Sunday 22 February 2009

101 Carp and no ice in sight.

Another weekend , another fishing trip, well that's not true, had a day at Alcott farm Thursday , with John Paul and his uncle. We decided to come to Alcott, because john and wayne were fishing the open Saturday, i was not , i was meeting john t at Oakham. The day fishing was not to good and i weighed 6lb , mostly Roach with the odd small carp and john 7lb his uncle estimated 15lb.

Anyway back to yesterday. We arrived at the fishery about 8.00 and set up on the old pool to the right, and settled on the pegs where we broke the ice the first time, thankfully no hard work to be done this week, pheewww. I started on the liquidised bread again , using pinkie on the hook, john the waggler 2 rod lengths using red maggot hook bait. After an hour i had nine small Roach , it was slow , but john was baggin on the wag. I had fed a pellet line at 8 metres and decided on a change of tactic , target the carp, well the weather is starting to get warmer, time for the carp rigs to come out.

First put in on small pellet resulted in an instant bite and a nice 4oz Carp was soon in the net.The action was non stop from then on , john baggin Roach and me small Carp. In the end i made it to 101 Carp but as always, that last fish took ages to catch. John had easily 200 Roach with 2 Tench and a couple of Carp total weight 16lb 10oz , i ended up with 29lb 13oz, so a great day and with the summer slowly approaching, this year we should be into some good sport.

16lb 10 oz mostly Roach 101 small Carp for 29lb 13oz

Sunday 15 February 2009

Ice hole “ pt 2 “

Well it was cold again and yes, Oakham like everywhere else was frozen. We ended up at Oakham because the winter league match was called off, a burst pipe or something. Any way, i for one was secretly pleased, a chance to catch some fish.

Me and John met at 7.15am and had a pleasant drive to Oakham, it was nice because the sun was rising and it gave the impression it was going to be a nice day, eh wrong , well weather wise any way, it was bloody cold.

We fished the lake to the right , the same one as last week but different pegs , we fished the east bank , it would make a change , we already knew we would catch where we were last week, where would the challenge be then. John started with a small ball of groundbait, i decided on liquidised bread again , but fish red maggot instead of punch,  feeding pinkie. I started well and had about 10 Roach before John had his first fish. All was going well for me but a bit slower for John. John decided he wanted to fish to the island but with the ice it looked impossible, how would he break the ice at 9 metres. On went his pole cup and he began to tap the ice, breaking a small hole near the island, surely he was not going to fish it , he was. Over went his rig and he slowly lowered it into the 6 inch diameter hole and had a roach straight off, he played it then began to drag it over the ice, i thought it was hilarious , i had never seen anything like it, the next put in a carp, his no2 elastic stretched under the ice, he eventually got it tio the surface and struggled to drag it across the ice, this was not right , so he got his cupping kit and filled it with hot tea, trying to make a small channel to play the fish in, god it was so funny, but it worked and using is cup again tapped out a nice small channel. John began to fish the pellet and began to get the odd Carp, i was plodding along nicely with the Roach and the odd Carp.

  The day passed quickly and we both put a nice bag together, but with John feeling ill , i might have got a few more than him, alas he weighed a great 7lb to my 6lb, we still enjoyed it , even though the weather turned really cold.

My 6lb  = 102 Roach, 4 Carp          Johns 7lb mostly Carp.

Sunday 8 February 2009

Hole through the ice “ Eskimo style “

   Well its been a bad winter weather and fishing wise, not doing too well in the winter league,  struggled  on a few venues and fed up with this snow, but still , occasionally you get it right and you begin to love fishing again and this weekend was the case in question.

Got up at 6.30am and arranged top meet my mate john at 7.15, outside fisherman's friend . We got up to –3c and it didn't look good, even john, in fisherman's said “ There are always a couple of fools “ and it looked like he might be right. Even the drive to Oak ham our venue today was a bit treacherous, as my car slid on the black ice , which worried me, it felt like my tyre was flat.

We arrived at the lakes to a picture card winter scene, crisp snow  the sun breaking through and a frozen solid lake. Me and john grabbed a length of scaffold pole and began to break the ice , creating to fishable areas about 3 ft across and 7 ft long , just enough to give us a bit of depth, about 3.5ft to be exact. We then spent another half an hour netting the broken ice out of our swims, but at least we were nice and warm.

We both started on the punched bread and john had a fish straight away, it took a little longer for me to have one , i think john had 3 fish by my first, but we were catching.

John began to have a better stamp of fish on the red maggot over the liquidised bread, i gave pinkie a go as it was quicker to mount on the hook than punch, i to began to catch quicker. John gave me a few red maggot to try and it did seem to pick off the better Roach.

 

As always i wanted to give the Carp line ago so went over on pellet over micros, but was only having little dips on the float, i gave the water a tap with my pole and the float buried , carp on. This happened a couple of times, who would have thought summer tactics in the depth of winter. Anyway i took 4 carp on this line and all the while John was bagging some nice Roach. I eventually went back on the Roach line and began to catch again. All in all i had 5 Carp and 102 Roach for about 6lb John had a heavier bag of fish with some quality Roach ,not far of the pound mark , what a great day, i do not know why more people do not venture out in winter and even if a lake is iced over , depending on your choice of venue, you can still catch after all the disturbance of breaking the ice, I'm sure the fish respond to the commotion.oakham 8 feb 2009 002 oakham 8 feb 2009 006

2 holes in the ice                                       Johns near 7lb bagoakham 8 feb 2009 004

Just over 6lb i think.