucketfull with me, this time topped off with some pellets and boilies.  A couple of kilos of this went in to commence the session.
  I had meant to bring float and light quivertip rods with me to at least pick up some bits and "break the blank" but realised upon my arrival that they were still in the garage. Condidtions were awful, temperatures had plummeted overnight and there was a cold and gusty northerly wind blowing upstream. It would have made floatfishing a pain anyway so I settled down with maggot feeder on the heavy feeder rod and a couple of pieces of sweeetcorn on a running ledger and a six lb hooklength fished over the area I had been baiting.
  After two hours neither rod had had a bite, and wind chill meant that I really needed to be keeping hands in pockets, rather than keep chilling them with the regular feeder fills. I was pretty resigned to blanking again, and swirched the feeder rod over to a couple of 10mm  pellets on a bolt rig.
  At 5pm i had still not had a single bite but at least the wind has dropped and the chop on the water  had subsided. I was just thinking that tackling up with a float for the last half hour probably wouldn't be worth the effort when the surface dimpled as a small fish topped and and the late evening sun suddenly peeped out from behing the clouds... It was a sign!
a small handful of maggots was propelled towards the topping fish, the ledger rod was equipped with a small waggler and size 22hook to a 1lb bottom and a single maggot nicked on before swinging it out just beyond the marginal weed. Of course as I did this the wind got back up and the sun went in... typical...
 I started off with the bait just touching bottom, moving slowly upstream as the water here is static and the wind was moving the float. at the end of each "trot" I shallowed up by a foot, and on the third cast was startled as the float dipped away. I missed the strike but smiled to myself as i chucked out another handful of maggots... I won't be blanking today!
 two "trots" later the float dipped once more and a silvery dace was swung in. This was followed by a baby chublet, then a roach, then a bleak... four species in four casts. I then picked up another couple of baby chub and another bleak before I hooked into a better fish, landing a small perch. That made it five different species in about 15 minutes. The swim went quiet for a few minutes until my last cast at 17:30 which resulted in another obliging baby chub.
The last few minutes had really cheered me up, but as I slung in the rest of my bucket of prebait I was reflecting on the fact that I'm still no closer to that river carp...

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