I needed to get out today so made a decision to go down to the lake in the valley after lunch.
So,after a nice piece of salmon steak with some Jersey Royals and broccoli I was down to the pond by 3pm.
This pond/lake by the way is about 10 minutes drive from my house, set in a valley in the Wolds, 2 minutes from the "main" road. It's owned by George, whom I reported on last year with his serious problem with Weil's disease. Not seen him for a while but I'm told he's still recovering away from the farm..
The valley is full of bird life, a constant battle of song birds, along with the continuous cooing of the wood pigeons and the cackle of pheasants.
I have in the past had good sightings of a pair of buzzard who nest in one of the woods, and for the first time down there, today I saw a red kite just over my head being mobbed by the local rooks.
Too slow with the camera!
A decision was made to fish with the cane rod I bought for £150 some 3 years ago, I picked it up at the 2010 Barbel Show.
Used it once on the Trent, that season but didn't really test it, I blanked!.
I wasn't particularly happy with it, hence the lack of use, it just seemed to be a bit floppy, not certain that's the right term, but I wasn't happy with it's action.
Thought about getting rid of it, and took it to the 2012 Barbel Show, but the price I set didn't attract any interest, so I bought it home.
From memory the rod is modelled on the Fred Crouch Barbel Perfection, with a weighted separate butt section and 2 eyed sections, giving a rod of about 11feet.
It was the first rod made by Paul Johnson of Hull for himself, before embarking on a few more for friends in the HPS.
He sold it to me as he needed the money. By the look of it, it hadn't been used at all.
I matched the rod with my Youngs John Wilson Heritage, 4lb bs Maxima fished straight through with a porcupine quill float fished waggler style and a size 10 barbless hook.
No finesse, I wanted to catch the carp that are fairly numerous in the lake and are up to about 15lb to test the rod.
Bait was to be some hooker pellets,sweet corn, some old prawns and bread flake, feed was Sonu micro pellets.
The swim I chose I could fish with a little depth of around 4 feet, so I fished on the bottom lift method.
It didn't take long for the flake to work as I more or less straight into a nice common carp, probably about 6lb. So, rod Christened.
I went on to catch My second fish also on flake was a small tench and I went on to catch roach, rudd and crucian carp another tench and a few more carp using a variety of bait.
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| rudd, ready to spawn |
So all in all a good afternoon out of the house, I even sat in heavy rain for two hours,everything is soaking wet but I've bought the rod and reel in to dry before I put them away.
Nothing big to report, although my last fish, after disposing of all the old bait, another carp of about 10lb or so on my last prawn, I lost that one suffering a pulled hook at the net, due to me trying to photograph the rod action, it put a good bend in the rod though
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I now have confidence in the rod's action, it handled the last fish with ease, and was forgiving enough to not knock the smaller fish off.
I'll be making a bit more use of it....perhaps on the Wye!
I'm sure the guys of the Project won't mind me passing on the latest news from them.
Please help in anyway you can, it a great job they are doing seeding the Avon with young roach..
Hello All,
We hope you don’t mind being blind copied in on this email, but we thought we’d send a short message out to let you all know the Avon Roach project web site has been updated with the goings on of the last year at The Avon Roach Project
Hope you like.
We intend starting a BLOG in a couple of months so everyone can live the nightmare with us in smaller chunks of more detailed and personal information. However, we’ll let this update get publically absorbed first. After all there’s only so much roach stuff a man can take.
We have had the best year ever, probably due to the cool soggy summer and the good late winter temperatures of 2011 putting the adult fish in a decent condition prior to spawning.
One or two folk have started to catch roach in some of the places they hadn’t been seen for years, and we have been asked if we had anything to do with it, which of course we have.
We also saw a far greater number of smaller roach return to our spawning boards this and last year, which again could be attributed to us returning good numbers to these locations. We also saw some absolute whoppers too – three pounders some of them.
We decided not to return any of ours at the end of 2012, which we had scheduled to do, because of the almighty flood conditions. Instead, we retained them in our stews and will be giving the river a double dose this coming autumn.
Thank you all for your continued support.
Kind regards
Salmon Steaks,Cane and pin and Crucian carp and all. That sounds nigh on a perfect day to me Fred. Go on, go catch a barbel on it.
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