An evening after pike

After my somewhat disastrous bike and pike trip last week, I decided to have another go at targeting the toothier species on a local club water with my friend Steve. We stocked up on dead baits and wire traces at Lobby's (our local tackle shop) and set off for a few hours bait fishing after work.

The sun sets over our local club water

We each took 3 pike rods and a quiver tip to try and catch some live bait. My plan was to fish a small ledgered roach dead bait to the sunken trees on the far bank, a ledgered mackerel at my feet in the deep water (around 30ft) against the dam wall, and then attempt to catch some live bait on the feeder rod to use under a pike float and let it drift around the open water. This proved trickier than I expected as it turns out feeder fishing in deep water has its problems that I wont go into here. Anyway, after a few skimmers that were too big, I managed to bag a little roach that promptly got lip hooked on a double hook, set at about 20 foot depth under a small pike float and gently cast into the water. The weather conditions were looking pretty good, we'd had a fair bit of rain earlier in the day brought in on a south westerly wind, and it was meant to stay overcast for the remainder of the day, so we were pretty confident of getting a fish out between us.

The first run came about an hour in, from one of Steve's rods fishing the trees on the far bank. Sadly all he had to show for it was an old rotten stick as whatever had picked up his rig had made off with his roach and deposited the hooks in one of the sunken trees. It was about another hour before we saw any more action, this time it was my rod with the roach dead bait. I saw the rod tip bounce, before a few beeps of the alarm and a slow rotation of my freespool indicated something had picked up my bait. I hit the run almost instantly to avoid deep hooking, as piking legend Mick Brown had pointed out in a recent facebook post that the water temperature was unseasonably high and as such pike are much more likely to wolf down their food straight away. It turns out I may have hit it too early, as I managed to pull the bait straight out of the fishes mouth. Upon inspecting my dead bait however, there were clear marks on the fishes flanks between my sets of trebles that looked more like it had been attacked by one of those staple removing tools than a pike, which led me to believe I was dealing with another toothy resident of the water...

I re-baited the hooks with a fresh bait, this time placing the bottom hook right in the area where the tooth marks had been, and recast to the same spot. About 20 minutes later the rod was off again, and this time I left it for 2 or 3 seconds before hitting the run. I was into what felt like a half decent fish, it didn't zoom off and seemed to use its weight to stay down deep in the water. It took a few minutes to get it to come up from the deep water, and it turned out it wasn't very big after all! But it wasn't a pike either. My suspicions had been confirmed, and I had myself my first ever zander. Not a monster by any means weighing in at just a smidging over 3lb, but it was another new PB so I was happy!

My first zander, caught on a small roach dead bait

I rigged up with another small roach and put the rod back on the spot, hoping it was just 1 of a small pack of hunting fish, and also re-cast the mackerel rod to the far bank as this seemed to be where the fish were. It only took about 5 minutes before something had picked up the mackerel, though sadly it dropped it again almost instantly. After that we didn't have any more interest, despite staying an hour into darkness which is when the water usually comes alive, so we decided to call it a day and reeled in.

Catfish rigs

I've had a few people ask me about what rigs I use for wels catfish, so figured I'd put the details on here for all to see. I use two main rigs for most of my cat fishing (where it's not possible to use live or dead baits), I've tried others but these are the two that seem to work the best for me. The first is a simple bottom bait pellet rig, and the second is a popped up meat rig. But before we get onto the rigs, there are a few things you should consider when making any rig for catfish which will make the rigs differ from those used for carp.

The cavernous mouth of a 27lb catfish, they go a lot bigger!

The first thing is, a catfishes mouth is big! This means you can use big baits, which in turn will mean you need to use a big hook (and as catfish do tend to pull back a bit, a strong hook!). Also, this means when Mr catfish comes along to gobble up your bait, it's going to get sucked into that big cavernous mouth right to those circular pads at the back, but that's not going to happen if you're using a 5" long carp rig, so you need to use longer rigs, much longer. I tend to go with anything between 18" and 24". The next thing is, its mouth is full of crushing pads which it uses to mush up its food. These are very abrasive (imagine the hooked side of Velcro, only harder and sharper and you'll have a rough idea what they are like) While they wont cause you any real damage, they will shred your hook link material if it's not up to the job, so you need something strong and abrasion resistant. I prefer to use Kryston quicksilver in 35lb, but ONLY where I'm very unlikely to hook a carp, as it's quite abrasive and could damage the soft mouth of a carp. Where there are carp present, or if I'm using smaller baits that other fish could pick up, I use fox coretex in 35lb, which is much softer and coated, making it much more carp friendly. The downside is it's usually only good for one or two fish before it gets too damaged to risk using again. Lastly you'll notice the catfish has tiny eyes, and a face full of whiskers. This means you don't need to worry about what your rigs look like, as the catfish won't see them anyway, so don't let the bright colours of catfish specific hook link materials put you off, in fact they're designed to stand out to deter other species with good eyesight like carp from picking up your baits. You do need to keep things tidy though, as those whiskers probe around when searching for food, and you don't want them touching line looping up off the bottom and spooking the fish.

Anyway, I've rambled on too long already, so onto the rigs. Prepare to be amazed at how devastatingly simple they are!

My bottom bait pellet rig, the pound coin is for scale

This is my pellet rig. It's just a simple knotless knot hair rig, using 35lb quicksilver and a size 1 wide gape hook from korda (tbh I'm not a fan of the korda wide gapes, but it can be hard to find anything better that's big enough from a tackle shop at short notice, and a crap hook is better than no hook!). It's much the same as a simple carp rig, just bigger! You need to make the hair long enough to fit the required number of pellets (in this case 3 21mm halibut pellets) and still allow the hook to lie flat on the bottom out of the way of probing whiskers. It's a good idea to make a large loop at the end too, as you may find you need to use large bait stops due to the size of the hole in pre-drilled pellets (personally I just use a piece of fake corn as a sort of buffer and a normal extender stop, as I find the big pellet stops can cause the pellet to split in half). Also, note the float stop on the hair, as this serves a purpose! When you have threaded your pellets onto the hair and fitted the bait stop, snug the float stop down against the bottom pellet to keep them all in place, it helps keep things tidy and will stop any potential tangles occurring from line getting caught between two pellets on the cast. That's pretty much it, put a few small blobs of putty up the hook link to keep it on the bottom out of the way and you're done, simples!

My popped up meat rig (minus the meat!)

This is my other favourite rig, the popped up meat rig. Again its just a simple knotless knot hair rig, but this time with the hair coming out from much closer to the eye of the hook so that the hook hangs with the shank horizontal as I find this better for getting a hook hold. This one uses the 35lb coretex, as the meat can get whittled down by small fish to the point that other species of fish can pick it up. It also utilises a size 4 fox Kuro S2 hook, a fox pop-up weight, a float stop, a foam disc and a fox anti tangle sleeve. I prefer to use the fox pop-up weights as split shot can damage the braid and I don't like to use huge blobs of putty. Again there is a float stop on the hair, but this time it's to stop the big lump of meat from sliding down the hair to the hook when it's popped up. After the float stop is a foam disc. This is simply to provide a platform for the meat to sit on and to stop the float stop from pulling into the meat, half a boilie would perform a similar function. After the disc there is a fox anti tangle sleeve. This is to increase the diameter of the section of hair that the meat sits on which will stop it from slicing through your meat like a cheese wire. You can use anti tangle tubing or a piece of drinking straw for the same result, I just like to use these as they're about the right size and have a tapered edge which helps thread the meat onto it (that and I have loads floating around my tackle box!). At the end is obviously a pop-up, in this case a sticky baits krill "white one". Meat is fairly buoyant on its own due to the fat content, so you'll find you don't need a big pop-up to lift even a big lump off the bottom. Alternatively you can use about half of a pop-up, and fish the meat on the bottom snowman style. Don't be afraid to pop it up a long way either, if you look at a catfish's head you'll see it's lower jaw protrudes the top, which would indicate it's designed to feed on prey higher in the water than itself. I seem to have more luck at around the 6 to 8 inches mark than I do the 1 or 2 inches you would usually use for carp. Again use a bit of putty to keep the rig pinned down out of the way.

One last thing worth mentioning rig wise is to use a free running lead setup. Like most predators catfish don't like to feel any resistance, especially on more pressured venues, so carp style bolt rigs aren't generally a good idea. Sure people catch on them, but then some people have caught carp on spinners, doesn't make it an effective way to fish for them! Try and use large run rings where possible and bobbins/swingers as light as you can get away with that will still register a drop back, and keep baitrunners as loose as they'll go, or even fish open bail arm if they're really picky.

A 44lb 8oz catfish caught after just a single beep from the alarm proving that big cats can be very wary creatures

Epic bike and pike...

Well the plan was to get up early (ish) and cycle 12 or so miles to the end of the Gloucester canal, and then lure fish my way back with my friend Ben until it got dark... It didn't really go to plan. For one reason or another, leaving early (ish) turned into leaving at half 12! Then during the hour long journey straight into a gale force wind howling up the Severn valley, I managed to get 2 punctures which added the best part of an hour onto the journey. We did eventually get there though, at about half 2, only to find it almost impossible to fish due to the wind. We wandered back towards home for about a mile until we were more sheltered from the winds, and finally got a bit of proper fishing in. Ben managed 5 or so perch to about a pound, and I managed a couple of small perch and a small pike of about 3lb, all caught on small (size 3) mepps aglia spinners. Not too bad considering we only had a couple hours of fishing in the end. I didn't get any pictures as I had to travel light and couldn't get the DSLR to fit in my bag, so instead I've added one of a better fish I had from the same area last year, cheating I know but you can't have a blog post without pictures!

One I had last year, hopefully I'll find some of this size this year too!

36 hours on Gardners Pool

My friend Steve and I have been members of Gardners Pool (which I often refer to as "GP") in Saul for 5 years now, but we'd never managed to do a night session there, until now!

A photo I took of GP a few months back, during sunnier weather!

The lake itself is about 5 acres in size, with a relatively flat bottom at around 3.5 to 5ft deep. Its a mostly gravel bottom without too much weed, but boasts some HUGE sets of lily pads. It also has its fair share of resident ducks, coots, moorhens, seagulls and of course the inevitable dreaded swan, which can test ones patience at times! Over the years all of these creatures have been given names by the two of us, mostly out of boredom on the less eventful days. We have such characters as Trev and Dave the mallards (Trev being the female, don't ask me why!) Rambo the swan, McDuck and his arch enemy Colonel Gadaffy duck, Duxedo (a black duck with a white chest), Kung Po and Szechuan the mandarin ducks, Moorhen freeman, Coot features and of course Cheryl vole (who, incidentally, is a field mouse). I realise this has nothing to do with fishing, but I've become so used to calling these creatures by their names that I thought it best to explain in advance just in case they crop up in the rest of this blog, so that you the readers aren't so perplexed when I refer to Rambo as being a pain in the arse!

Rambo will swim the entire length of the lake just to hiss at you!

Anyway, lets get to the session at hand! We eventually arrived Saturday morning at about 8:30am in the pouring rain after having to return home because some idiot (me) forgot their boots. The peg we had booked for the night was still occupied by the previous overnighter, so we unloaded a minimal amount of kit from the car, and decided to fish a peg known as the disabled peg until we could get on peg 4. I hadn't unpacked my baits, so all I had was a rig with 3 pieces of fake corn, and a rig with a sticky baits krill pop-up. I cast the pop-up rig to the edge of a big set of pads about 40 yards out, and I flicked the fake corn rig down the right hand margin (which I call carp corner) next to a smaller set of pads. It wasn't long, maybe 15 minutes and the corn rod was off! A short battle ensued with a small excursion into the set of pads, but I was the victor and a small common of about 6 or 7lb was in the net. I hadn't unpacked my camera as the weather was terrible so unfortunately there are no photos of the fish, or the one that Steve had not long after, also on a margin rod and around the same size. The rods were put back out, but nothing much else happened, other than the rain got heavier, and we got wetter and colder!

The rain cleared around dinner time and the chap on peg 4 had left, so the next hour or so was spent walking all our gear around the lake, as we couldn't get the barrow to fit in the car. An hour or 2 later and base camp was built, clothes were drying on the bivvies, dinner had been demolished and the rods were in the water. The margins on this side of the lake are a fair bit shallower than the opposite bank (where we started) so we opted to fish both rods out to the pads in the middle where it was deep enough to avoid being cleaned out by Rambo and his friends. Steve opted for the scattering of boilies baiting approach, where as I opted for a thin band of particles just off the pads. Neither approach really worked, the lake never fishes that great during daytime, but you can usually wrangle out a few fish but today the lake was pretty dead, maybe all the rain had made the water temps plummet and the fish had turned a bit lethargic, who knows, but for whatever reason the fish just didn't want to feed.

Starry nights means cold nights this time of year!

Day soon started to turn to night and usually the dusk period is where most of the action happens, so the rods were recast over the thin bed of bait with a fresh CCMoore live system snowman with a small bag of nutty stick mix on the left rod, and a chunk of red pepperami with a small bag of equinox pellets (strange combo I know, but it seems to work!) on the right rod. Dusk soon turned to night however without even a beep, and the clear skies meant it was getting pretty cold so we decided to go hide in our sleeping bags until the morning, rather confused as to why the lake was so dead.

I was awoken in the early hours by a few beeps of the right alarm, but after watching my motionless swinger from the warmth of my sleeping bag I decided it was probably just a liner and went back to sleep. About half an hour later I was awoken again by the same thing, and again decided it was a liner and went back to sleep... For all of about 10 minutes when the same thing happened again. I reluctantly left my cosy sleeping bag to go and investigate. The swinger was still, but I could see my line twitching ever so slightly where it entered the water, so I figured I'd managed to prick a roach or something similar while it investigated my hook bait. After reeling in and a short battle in the margins, turns out that the "roach" was another 7lb or so carp! It must have just picked up my bait and stayed still. Usually the runs are pretty violent as the fish take off towards the big sets of pads once they realise they've been had. I pretty much reeled it all the way to within a rod length of the bank just like you would a bream before it finally woke up and fought back. After checking the fish over it was healthy enough and was in pretty mint condition being one of the smaller newer fish, which appeared to further confirm my feeling that the fish seemed to have gone a bit lethargic from the sudden drop in water temperature, as until this weekend we'd still been having 20ºC+ daytime temps and barely a drop of rain all summer. Anyway the rod went back out on the spot with a fresh chuck of pepperami, but that was all the "action" that was had during the night.

One of the smaller residents of the pool

The following morning things looked to be on the up however, with a short bout of feeding from about 8am for an hour and a half or so, resulting in both of us catching a few small carp each. We still hadn't managed to find any of the lakes numerous double figure fish, but after a rather disappointing night the smaller ones were more than welcome. As is pretty typical with GP though, the fish turned off as soon as the sun started to climb higher in the sky, so we did the only thing any self respecting angler would do, and made a heap of bacon sandwiches and a cup of coffee while we made our plans for the rest of the day!

Now I had a backup plan if the carp fishing wasn't going to plan, and as the bigger fish seemed reluctant to come out to play, I decided to put my plan into action during the slower mid day period. I'd also brought along my now ancient feeder rod and 3 pints of maggot to have a crack at the bream in the lake which can go into double figures.

5lb before relieving itself all over my mat!

 I fished just a simple maggot feeder rig over the same bed of bait I'd used for my carp fishing (and topped up after the morning feeding spell). I got bites almost instantly and caught plenty of skimmers and the odd rudd, but the bigger specimens were eluding me. I decided to try something a bit different, and added a healthy splash of tiger nut flavouring to my now half depleted tub of maggots to try and tempt one of the larger residents. Oddly this did actually seem to have a rather instantaneous effect, just not entirely the one I was looking for! After flavouring, I found I caught pretty much only Rudd, it looked like the bream didn't agree with my decision at all! The rudd weren't too bad a size though at around 8-12oz, and they were all in scale perfect condition so it was nice to see them doing so well as they seem to be slowly disappearing from lakes across the country. This lasted for about an hour or so, and I was starting to run low on maggots, when it appeared the bigger bream wanted to come and play after all! I caught a few in the 2-3lb mark in amongst the numerous rudd I was still catching, and then when I'd gotten to the point where I could see the bottom of my maggot tub and only had a few feeders worth left, I snagged this 5 pounder which was probably more like 4lb 12 after it had finished doing what can only be described as a torrent of wee during the photo taking! There may have been a whole shoal out there, maybe even containing some of the bigger ones, but the truth was I had no maggots left, so that was the end of my bream session and the carp rods went back out with big baits to avoid them (They just aren't any fun on carp gear).

The afternoon was now becoming early evening, and the task of packing everything down in time to be off the lake by 7pm when the gates are locked was at hand. Obviously this meant that the carp were going to wake up and have another feeding spell to hinder our progress, and Steve was the first to connect with a double of just under 13lb which was much more in the ballpark of what we'd been expecting to catch. I managed to lose another 7lb ish fish at the net, and then go on to lose another about 5 minutes later. I hadn't suffered a hook pull from a carp in ages, so I guess it had to catch up with me at some point, thankfully with smaller fish! With the gear almost all packed down my pepperami rod screamed off and I was into what felt like a better fish. I prayed to the fishing gods that I wouldn't suffer another hook pull, and what seemed like an age later I had the fish in the net. It had put up a good fight, and if I'm honest I thought it was going to be an upper double from the way it was plodding around the swim, but at just under 14lb it was still more than welcome, and a good finish to a tricky but enjoyable session...

A typical GP common at just under 14lb.  

Chasing Cyprinus carpio

Just booked a night on a local carp water for this weekend to have a bash at some wildy style doubles. Had a quick look round after work today and something is definitely on the feed, fizzing and clouded water everywhere, just hope they're still at it in a few days time!