Like I said it's a 130 mile trip to the lake, but this is by choice, no-one forces me to do a 260 mile round trip but the facts are that living were I do you have to travel a reasonable distance to catch fish of a certain size. Don’t get me wrong there are certain waters closer to my home with big if not bigger fish in them but the effort to fish days only on limited time and risk treading on other peoples toes really is hard work (trust me I’ve done it!!)
It's 9am on Monday morning and I’m just leaving for the lake. Now before you think 9am, on a Monday morning, must be a full timer, I’m afraid you'd be wrong. This is my week’s annual leave from work and so is a strange time for me to be starting a trip. The facts are I work 5 full days a week, start at 7 and finish at 4 or 5 (even on a Friday), so a normal trip for me sees me loading up on a Thursday night doing a full day at work on the Friday and then having the pleasure of a 2-3 hour drive in rush hour to the lake, finding it pretty much stitched up, setting up in duffers corner (again) and hoping for a move on the Saturday, that’s my reality but somehow I do still manage to winkle out a few fish.
As this is a diary style piece I am literally writing it as things happen so even I don't know what the outcome will be. All I know is I’ve got 72 hours in front of me and in the middle of the week for a nice change, one last check of the kit, unhooking mat and scales, you never know I may just need them.
"Overturned lorry at junction 23 of the motorway heading southbound, expect long delays". That was the first thing I heard when I switched the radio on! What made matters worse was I’d just turned the radio on as I was getting on the motorway at junction 24!! So what was meant to be a 2 hour journey turned into a 4 hour journey.
I pulled into the car park surprised to find only 3 other cars parked up, and after a good walk round and a chat with the other anglers I found out that the pit was fishing fairly slowly with not much out in the last few days.
I settled on an open water swim in the middle of the pit mainly due to the fact that it gave you a good view of most of the water and any showing fish could then be moved onto later in the session. The only other swim which took my fancy was also an open water swim but the thought of trying to hit a feature the size of a dustbin lid at 80-85 yards with a marker and your 3 rods accurately and not have a disaster in a 20 mph crosswind didn’t really appeal to me!
That’s the trouble with this pit, if your slightly off the features you really are in no man’s land and you’re looking at making it very hard for yourself, basically the more accurate you are the better your results will be.
The pit itself is some 25 acres with depths down to 30 foot and up to 6-7 feet on the tops of some of the features, every swim does have some kind of feature in it although to new members these can take a few trips to suss out, as I said earlier you’re looking for dustbin lid size fishable spots on most of the features. The swim I chose had that many humps, bars in front of it not to mention the margins that you could easily use a dozen rods and you still wouldn’t have all the areas covered, I also had a nice size bay to my right which the fish to tend to hold up in. The feature I was fishing was one of the bars which ran out of this bay at about 40-45 yards range with 8 foot of water on its top then either side dropping into the deeper weedier water. A few casts with a lead and an old rig close to the marker told me that the marker was tight up to a weed bed and by casting all 3 rods just to the left of the float it was slightly deeper (10 foot deep) and had just a very light covering of silkweed on it, nothing that couldn’t be overcome by altering the rigs slightly.
Now when it comes to rigs I don't do fancy, complex ones, my pop up rig is the same now as it was 10 years ago, size 8 Mugga hook fished swimmer style then alter the hook length to suit the bottom I’m fishing over, as for bottom baits I rarely use them anymore much preferring a balanced bait on a 'KD' style presentation.
All 3 rods were cast as tight to each other and to the left of the float without a disaster occurring, then 30 spod loads of bait was deposited again as tight as possible over were the baited rigs had landed. The spod mix consisted of 2 sizes of pellet, hemp, whole, chopped and crumbed oily chicken boilies all covered in a light coating of salmon oil. Now I must just say that having been with DT Bait for a number of years (I have wandered once) I have to say that the oily chicken range of baits is the best warm weather boilie I have ever used especially when chopped and crumbed down and mixed with pellets, it seems to keep the fish occupied for longer in your swim than anything else I have ever used and if the fish are in your swim longer there’s a higher chance of them making a mistake, and let’s be honest the only time we catch fish is when we trick them into making a mistake.
With the rods done (it’s now 6 pm) I settle down for the first brew of the trip and get the frying pan out for some much needed grub. Fish have already started to show on the opposite bank and with no-one fishing opposite hopefully their first port of call will be my baited spot. Just on dark fish start to show to my right in the bay with most of them on the bar which leads out to my spot, surely its not too much to ask them to move the 20 or so yards out of the bay and have a feed?
I was in the land of nod by around 11pm and sadly woke at 5am to find everything as I left it, even the radio was still on. The first brew of the day was made and I went to sit at the end of the swim to look for any signs of showing fish. The only fish I saw were crashing over the deeps about 300 yards to my right, but fish do have the ability to swim and in this pit they do move around very quickly and as I was sat in the middle I wasn’t that worried as I had only done my first night.
None of the other anglers were up and about yet but the tone of a bite alarm soon had the guy on the opposite side of the bay to me running for his rods, I went round to see if he needed a hand and just as I was entering his swim he had just landed the fish. Unfortunately it was a bit worse for wear and looked like it had recently been foul hooked near one of its eyes, it was quickly weighed and released, and in all fairness to the angler he never had a photo and just wanted to get the fish back as quickly as possible to save it from any further stress.
Looking at my phone it was 7am and I knew from past experience that if the fish were in this swim at this time of the day that they had a tendency to move down in front of me by around dinner time, a quick "well done mate" was said and I was off back to my swim. Well how wrong was I as the fish did a ‘u’ turn and went back and sat over the deeps again!!
Later that day the rods were wound in and a good 2 hour walk round the pit checking all the nooks and crannies revealed absolutely nothing, the other 2 anglers had the same idea as me and when our paths crossed they said likewise, they hadn’t seen a thing, or at least nothing which warranted a move. I knew the wind was due to swing round to a west/south westerly in the morning would benefit me and so with nothing to move for I got the marker back out on the spot and topped up the bait with another 15-20 spods of pellet and chops.
Around 6 pm 3 other anglers turned up to fish quick overnighters and all 3 went and set up at the deeper end of the pit were the fish were holding up, one of the other guys had already moved so now there were 4 anglers all fishing the deeps, surely all that markering, spodding and constant casting by 4 anglers would move the fish?, and move ‘em they did. That night I got around 3 hours sleep due to a constant stream of liners keeping me on my toes.
Just as it was getting light the middle alarm let out a few high pitched notes, the bobbin pulled up and the line pinged out the clip, the fish instantly dropped down over the back of the bar and tried to bury itself in one of the weed beds but steady constant pressure soon turned it and it kited out into open water, after only a few minutes the fish was in netting distance and I could see it wasn’t one of the bigger residents of the pit but looked like it may go 30lb, so carefully the fish was played out until it was safely in the net. It was a long, lean mirror which looked in good condition and as stated looked like it could go 30lb. On carrying the fish to the mat it looked like it was going to be close, on the scales it went 28.12lb, obviously down in weight from spawning as it looked like it could easily carry another 2 or 3 pounds in weight. With a few self takes done the fish was returned and a celebratory brew was made. Not a monster but I was off the mark, on the good old swimmer rig again.
9am and the left hand bobbin pulled up tight and then dropped like a stone, I picked the rod up to be met with no resistance until I started to wind in and then felt a few 'kicks' on the other end, Tench on!!
That was the end of the mornings activities and so wound in around 2 pm and went for a good luck round to find some fish, but as same as the previous day nothing was seen only the odd loner just passing through a few of the swims.
By the time I got back to my swim everyone else had packed up and left for home, so my last night was to be spent on my own, a very rare occurrence. The other thing which had happened was that the south westerly wind had picked up and got some real force to it, so much so that the spot I had caught from could no longer be hit with any degree of accuracy. I did manage to get one rod bang on the money but the remaining two rods were fished on a feature straight out in front (so wind assisted) at 40 yards range. Again the spod rod went to work until the ritual 20-25 spodsfulls were deposited on the spot. With the rods done it was brew time again and my mate bod phoned to ask how things were going, I told him it was slow with only 3 fish out in as many days and that it really didn’t look that promising for my final night, but as I was the only one on if a fish was going to come out it would have to be me that would catch it, those odds I liked. We chatted for a while then bid each other farewell and soon after the previous night’s lack of sleep must have caught up with me as the next thing I knew I’d automatically slithered under the bed chair cover and literally passed out.
5.45 when I awoke the next morning and after a good night’s sleep I treated myself to a brew and a bowl of cereal followed by a bramley apple pie (living like a king!!). The strong south westerly was still blowing but more importantly there were no signs of any fish, the place looked dead!! To make things worse the two families of coots came out to play and started to drop on the other anglers spots that they had fished just to prove that nothing had visited their spots during the night.
Totally out of the blue two fish roll at the back of the feature with the two rods on it, a quick look at the phone tells me it's 10am, due to the 72 hour limit rule I’ve got 5 hours left as I’ve got to be out the swim for 3 this afternoon, I sat there willing it to happen but all that happened was that time slipped by and before I knew it I was all wrapped up with the gear on the barrow walking back to the van.
Was I happy with my result? considering there were only 4 fish caught in the in the previous 4 days and a steady stream of anglers had visited the pit then to have been one of the anglers to have caught then in those circumstances, yes I was happy with the result. The other 3 fish were all in the 20lb bracket as well which was a bit disappointing considering the stock of the lake but you can only catch what swims along.
Well that’s your lot for this time and if you’re still reading this then at least I’ve not sent you to sleep which can't be a bad thing.
Whatever you do and where ever you fish I wish you the best.
Be lucky,
Mitch Webb.
