Like a nice bit of Cod, Battered......

On the road and todays plan is a wee experiment.  I'm fishing standard pole tactics at 9M and Robs
on a 6M whip. The venue chosen is particularly deep with depths of 15 foot and 10 foot each.
On what was quite a windy day I went with a 2Grm Preston float, tied to Preston .128mm line with
a 6 inch hooklength of .104mm. In "old money" thats 3lb to 2 lb lines. At the bizz end a size 18
Drennan Silver Fish Hook

Rob is fishing in shallower water and using similar enough kit other than the float was  1Grm and the hook was an 18 Drennan Red Maggot.
We also chose to experiment with groundbait, or at least the colour of it. The mix itself was equal
amounts of Sensas Gros Gardons, Sensas Lake and brown crumb. Rob added Black Tracix to his,
I didn't. We decided on a 4 hour "match" so at 10 a.m. it was All In.
I elected to use a pole cup for precise feeding, Rob chucked it in by hand. I started by feeding 4 balls
with caster and chop worm, Rob went with 2 balls with caster and hemp. By the time I'd finished feeding the little beggar had 6 roach in the net !!! It's an early indication of how the next few hours
are going to go I figured and I was right. Initially we were catching at the same speed and he was keeping about 6 fish ahead of me. After 1.5 hours he was 20 odd ahead of me and I knew at that stage how the next few hours would pan out.

I was right and as the time passed by my attempts at keeping up were useless. I stuck with it as we had agreed to see how the two different tactics compared. I had been feeding with a pole cup for accuracy but that just added to my time not catching so I changed to feeding by hand. I was so far behind at this stage it really made no real difference.  So we'd figured a few things out but we've still things to be sure about. Groundbait colour and the amount needed is next on the list, hopefully we'll get out again next weekend and we'll sort that out then.

Next time Rob gets the dodgy tactics.......

163 of the little beauties, top job

More like it.............

Theres fewer better looking things than a natural venue on a nice calm morning.  Theres probably only one way to improve it and thats to slap a seat box on the edge of it and get at it.

Even with a later than usual start time one half of Team Kavo stayed in bed, so I found myself on the side of this beauty on my own with winter roach once again the target. On what is a very deep venue I decided on fishing the feeder and having a relaxed quiet day. At 25 yards I was getting a count of 17 so a solid 20grm feeder was clipped on and cast 6 times into the lake. Loaded with caster and hemp
and plugged both ends with a mix of Sensas Gros Gardons and Sensas Lake, I was confident.
A size 16 Tubertini 808 was then attached and time to see whats out there. Two red mags to start with
and within minutes a couple of small taps on the 1/2oz tip and it's roach number one. Re cast and it's same again, tap tap and lift, second roach and things are looking promising. It's odd how things go sometimes but after 30 minutes and despite trying different hook baits, shorter hooklength and down to a size 18 hook I'm still on two fish !!! A short wander back to the car for a cuppa and a rethink had me back on the box with my trusty 6m whip in hand. Now their for it I reckoned and as I finished my cuppa I kickstarted the swim with two balls of groundbait laced with caster and hemp. The groundbait was the same, though I added more liquid from the hemp to help bind it so that it would go down better in the 10 feet of water and I darkened it with some black Tracix.
The rig was a Preston 1Grm float with a small bulk half way and 3 droppers to the hooklength, initially this worked well but a bit of a blow got up and I changed up to a 1.5 Grm Preston float.
A 1Grm Olivette half way down and 4 small droppers seemed to be just right and the bites were
now coming thick and fast. It was vintage stuff, cast, feed, strike, swing, unhook, keepnet, clicker and repeat the process. Over the next few hours I did that over and over and ended up with 70 silvers. Mainly small roach, a few perch and some very small skimmers. I missed a few in fairness but thankfully not that many. The feeding was key and as long as I fed a small, very small nugget of groundbait I could almost time the bites. I experimented with loose feeding but it lead to very few bites and was probably bringing fish up off the bottom and scattering them all round the place.
As soon as I went back to the nuggets of groundbait I got the bites back.
Over the course of the day I got chatting to a few lads from Dublin who were pegged to my right,
3 generations of anglers, Son, Dad and Grandad, great to see and as I was catching well I gave the youngest a few casts. Good lad that he was, straight into a few fish and despite it being his first time
swinging he got the hang of it quite quickly. I'd planned to pack up at 15.30 hrs and having reached 50 fish at 14.30 I decided I'd try to get 70, so when the young lad (James) arrived behind me as I bagged number 69 I asked him if he wanted to get number 70 and he duly did.

James' was the one in the middle.......

So ended a great day on what was a new venue for me. It's close enough to home and seems to be
well stocked with  silvers, though they were all small. In the words of a few different bad guys,
I'll be back.

Roach Bashing, not.......

Sunday the 5th saw us up at a spectacularly early time to first head into Dublin to collect Gary and then off up to darkest Cavan for an  FTI AC get together.

Little and Large, ayone remember them

We'd himmed and hawed about going as the weather leading up to it hadn't been ideal. A few really cold days and nights had me doubting whether it would be a productive trip but we bit the bullet and headed off to meet up with our good friends from the club.

It was to have been a days roach bashing and I decided to fish to hand at 6m. Cast / swing, feed,
hit dipping float, swing to hand and repeat the process. Well that was the plan anyway, pity nobody told the roach.

I love my Tubertini Cap

Rob set up the now predictable stick float, he's got it bad. Close in there can be very little tow here and at times it even tows the opposite to the main current. I guess thats why the roach shoal up here
in winter time, big difference in them being there and them feeding though. It wasn't happening for either of us and a wander up the line confirmed it wasn't happening for anyone else either. We scaled down both set ups and had a go in each others swims but that didn't improve things much, if at all.
Rob spent good time with some of the others asking, listening and hopefully learning.
As ever, tips, info, ideas etc were freely given and it's one of the great benefits of being a member
of FTI AC. To be fair it's a great advantage of being in any club.

Here comes the scales............

We weighed in and my 17 fish pushed the scales round to 2lbs !!! Very dissapointing if I'm being honest but the slaggin from peg to peg and the banter between everyone made for a decent day,
despite the poor fishing. After all the gear was packed away and to round off the day Rob was presented with his club award. "Club Angler of the Year 2011"

Davy (Mr Chairman) presents the award to Rob

A really nice touch and an award that means a huge amount, thank you.