Back on The Boards

It's geting close to me over doing this spot but when theres fish there, well you've just got to
give it a go. With that in mind, arrangements were made for me and my pal Steveo to have a few hours
out for a but of fun. Invites were sent out to a few others but come the witching hour there was only myself and Steveo at the agreed meeting point at stupid o clock last Saturday.
Armed with my trusty whips and this time a properly set up waggler, they didn't stand a chance.

We arrived about a half an hour before dawn and set about setting up, three trips from car to swim and the mountain of gear is in situ. Sorted the 6m whip out first, though the plan was to fish the waggler more than the whip in the hope of bigger fish. Last couple of trips up here had seen anyone who fished the faster running water get less but bigger fish and that was what I was after today.

We mixed up the groundbait, a bag of VDE roach mix, can't remember the name, a bag of Sensas Lake
and a about a third of a bag of Sensas River mix to help give it a bit of weight / stickiness.
A bit limited on bait as I hadn't sorted any caster so, Red & White Mags were the main attack.
The plan was to get a few in the bag on the whip line and then have a go with the wag. Steveo had a similar idea but he was going to have a go with the feeder gear.


Unlike previous visits here I decided to kick off with a good bed of feed on the whip line so out went 4
orange sized balls of groundbait with a good helping of hemp mixed in.
I'd chosen a 1.5grm Tubertini float fished in to about 8 foot of water. It was really pushing through from left to right further out but close in it wasn't particularly fast, though strangely enough there was times when the flow went in completely the opposite direction. Steveo was first to notice it, when he asked me why would his float be going against the flow, my obvious response was "thats usually because you have a fish on" and sure enough he lifted into yet another hand sized roach.
Bites for me were allmost non existant for the first half hour, I decided that was due to the big initial feed and kept at it. Sure enough the bites did come though they were difficult to read with the slowest dipping of the float being a bite. Getting the timing right was the trick and though I'd hit them all some resulted in a swinger
and some not. It was busy enough but too many missed fish had me behind Steveo I reckoned, so time for a few bigger fish and out with the waggler.
I'm no expert at fishing running water and the next half hour or so reminded me of that. I did have a couple of fish off that line but not enough to warrant staying on it and as I watched Steveo swining away on his whip line I decided to put the waggler away and settle back down on the whip line. I had kept feeding with small
balls of groundbait with hemp in it so the fish were still there and a bit more obliging then earlier.
I'd adjusted a bit this time round and started off a few inches off the bottom with catapult in hand.
Every cast had a few mags or a pouchfull of hemp in on top of it and that seemed to get me a decent
run of fish. Steveo had switched over to his feeder gear and true to form wasn't catching as many fish
as I was. He was fishing about three quarters across with a cage feeder which I tried to get him to change but he wasn't having it. Personally I'd have gone with a closed feeder to be happier that my bait was getting down. I'd have thought that using a cage feed would have a certain amount of the bait getting pushed out by the current before it hit bottom, I suppose it's one of those things that you think is right but often don;t get to prove or disprove. To be fair he had a few fish on this line but I was definitely catching more and felt like I was catching up again.
We kept at it for a couple more hours, bites were slow enough but at least there was bites.
The sun came out to play for a while at about midday and it was lovely sitting with the sun on my back
and the fish playing ball. Spring has arrived I thought, it's actually warm and for the first time in months I could actually see my maggots wriggling round in the bait tubs.

Theres allways a weigh in, even on a pleasure session so having packed away some of the gear we puleed the keepnets in to see what we had. I was figuring on about 8lbs for when Steveo weighed 13lbs I was
looking at a right kicking. I don't know, I bring him to these places, mix his groundbait, tie his rigs,
sort his bait and then he beats me. I pulled up mine and was happy enough with what I saw, plenty of
fish but too many small ones saw the scales go round to 11.5 lbs which surprised me completely.

I'm not sure how long the fish hang around this area but while they are there I'd recomend
a days fishing up there, it's great stuff...........