As you pull in to the fishery the small pool is right in front of you. Parking behind your peg (part of the lake anyway) was a nice bonus considering my chilled out attitude to the day.
I usually fish this lake with a groundbait and pellet attack, with expanders on the hook. I've had mixed catches of up to around 120lb on here before so felt like I had it pretty sussed after a while. Usually you start by catching roach and rudd, for these to be replaced by skimmers, and finally the carp move in. It always provides an enjoyable day.
With the water level about 12" down on the norm, my first job was finding a peg with enough water in it. I sat initially on one of my favourite pegs without giving the water level a second thought. When I came to plumbing up though I only had two feet of water in front of me! Ideally I wanted to fish at around 6m so that I could feed comfortably by hand and hopefully get in to a proper baggin' routine - a bit like we used to do at Witherington Farm near Salisbury (old favourite). A ball-ache indeed, but shifting my gear a couple of pegs back towards the car and I was sorted with around three feet of water and a couple of tempting margins. I had the same depth everywhere between 3 and 11m so it gave me the chance to feed a few spots if necessary, depending on how things developed. Hopefully though, the 6m line would come alive and I'd trump my previous best on the lake.
Knowing before I even arrived that the squillions of silverfish that fill the lake would potentially be problematic, I came prepared. On matches at Bake Lakes we used to get pestered by skimmers on the pole line. Eventually I found that feeding 8mm pellets rather than 3's, 4's and 6's kept them at bay a little more effectively. I guess it just means there is less bait covering the bottom so the fish don't become such 'grazers'. Anyway, I bought with me some 8mm pellets, a tin of hemp (hopefully a non-fishmeal particle with prove less attractive to the skimmers in here?!) and one bag of groundbait/paste mix which I'd mix on the bank.
Since I've already given the game away in that this did prove a frustrating paste session (although relatively successful - read on) I won't go in to all of the details about what I do or why I do it with this entry. I'm treating this session solely as an educational practise session.
Elastic is the black J-Range Lastix. I've found it perfect for this type of fishing.
Rigs are naturally sturdy, long tipped patterns. For me they include Garbolino and SconeZone patterns. Both of these I under-shot slightly and use the bulk of the paste to bring the float down to the bottom of the bristle. I also like a quite a wet, sloppy-ish paste (despite the image above making those balls look quite dry)! Paste fishing has moved on in various ways over the years, and every angler now has their preferred way of mixing it and a preferred way of fishing it. In truth I think it probably depends a bit on the venue and the individual anglers level of confidence in different methods.
Paste mix today is simply Sensas Crazy Bait Gold, straight out of the bag. I'm probably only mixing up 1/4 of a bag for roughly four hours fishing. The one additive that has stuck with me through all a lot of my paste fishing life is the Cat Meat and Liver Squirts. It's strong stuff and on a warm day like today I have confidence in its oily, fatty goodness!
I've always like to feed quite positively when paste fishing. I know it's not always the way, but on the venues I grew up fishing, dumping a pile of bait and either fishing it out or topping up over the top of it has always worked well for me. At times I know I've been caught out by putting too much in, but that's match fishing! With this being a pleasure session though, there was no harm in trying.
I started by putting the above cup of hemp with a few 8mm pellets and a few nuggets of paste on to the 6m line. Confident I could catch fairly quickly and only here for a bit of fun, I went straight over the top of it in an attempt to see how long it would take for me to start getting a few line bites.
To cut a long story short, pinging 8mm pellets over the top every few minutes I did actually catch the odd carp (averaging about 2.5lb)! Life in general was slow to start; a few liners, the odd bubble. I could tell that something wasn't quite right though. I was getting too many line bites and not enough proper ones. There were obviously fish in the swim, but it just seemed that they wanted to be sitting over the food rather than really getting their heads down. It was hard to tell whether it was just the time of day (we were now in that quiet spell between about 2pm and 4pm) and they just weren't really in the mood, or whether I'd just buggered it up by putting too much bait in.
I'd been feeding the 3m line to my right by hand from the start too, solely with 8mm pellets. My initial look over this line didn't receive a thing, but the second go down there did snag me a couple of fish. Still it was hard going though.
BIG mistake. These small pellets really are what the silver fish in here are attracted to. Having not had such a problem on the hemp line, I couldn't get a ball of paste down through them as they darted around in the upper layers under the pole tip. I did catch a couple of carp on the occasions when the paste made it down through the hordes of rudd, but even when it did, the fish just seemed to be sitting above the feed again with only the odd one rooting around the bottom.
Hmmm......
My usual pellet attack would be working wonders here. At least I would be happier catching the silvers if I was actually fishing for them. There are faster ways to get them than with 1" balls of paste!
Eventually I managed to calm things down a bit. Despite trying another line with no feed at all but the paste on the hook (no fish), I settled in to a more successful pattern. I was back on the 6m line but rather than constantly throwing half a dozen 8mm pellets at the float, I just dumping half pots of mostly hemp with the odd 8mm pellet after every two or three fish, then leaving to settle while trying the margin.
What was interesting was that the silver fish seemed less confident closer to the bank. On the 3m line I was feeding regularly with the 2mm and 4mm pellets I'd fed further out, but there was little or no interest or problems with the silvers. As a result, it wasn't long until I was catching carp consistently here as well!
By alternating between 3 and 6m lines, catching a couple of fish from each before feeding and moving over to the other, I had a better last hour.
I'm rubbish at counting fish, but I think I probably had between 18 and 20 carp by the end of the session. It was definitely an interesting one, and the paste is something I will come back to again soon (on the bank and in more detail on here - I'll wait till I've got the place fully sussed before spending time on it). It wasn't the bagging session I'd hoped for as the carp didn't appear to be in the mood and the silver fish were very frustrating at times. Eventually they moved in on the 6m line as well, leaving me just the 3m option at the end.
Naturally I'll be back. The Alps is a great little place with a lot of variety.
Great blog and good photos!
ReplyDeleteThanks Paul! :-)
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