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.

What a day,

The recent poor day on Sillan had one some good sides, we had stacks of bait left and were
both dying to get back out to actually catch something. A day on the river was called for so we set off
for The Barrow, with a plan for Rob to fish the pole and I was on the stick. Fishing this way meant we could change over at some stage if we wanted to. We had a look beside the supermarket but between, the cars, the noise and the filth we decided against it and headed for "The Lawn". After getting set up it wasn't long before Rob was in to some quality roach. A 12grm Sensas Flat Float went through the swim quite well and with a size 16 Drennan Silverfish Hook everything appeared to be spot on.
He had an early burst of roach, then the dace took over. An introduction of Groundbait seemed to bring the roach back and he started getting them again.

I was down stream and running a Drennan Stick Float, feeding loose  mags and caster and after 20 odd mins started getting bites, a mix of roach and dace and some great dace to be fair. With the flow going left to right and a strengthening wind going the other way, line control was easy and things were lookng good.

23 fish on the stick

After an hour and a half Rob went to get the breakfast and I jumped on his box for a few put ins on the pole. By now the wind was really making things difficult, hanging on to his pole was just not good and there was a real danger of something getting busted so we decided to pack up and look for somewhere a bit more sheltered.

22 fish on the pole

We had a look at the "Swimming Pool" but that was wide open and too windy so we moved back to where we initially looked at the Supermarket. We decided to leave the pole in the car and just set the float gear up again, the next couple of hours was just cracking. One rod between us, cracking sport.
We were up and running quite quickly, using the same set up from earlier. A couple of run throughs to re check the depth and after a couple of adjustments we were ready.

Robs turn...........

I started and after a few fish we agreed that after each one of us had 5 in the net we'd swop. Quite quickly we had 25 in the net and we set a target off 55 fish which would give us 100 for the day. Loose fed mags and caster seemed to bring dace and like earlier introducing groundbait seemed to bring roach. At about 4.30 and with the light fading we were on 50, 5 more to bag and it was my turn on the rod. We were chatting to a local lad about various swims in the area and as I cast out before I knew what had happened there was line everywhere, a real birds nest. Cut the line in a hurry, Rob pulled the float back in by hand and I re threaded the rod. It's almost dark at this stage I can hardly see what I'm doing but a few minutes later and we're not going home till we have the 100. The last few casts had Team Kavo working together,  from where we were sitting the street lights that illuminated the bridge meant after a small run of the float I couldn't see it in the reflection on the water. Theres always a way round these things and Rob moved 10 yards down the bank where the reflection wasn't an issue. So I cast and he called it, as soon as he said "Strike" I did and 10 minutes later we netted
fish number 100. A fabulous days pleasure fishing came to an end with two happy anglers grinning
from ear to ear. The drive home flew by as we were in flying form, so good that Rob actually stayed awake all the way home, another first.

55 glorious Barrow Roach and Dace

Lovely Jubbly

Why do we do it ?

Over the weekend just gone we had  a session on the feeders on Sillan. Rob had picked up a cracking feeder rodover the Christmas and was dying to try it out. A Drennan Stillwater 11/12.5ft specifically for targeting roach and skimmers. We set up initially on the first couple of swims on the match stretch and got to it quite quickly. After some recent talk over the net regarding Wagglers I elected to fish a fixed one at about 20 yards into about 7 foot of water. After a couple of biteless hours it was obvious it wasn't going to happen for us so we packed up.
On the way back to the car we decided to have a bit of time off the Jetty with just the feeder gear and reckoned if we had nothing after 30 mins or so we'd call it a day. You guessed it we had nothing.
I gt a chance to try out Robs new Rod and it really is a lovely bit of kit. I gave it an hour and although I was enjoying the rod, with not so much as a sucked maggot we called it a day and headed for home.

A dissapointing few hours reminded us to pay more attention to conditions and local knowledge and though we assured ourselves that we would, yeah right..................

It's not always about catching, beautiful....

Hands Up

Tarts !!!!

After last weeks try at stick float fishing we were both keen to give it another try. So after a few PM's on fishingtalkireland.com and a very high river we decided on a new venue for us, B'town.
I had it in my head that I wanted to fish a feeder on the river, Rob was going all out on the stick.
The poles were left at home, it was going to be a rods only day, or so we thought.
Our good friend and all round nut job Gary Kearney joined us for the day.
Arrived at 08.00 and after a call to check where we should be, we initially set up at the end of the canalised stretch just before the lock and opposite a weir. It's quite wide so I decided to stick with my plan of fishing the feeder and went about getting set up. Rob and Gary were both fishing floats, Rob on a Drennan Stick Float and Gary on just about every different float you can imagine.

Rob was off and running and had a good roach quite quickly, I then had a couple on the feeder and all's looking promising. Almost out of nowhere theres a wind blowing back up the canal and the two lads on the float can't get anything like decent presentation. A hard flow right to left and a hard wind left to right, all went very quiet. We had a quick chat and moved back up the canal towards the town.
A few hundred yards and it's all very different, nice and sheltered with a constant, surprisingly fast tow.

All nice and comfy

I had chucked a 7Mtr whip in the car and I decided to set that up rather than the feeder. This led me to another small prob in that I had only brought relatively light rigs with me, 1.5grm was just way off the mark for what was needed but I figured I'd give it a go. A 1grm Olivette and 4 droppers were more often than not bunched against the hooklength knot in an attempt to get the hook down. It worked to some degree in so far as the fish counter said 33 when we packed up. The two lads weren't geting a lot but stuck at it, or went to the shop or "had a go" on my box.

Baggin !!!!

I was definitely getting more bites the more I fed, so each run through was accompanied by at least two pults of either mags or hemp. Dace, dace and more dace, lots of missed bites and lots of

Grrrrrrs and Aaggghhhhhhs but on what was a very pleasant day weatherwise, I wouldnt have been anywhere else.

Robs turn !!!!

So, a pleasant enough day doing what we love but just not doing it very well. At least we know whats required next time and there will be a next time.

I can hear my old Headmaster, "could do better"

Old dog, new tricks.................

Last week saw us back around The Barrow at our usual spots, armed and ready for a go on one of the canal stretches, we were quickly in a spot of bother. Our first choice was the same spot as my last blog
and after the three of us had nothing after an hour or so a move was on the cards.

I had a quick look at a similar venue but decided against it, as we had nothing like enough bait for three of us to fish it. Stephen headed for home, which might have been the right idea and as we packed up we were glad we did. I've seen some things in my swim over the years but ..............

Myself and Rob had bumped into Gavin (the Ireland junior team manager) and Damien
earlier that morning and we knew they were fishing the main river in the town so we decided to pack up and go see how they did it.
Up to the town and we found them no problem, all on the pole and using 20grm Cralusso floats !!!!
Not being equipped with anything of that size we had a chat for a while and picked up a few pointers.
Now it's difficult to watch others and not have a go so back to the car out with the float rod and on with a stick float. The biggest I had actually have, is a few Drennan Big Sticks at 2.25grm.
I was quite sure that it wasn't really heavy enough but we said we'd give it an hour, and we did.

It took us a while to get things sorted but we did
eventually and got into a few roach. It took quite a few runs through the swim to figure the best
shotting pattern and position but we got something right and started getting a few bites.

The lads fishing pole tactics were down to our right and catching a few at 13mtrs so we kept at about that distance ourselves. Regular loose feeding of mags and or hemp brought a few fish one after the other and we thought we had it cracked. You'd think we'd know by know !!!

It had taken us about 30 mins to start getting bites, then we had 4 or 5 one after the other, then it more or less died on us. We kept making adjustments and winkled out the odd fish but for whatever reason it wasn't really happening.  Despite the odd shower and a biting cold wind we had really enjoyed
our first real attempt at stick float fishing on a "proper" river. It's safe to say we'll have another
go or two at that, nice.