Reflections

Towards sunset

I've been out three times this week to see if I can unwrap some mysteries of lake two down in the valley.

I've not discovered a great deal, other than what I already knew existed, so I'll move on to lake three to give that a good try.

Last night, I was sky watching!

That was tough!

Dawn Rutter 8th May 1962 -18th June 2014

After nearly a three year fight with cancer my youngest brother's partner of 27 years left him, and us, for what we all hope is a better place.
She leaves Pete and their 18 year old daughter Lauren to start life again.
It's been a painful few weeks,back in Essex with my brother.
Hopefully the pair of them are over the worst of their mourning, and will soon be back to some semblance of normality.

Dawn will always be remembered for the straight talker, laugh a minute, always with a smile girl she was.

Rest in Peace Dawn, you will be missed so much. 



A night session

Thought I would pop down to the valley and fish lake one with just my fly rod, and a rod for eels for a few hours and arrived at 5pm.
Tackled up the eel rod and put a bunch of 3 lobworms on the size 4 and let it fish itself whilst I set up my Constable of Bromley 6 foot Wallop Brook rod for a bit of drop shotting for perch.
Both rods remained fishless until an hour or so before darkness fell.
By that time I had long given up the drop shotting with every intention of going back to it later.
In the meantime the carp started taking my worms, so with a change bait to sweetcorn the occasional roach and a nice crucian turned up.

Need a new net, eel damage!

I think I caught this one twice!

The wind got up a bit and the clouds moved in just before the sunset so I decided that 5 hours was enough and headed back down the road.

10:56

 I think a trip to the river is due!


It's that time again

https://www.justgiving.com/jerry-gleeson1

Trying something new

Had a thought!

Following on from Tuesday nights session and catching the eel, I thought I may have another angle to try, so I contacted my mate Baz Fisher for some advice, as he has become a bit of an eel fanatic lately.
So I kitted myself out for a sleeper rod approach to see what I may find in the first lake and to carry on float fishing..

the view of lake one from the top

My first cast was into the channel area below that tree on the right in the picture above, I sat on the left.
I had set up my 1.75 Fox barbel rod my Shimano 4000, with a size 7 barbless ESP G4 Raptor, a very light running lead and about a foot of Kryston super Mantis at 15bs, on 4lb Maxima. 
So, not quite fully armed for the job!
It got immediate attention to my three lobworm baited hook, which I put down to the rudd population fiddling with the worms. 
Leaving the rod on the pod with the balearm off, I put myself a dough bobbing on the ground which needed a foot or so of a run before it hit the rod.   
Then set about putting the float rod into action in front of me.Once again this put me into the small roach and rudd population, but not for long as I saw the bobbing scoot across the ground and hit the first ring of the rod.
Remembering to put the balearm across before striking, I knew immediately that I was into an eel by the fighting action, felt quite good too. 
Heavily out gunned, it didn't take me long to net the eel.

I thought I would let the fish calm down and get it weighed, just to get an idea of size, but as you can see from my photo, and I hadn't noticed, the hook had come out. The eel made it's escape!
I baited up again and put my float rod to one side,  caught a small roach, a perch of about a pound and hooked one more eel that dropped off at the net, smaller but very brown colour, compared to the silver of my first fish.
I think I may have learned at least two things from this first attempt, there are eels in the lake and perhaps a barbed hook is necessary for eel fishing?
Next time I shall be more prepared.

Ah, that's a bit better

I often wonder if.....
.....people are that interested in what at times becomes a daily blog,or a diary?
Whatever, I'll stick to doing it as it comes,so to speak!
The rivers at this time of year have never really appealed to me, unless I'm invited out, or when I went through the phase where barbel were the only fish for a while.
So this year I've decided that still water probably means more to me,  my fishing roots in Essex didn't really encourage me to fish the rivers.
So practicing on the small waters down in the valley will no doubt assist when I move on to some of the other fisheries available to fish in this area, plus one or two invites I have had recently to fish further afield.
Anyway, I decided to go down again and to go to the first lake, there are carp in there but not in the numbers that disturb a good days tiddler snatching!
So I decided to fish with sweetcorn over a few grains of hemp each cast, it worked for a while with a few roach and rudd, but no sign of the crucian (or the carp).
Switching to worm was quite quiet but I did catch one crucian and a couple of small roach and rudd.
Switching again this time to some small prawn, which are just a tad close to being past it, and immediately started to catch crucian, all under the rod tip in about four foot of water.

I suppose I had a dozen or so up to a pound and thought, should I say hoped, that perhaps mum and dad would be about.
It was not to be, and as darkness began to set in I had three carp on the trot, not bigguns, but I didn't mind so much today because they hadn't interfered earlier in the evening when my bait testing was on the go.

 A couple more crucian and a small tench, to round off the evening which was somewhat disturbed by my final fish, an eel of probably a pound, which found a hole in my landing net and  went through up to my float, do you think I could unhook it ?
Nope, so I snipped the line by it's lips and let it live another day, thinking I bet Pauline asks me why I didn't bring it home.....and she did!
So next time I'm down, I'll go back to the second  lake again and try the prawn approach there, who knows mum and dad may be in there?