Going for gold.

The sun had been blazing all weekend so Sunday morning I headed out early for a morning chasing crucians at Snitterfield reservoir. I hadn't fished here since last Autumn, so when I arrived and was met with this sight I thought it looked perfect, and felt my chance of getting into a few were high.

crucian heaven!

I set up in a peg in the shallower weedy end of the lake and put up a fourteen foot float rod with light pole float to fish close against the weeds. The tip on the float never even settled before it shot off and a small Rudd came flipping to hand. This went on constantly for three hours as a constant stream of Roach, Rudd, perch, Hybrids and bream took the bait.

Early on I had two good crucians roll over my baited area both estimated at one to two pounds. But no matter how many different baits or rig changes I made I never got a sniff from one. Both the roach and bream seemed to get bigger as the morning went on, the best roach being around a pound and bream of three pounds. After I had been feeding maggots quite heavily to try and feed of the insatiable hoard of Rudd I noticed some big roach coming up high in the water and intercepting them as they sank. Using a slow sinking set up I bagged some nice fish up to 14oz.

By 10am the open concrete bank of this Warwickshire lake was beginning to feel very much Mediterranean

and by 12noon I was done. Pulling the net from the water and feeling resistance I felt sure I had managed a challenge point somewhere amongst this catch but sadly I was to be disappointed as the bleeding point amongst the twenty pound bag of fish was the Rudd which I had already got earlier in the week.

A couple of bramas

As an angler more inclined towards specimen fishing I often find myself making the decision to wait for one or two larger fish rather than actively trying to catch numbers of smaller fish. So spending a session doing the exact opposite from my norm at first felt a little alien but after a while I really got back into it and began to enjoy myself. 

I was chuffed with the end result of around twenty pounds spread over five species and was also impressed that after so many years ignoring these fish I could find so much enjoyment in spending a morning catching them. Here in lies part of the enjoyment of being part of the challenge for me, It has made me fish for species of fish using techniques I have not done for ages and I am finding very refreshing to revisit some of these things I have long ignored.  

The end result a 20lb mixed bag