As I fish so many matches its rare I get the chance to visit
this wonderful lake for a pleasure session, even though it’s only 2 minutes
from my house! If you have had chance to read the previous post, you will know
it’s a beautiful lake covering 7 – 8 acres, which contains a good stocking of
Carp, Bream, Ide, Tench, Roach to name just a few. There are not many lakes
where the pegging space is so generous; you have bags of room between them. The
lake has 2 separately named areas, The Deeps and The Shallows. The Deeps is the
old trout lake area and The Shallows is the old coarse lake.
The peg I have chosen today is situated on the bank
to the car park, which is in the “deeps” area of the lake.
Bait
For bait I have pumped some 4mm expander pellets and cut up
2 tin’s of Plumrose Luncheon meat into 6mm cubes.
The Rigs:
Deep Rig
- Pole - Browning Z12
- Elastic - Yellow Browning Cenex Reflex
- Main Line - 0.14 Browning Hybrid Power
- Hook length - 0.12 Browning Hybrid Power
- Hook - Kamasan B911 F1 size 16
- Float - Tubertini Series Pro 1.5 gram
- Shotting - Olivette bulk and 3 droppers
Shallow Rig
- Pole – Browning Z12
- Elastic – Pink Browning Cenex Reflex
- Main line – 0.14 browning Hybrid Power
- Hook length – 0.12 Browning Hybrid Power
- Hook – Kamasan B911 eyed size 18 (tied with a knotless knot with a band on the hair)
- Float – A Shep Special 4x12 Chianti style @ http://www.carlshepherdsonstittletackle.com
- Shotting- Shirt button style
The session
It’s a baking hot day today, so the early shade on this side
of the lake is pretty welcome. There are plenty of fish up in the water
cruising around. It is for this reason that I have set up 2 rigs. 1 is for on
the bottom and 1 is for shallow, over the top of the bottom rig.
I have plumbed a line at 13 meters; the depths here are
around the 15 feet mark. I am starting the session by cupping in a handful of
meat and expanders, and fish the bottom rig over the top. This gives me the
opportunity to alternate the hook bait to see which works best. I am going to
feed meat over the top with the intent of bringing the fish up in the water.
This can happen quite quickly, especially when it’s hot like it is today!
After a bite less 15 minutes on the bottom rig, I start to
notice signs of fish up in the water. I bait the hair rig by pulling the band
through the meat with a baiting needle, making sure the bend of the hook is
just touching the meat. This is something I like to do as I think it gives good
presentation.
I have set the rig at 18” deep with a small bulk and around
24” line between pole and float so that I can alter the depth as required.
After a frustrating 25 minutes of missing bites I start to alter the rig, firstly by reducing the line between pole and float to 12”, this helps a little
as I manage a couple of decent Ide, but I am still missing loads of bites.
Next
I reduce the rig depth to 12” but this cause bites to reduce, so I change back
to the original 18” depth, but I spread the shot out shirt button style, this
again helps as I connect with a few more bites, resulting in some cracking
Bream and Ide. I am still missing too many bites though, so I put a couple of back
shot on between the pole and the float, my reasoning behind this is to ensure I
keep a tight line or the float sinks. This works a treat, missed bites are now
almost eradicated, and a good net of fish is soon amassed.
I finish the session with a cracking net of Ide and Bream
for around 40 lb, but more importantly having sussed out a better way of
fishing shallow, resulting in more fish.
