out of the freezer and into the furnace!

what a difference a week makes, from shivering at close to freezing to scorching 28c...





this was my thermometer sat in full sun - im not exactly sure where it went off the chart - maybe 40c? anyway, once shaded it told me that the temp was 28. the water temp rose from 21 to 23c during the session - the fish had been spawning and as i was too hot to move i assumed the fish were feeling it too.


A late start (following an unpromptu BBQ on saturday night)saw scooting down the A453 to melbourne pool, visited here once before, but never fished it. It has a bit of a reputation for decent tench and is beautifully located - even if the proximity to East Midlands airport does periodically interupt the serenity of the place.


There was no wind to speak of - just a slight breeze which at that time was blowing in to the road stretch. a walk around with polaroids showed a few carp moving around in the SE corner and i spotted another pair of carp and a bream in the sw corner. It seemed from the accumilation of floating algae which plagues this pool that the recent prevailing wind had been into this corner I so i balled in some groundbait with dead maggots, corn and pellets and fished with open ended feeders and double maggot on a 18 on on the left hand rod and the other with corn on a 16. The hours passed by without so much as a blip from either rod, and the drifting weed would encase the feeders with every retrieve. I switched the corn rod to a 10 mm tutti boilie and eventually to double maggot, fished over a bed of about 100 dead maggots thrown into my right hand margin. With the action being so slow i was getting a bit creative with the photography and just as i took the picture below the reel screeched into life and a fish was on...

on a 5lb hooklength and size 16 the carp gave a good account of itself, and the weed didn't help matters, but a few minutes later a dark and old looking leather carp was in the net. The scales wouldn't give me a double, settling at 9lb 14oz. fished on until sundown with no further bites... the tench will have to wait until another day.