Been a while

Has been to long since I updated this as my old school reports used to say, could do better.........
In truth there hasn't been much to write about, it's been an odd Autumn. it's usually a time I really enjoy but for one reason and another it's not been great this year. Time to get back to it and back with a bang.

29lb and yes, I am actually happy

Yesterday had us fish a venue we knew about but had never fished before. Joined by a couple of pals we were on the bank at 08.00 and fishing by 09.00. We were going to have a go at fishing  a "stick float" for the first time so one swim was chosen for that, a second swim was picked to fish a pole just in case we got the stick float fishing all wrong. There was a reasonable chance of this as we'd never done it before and the rod an reel used probably weren't the best bits of kit for this style of fishing. It should be said they are good bits of kit but not necessarily for fishing running water.

It's not the deepest bit of water, 4 foot ish and the water was pushing through at a nice pace. I went with 4lb main line, 2lb hooklength to a size 18 "Drennan Silverfish Barbless". The float was a Preston 4x4, with the shot spaced out shirt button style. We chose not to use any groundbait on this line and went for loose feed only, red & white mags, caster and hemp were all used at some stage and as is often the case 2 reds seemed to perform better. A constant stream of loose feed seemed to do the job here and we both had success when we had our turn on it. It was feed, cast, feed again, feed twice as the float ran through, strike, net  fish, feed while unhooking and repeat again. I reckoned we couldn't over feed them so the same routine was carried out over and over again. Sure we missed a few bites, got a few casts wrong (really wrong) but we got it together and on that line had 70 fish for 29lb 8 ozs of mainly good plump roach. Well pleased with this and it's fair to see it's a type of fishing we'll do again.

31lbs, great bag...........

The second swim was a pole swim and we decided to just fish the one line with one top 3 set up using a cralusso 4gram float which in hind sight was too heavy. We should have set up a second rig with a lighter float but the set up we went for gave excellent slow presentation and it worked. Similar lines and hook used though
the shotting here involved an olivette with a number of droppers. We went with using some groundbait on this line to see if it made any difference, it didn't. One thing I did notice when I had my turn on this line was that any time I potted in hemp I got quick responses. This turned out to be the best attack on the day with 82 fish for 31lb and ounces.

Stephen, 29lb also

Our two pals, Stephen and Ron both fished the stick for the day and had similar weights to us with Stephen having 29lb 8 ozs and Ron having 26 lb. Ron started an hour after the rest of us so his bag was notable.

Ron, 26lbs