Tuesday, 3 November 2009
tight lines
nige ;P
Tuesday, 27 October 2009
back in the saddle
It was nice to finally get amongst a few fish after what seems like months of nothing.
The last week i have felt under the weather hence i never got a night in, but this week i hope to go on Wednesday night so ill keep you up to date.
tight lines
nige
Tuesday, 13 October 2009
Tuesday, 6 October 2009
RAIN RAIN RAIN AND A FEW SNOTTYS
Fishing is a wonderful past time. It has so many variables, its never boring,never predictable and never the same from one day to the next. No my favorite lake is more like a hormonal teenager than a four acre carp pool. The mood at the waterside can change so dramatically from day to day, you never quite know whats round the corner. From an angling point of view i love this, it keeps me fresh and constantly having to work to catch my quarry. I haven't yet unlocked the secrets of this lake but its a work in progress. For the time being the best i can hope to achieve is to try and stay in tune with whats going on around me.
So here i am, four acres of Paradise to my self again. this is the first time Ive been fishing for months! I'm almost ashamed that we are now well into autumn and i have barley wet a line. Both rods have just been recast due to bream activity, i want to know for sure that both baits are in a position to tempt a carp through the night, not attached to a snotty.
Its now about 11.30pm i think, the only sound i can hear is the low dim noise of the motorway some miles away. Everything is calm but for the occasional carp crashing as it leaves its watery home for a split second. at this time of night it sounds more like a ford Escort being wrapped around a lamppost than a carp doing acrobatics. yet another cup of coffee, probably not the best thing to drink before bed but i wont be going to sleep any time soon anyway.
The tension is just to much, anticipation has taken over me once more, i cant take my eyes off the water, my rods. at any moment my bobbin could twitch signaling first contact! It seems like forever since i last held a carp. There is no feeling on this earth like that which you get on contact with a carp, its enough to wake a man from his slumber in an instant. As the rod takes on that healthy arc on the strike and you feel every once of resistance, too me that one moment sums up why i go fishing. Surely I'm in for a fish tonight its not cold (i have my door open) the fish are active, the full moon has just subsided behind some cloud cover, its bite time.
How I've missed this solitude, this space. Most people couldn't understand (including my better half) but i guess if you've made it this far you know what I'm talking about. There is a pair of green eyes sat watching me on the far bank as a cat prowls i see his eyes reflect my dim head torch. Yet another big fish has just crashed out somewhere in the darkness. All i want is a fish, all i can smell at the moment is rancid bream slime from the earlier encounter oh how id love to replace it with that fruity yet slightly nutty aroma of the carp. Smell is a wonderful thing, everybody smells something different in a carp but to me, especially in this lake i find that on the most part the carp smell very rich. Almost a cross between roasted nuts and fresh tree bark.
In the past five minutes I've heard another three carp in the darkness, I'm confident of the night ahead.
the wind has suddenly picked up, i can hear it in the trees now. Wow a big fish has just completely left the water in front of me, it must of been a twenty. I can hear it over the distant traffic, i can see the tree tops on the other bank dancing and swaying against the night sky, i think its going to rain soon.
its now 7am the kettle is on once more. Its been raining since about 3am and the light is creeping back into the wet morning very slowly. The mood has changed from the edgy suspense of last night to the sulky withdrawn state I'm now faced with. Two new rigs dispatched to their spots maybe that will bring a bite. Its now 9.30am I've had mt breakfast and have that feeling of deflation that always follows a fish less night. Confidence is low, i always prefer to fish at night, i catch more but i also love the still night air.
My bobbins hang motionless an inch above the floor, my alarms are covered in mud from the rain splashing up. Its dinner time now and still no fish, its still raining though. My left hand bobbin just smashed into the rod the delkim let out a flurry of bleeps at the receiver end. Turns out its a bream, on goes the kettle once again.
An hour has passed and still the rain hasn't eased off, the peg is now under several inches of water. Another bream on the bank sees that I'm drenched i think i have one on the other rod as well. I had a stick attached to that rod, maybe i can call it a TREE TROUT. Its the nearest I've had to a carp this session.
well that was a bit different, hope you didn't get to bored along the way.
tight lines
nige
Thursday, 10 September 2009
Thursday, 30 July 2009
This weeks trips.
It fell to a mixer late on in the evening once the light started to fade.
Tuesday was even worse than Monday, me and Carl were going on the lodges for a couple of hours summer plugging for the jacks but we never got a take all day! It rained constantly and i had no waterproofs, all the required ingredients to have a cruddy day! I did however see a couple of kingfishers which is always a treat. At the end of the day it was a day out, better by far than sitting at home all day.this is the middle lodge, although its solid with fish there impossible to catch. evening match's are usually won with a couple of ounces by quality match men! But just look at the beauty of the place who can possibly complain for twenty quid a year, its a total bargain if you ask me. And this is only one of the three lodges!
Well I'm hoping to get back to my club water again on Mon/Tues so ill let you know how i get on. Who knows i may catch a whopper Ive caught some pretty unexpected fish of late and I'm now thinking I'm on a bit of a role. How long can my luck hold out?
tight lines
nige
Friday, 24 July 2009
Finally !
The bait was really working now so i gave both of his rods and mine a good scattering then i went for a wander with a floater rod and managed to bag another three small commons between 6 and 8lb as well as three decent bream around the 4lb mark and a cracking hybrid.
so at the end of Monday i had seven carp to my name i was well happy! Monday night passed by without so much as a line bite i managed another carp on Tuesday morning then another at about 9pm whilst Carl managed a few too in the day which was nice, we were both having a cracking session. i sat up all night on Tuesday feeding a field mouse trout pellets at my bivvy door i hadn't seen it the night before although there had been a rather noisy tawny owl sat in the tree above me so it was a sensible little mouse. I must of drifted off around 3:30am and was quite bemused as to what was making the whistling that woke me up. I actually thought it was my own nose whistling as i breathed so turned over on my bed and sunk my head into my pillow. The noise however did not stop and eventually i sat up only to find a little robin sat at my door whistling at me for food! i have never seen anything like it in all my life, he was no more the three feet away and didn't even flinch as i sat up the leaned over to open my bait bucket to shower him with pellets. That was it i had made a friend for life, drifted in out of my peg for the rest of the session picking up bits and pieces of food.
dawn is always my favorite time on the bank and this session was no different with a mug of coffee in hand i just enjoy sitting back and listening to the dawn chorus as the world around me wakes up. its also a brilliant time to see the carp and where they are feeding let alone catching them , often in the margins. the smells in the air at this time of day are coated in dew which only enhances them, the smell of the surrounding woodland and the water itself is a real treat for me as i live in an urban area on a busy main road.
Wednesday was a nightmare for me i didn't get anything at all apart from a few snotty bream where as Carl was amongst them again with a couple more cracking low doubles like this mint common.
What a belting trip we had, 17 carp between us. i had ten and Carl seven. that's more than we could of ever hoped for and has really given me confidence in my bait.
as we were packing up on Thursday morning i had a chat with two old men that were setting up for the night. when i say old they were both in their mid 70s and still get out at least 1 night a week and had just come back from a week in France. what an inspiration!
until next time, tight lines
nige