Ryton's on the change.

I read somewhere once that lakes go through cycles in relation to the dominant species within. It said that lakes are either dominated by bream or tench and that even if both are present it is normally a case that there will be one species that is dominant with the other only present in small numbers. At the time of reading this I never thought that much about it, but now thinking back and applying this theory to some of the lakes I fish, it makes sense. My old adversary Coombe pool was in the past renowned for being a bream Mecca, and although there is still a giant shoal of bream swimming round in it, there is no doubt that the bream numbers are dropping and more tench seem to be showing up. Napton reservoir in all its bleak resplendence is predominantly a tench water with apparently a handful of big bream. Personally I think the dominance of a species in an environment is simply down to environmental factors and who they benefit, and my belief was further reinforced when the other week I returned to a favourite lake of mine, Ryton pool. Ryton has changed a lot since I began fishing years ago. I remember the first year I fished it when the water was gin clear and the weed grew so much that by midsummer I reckon with a spot of luck and light feet you could have run across the top of it. Others years after that there was differing amounts of weeds and clarity but one thing remained the same; tench were what you caught and bream were just rumors. Fast forward ten or so years and I once again stared into the water exactly where I did when I first came to this lake and one difference was that I quite simply could not see the bottom as I could on that first visit. Over the years this sandpit lake has become more and more coloured during the warmer months and possibly as a result things might be changing.

When I arrived on my first session a while ago the water was coloured but the lake looked pretty much as it had when I last walked away four years ago. The few stages still dotted the woodland bank, people were still feeding the water fowl copious amounts of food from the duck feeding station and the long concrete road bank was still infested with rats all the way down to the very last swim on the side of the road point where I decided to fish.

Much to my amusement I was lectured quite arrogantly by a pair of young carp anglers after I asked how it was fishing. The pair of Noddys must have thought they were auditioning for a role on Thinking Tackle the way they were talking. Everything was casting out tight to this or using that and honestly, they sounded a proper pair of idiots. Worst of all was that I reckon when I first started fishing Ryton one of them might not have been that long out of nappies.

The faces sitting around the pool may have changed since back in the day, but the fishing it seemed hadn't. After pitching up on the end of the concrete I began fishing exactly as I used to, by casting method feeders at range. This tactic always worked well here as the disturbance caused by putting down a bed of bait seemed to put the fish off too long to be of benefit. By roaming the feeders round I always seemed to pick up a fair few fish, then once an area came to life repeated casting usually found more fish.

It didn't take much more than fifteen minutes for the line I had cast onto the plateau in front of the island to scream off. Much to my annoyance this fish snapped the five pound hook link I was using and straight away two new heavier links were tied and cast out baited with 10mm boilies, which proved to be the down fall of a slew of nice tench.

The best of the session was not much over four pounds but still I was very happy to see that the tench were still about in Ryton. Much to my amusement the arrogant young carpers down the bank were being driven crazy by my buzzers going off all afternoon and I wasn't helping the situation by increasing the volume with every fish to make sure they heard the shrill tones. They might not have been carp I was catching, but every time a buzzer sounded I could see their little faces looking over to see what I was reeling in.

What came along next though would herald a change which I think could well be the end of the tenchs domination of Ryton pool. After a single bleep the bobbin dropped back and for Ryton that's unusual. Every tench you catch generally pulls the bobbin up be it gently or violently and when I lifted into the fish I was met with a dead weight. In all the years previously fished on this pool I have caught two bream. The first was a random four pound silver thing and the other was an old bugger that was knobbly, black and blind in both eyes. What rolled into my net was young, a few pounds and just turning from skimmer too bream.

The tench were gone after this fish and no matter where I moved my feeders they seemed to be found by another little bream. Four more homed in on my ground bait topped method feeders and sent my bobbins back as they moved off with the baits.

Where these young bream had come from was a mystery, everyone who fished this pool knows of the shoal of big old bream which rarely got caught and everyone was of the opinion that they were well past breeding age. Turns out that might not be the case and that possibly some bream Viagra might have found its way into Ryton about three years ago from the look of these healthy young buggers.

A few days later I went back to have a second crack at Ryton under the belief that these bream might have just been a freak occurrence, but exactly the same thing happened. Two tench were landed not long after arriving...

Then the rest of the session was dominated by the veracious horde of young bream which quite literally followed my feeders back to my own bank after I began fishing at range and ultimately ended up margin fishing in an attempt to avoid them. 

It is with disappointment in my heart that I say I reckon Ryton is on the change. Yes the tench are still present, but undoubtedly after a couple of sessions it is obvious that there is a hell of a lot of these 2-4lb bream present at this time. Looking at them they look really young and strong, they almost seem pre programmed to eat boilies, which is no suprise as loads get fed into this water. It's a sad time for the tench fishing at Ryton which I used to love so much, as these bream will ultimately have a huge effect on the water and probably push the tench out over time. Although there could be a silver lining to this change! If they can avoid the predators and keep growing as they seem to have, maybe in a few years Ryton might be filled with really big bream which could make for some interesting fishing in the future.

Everything except the terrapin.

I lay warm and curled up in the quilt next to JB and listened to the wind driving the rain into the window beyond the foot of our bed. One of the trio of alarms it takes for me to get up had already gone off and woken me. Waiting for the following two I kept peeping over the edge of the quilt in a vain hope that the rain would miraculously stop now I was awake but it never did. All too soon the two chaser alarms came and went and still I lay there ruminating on my reason for getting up. I must have been mad thinking I would go out fishing in this weather. At this point I must say I am by no means a fair weather fisherman, but I am a fisherman who hates getting wet before I've even started. As long as I can get entrenched in a moment of dry I am happy.

My only opportunity to get out this weekend had already morphed form a crucian session to a tench fishing session as the wind and rain hardly seemed conducive to fishing delicate float rigs and certainly was not the classical crucian conditions I wanted. Still laying bed I was torn between the dry warmth of my current position or damp morning and maybe a cold fish. It was a memory which set me right though! Somewhere from the back of my mind I conjured the recollection of a session on the same water on a very similar day. That day I was the only one who ventured to that lake and it really paid off. I remembered even under the brolly I got wet the rain was driving so bad, but the pay off was worth it as I caught loads of really big old tench. After psyching myself up I quietly whispered out 'who dares wins' so as not to rouse JB and dived out of bed.

Two weetabix and a stop at the shop later I was sitting in the car waiting for the rain to momentarily stop so as I could make a break for and run the deserted path to the vacant area I wanted to fish. Eventually and conveniently the rain stopped and I made my move.

All set up and ready to go the previous visit here to Ryton pool came back to mind. So I opted to fish one rod short over a few loose balls of bait and fish the second as a prospecting rod at range out in front of the island where the wind was battering into. It was a slow start in truth but I was confident I was in the right area and that bites would soon enough come.

Even though the small silver fish were obviously finding my baits it took two hours for the first run to arrive. I half wondered if it was the tow of the water that was lifting my bobbin on my prospect rod at first. But after letting it rise slowly right into the buzzer the line carried on moving and began taking from the reel very slowly. Low and behold it was a fish and not a bad one either! Being as it was my best tench of the year so far I thought a nice tench selfie was in order and that's when I realised that I had neglected to put my camera in my bag for the first time in years! So for this session I was going to have to rely on my ageing phones camera.

The pictures didn't actually come out half as bad as I thought they might. But I've enough experience of sods law to tell me that today I would probably regret not having my proper camera to hand...and only too soon that was confirmed.

Even with the wind trying it's best to hamper my cast I managed to deposit the feeder back within reasonable proximity to the previous successful cast and it worked a treat within fifteen minutes the alarm bleeped into life and a second tench was on and this signalled a run of six more fish of around three to five pounds and culminated in a broad six plus female.

The close in line quite literally lay dormant as all the action seemed to be coming on this occasion from literally the centre of the lake. That was until I had a very stuttering take again on the long line. I had only just picked up the rod and bent into a solid fish when the inside line whizzed off. I was in half a mind to try and pick up the second run, but the fish I had on seemed to be developing into something a little more serious. The second run luckily became a dropped run which was terribly convenient as the fish I was playing was not playing ball. I really wanted it to be a massive tench but I knew it wasn't one in reality. A few people have asked me why I take such a large net tench fishing on Ryton in the past. So here is my answer... 

At nearly sixteen pounds this classical Ryton football would have never fitted into some the nets I see people using when tench fishing on this pool. My right hand is actually hiding how much this fishes gut hung down. Other than the slight nick in its dorsal fin it was absolutely mint top to bottom and thank god I had no one fishing to the right of me as the little bugger kited right into the bank and would have wrought havoc if anyone would have been fishing there.

Really after catching a mess of tench and that carp I was thinking I should be making tracks as I was already a bit overdue leaving. But I couldn't help chancing one last cast into that over productive area and thank old Isaac I did. I had just nipped down the bank to speak to another angler quickly when my alarm receiver bleeped once. At hearing that single bleep I made my way back to the rods. Nothing happened for a while but I still hovered, the thinking it would go off any moment. Slowly the bobbin rose then dropped back six inches sending the alarm in spasm. Thinking it was a drop back I struck and felt some solid resistance. I was waiting for it to steam off as I suspected a second carp had found my bait, but it just slowly started to come closer with pressure. My next thought was it might have been a decent tench, but the tench normally bang their heads a lot in Ryton. My next theory of what I had hooked was a bit out there! There have been a couple of terrapins caught by anglers in this pool over the years and on was even quite a large one as well. As my quarry got closer I was really getting quite perplexed by its identity and wouldn't of been surprised if a snapping mouth with my hook in it appeared out of the water.

I know it's a bit of a Loch Ness monster type photo. But this is one of the Ryton terrapins I took a few years ago.

What actually surfaced was just as surprising as a terrapin... It was a bream! and a good one at that. Now it might sound weird to be shocked at the presence of bream in anywhere, but at the tench dominated Ryton big bream are like hens teeth. According to legend a small shoal of less than ten big old bream have been in this pool for donkeys years and they very rarely get caught, hence my shock.

This one certainly fitted the bill. It was practically blind in both eyes through age and scales that stood as tall as they were wide and long. Even being as obviously old as it was it was in relatively good condition. Back in its prime I am sure this fish would have weighed in as a double. One thing that I did notice was that unlike all the bream I caught last week, it showed no signs of spawning tubercles if it was a male and was carrying no spawn if it was a female. So can only assume it was well past breeding age.

I have to say I was really honoured to catch such a Ryton rarity and it seemed a perfect way to finish a great session.

I think it is worth mentioning that on previous visits to Ryton, I had bumped off a worrying amount of the fish I hooked. After examining the rig on each occasion I had found that the hair rigged fake plastic corn bait I had used was folded round into the bend of the hook. Although it wasn't masking the hook in any way I fear it being twisted into the gape of the hook may have interfered with the hook penetrating or may of helped the hook pivot out of its hold. So I made a tiny and simple modification to my rig by way of adding a small section of silicone tubing that was threaded onto the hook link and then hook before tying the knot-less knot. I feel this certainly helped towards my success on this occasion as not one single fish came adrift during the fight and every hook hold was either in the bottom lip or corner of the mouth.

The lake #20 Hola tenca

I have been on holiday for a week and when I say holiday I don't mean I was sunning myself on some Mediterranean beach. Though it could be said I was living and working like a Spaniard! With the temperatures knocking close on thirty degrees I have spent my time slaving early mornings and late evenings building a new patio, whilst in between taking siestas away from the midday sun. Somehow I have managed to avoid sun stroke and now have an beautiful new bit of stone sun deck that catches the early morning heat a treat but is perfectly shady come the evening.

Even with labouring to be done I still managed to find time to squeeze in a few fishing trips here and there. Though in all honesty they have been much of a muchness in this savage heatwave. Thrice I visited the Avon in search of a barbel. On the first two attempts I got the distinct feeling I was wasting my time. On one of those sessions the eels, of which I am seeking on another venue but not the river, were so ravenous that anything I cast into the river seemed to attract them. Meat, pellets, boilies were all devoured by them and although one of the many usurpers was a respectable two pounds plus, they inevitably ruined my session. The next time it was bream who would not leave my baits alone and no matter how big the baits were they in the end managed to engorge my bait and hang themselves up.

My best chance I think came when I paid a visit to the BAA stretch of the Avon at wasperton. After arriving and finding the pegs I fancied occupied I opted to fish a large run of willows on the opposite bank around two thirds the way up the stretch. With no one insight I fished right at the top of the trees in a slow but covered swim and was able to tuck my bait under the cover and trickle in bait without fear of having anyone else drop below me. 

It was one of those nights when the conditions felt very right. With the sun gone the air was cooling, and not long before dark crept close my rod tip nodded a few times indicating possible interest. As I crouched excitedly behind my rod waiting for a bite was sure was about to come I caught a rolling thumping sound which seemed to be getting louder. They appeared fast a flash dashing down the field behind the trees and straight towards the willows I was fishing. That old saying of tread quietly meant nothing to this excited string of horses and as they thundered past my rod tip arched over bouncing back and forth as unseen fish scarped out of the swim. 

All that was left after they passed was what looked like a dozy old Irish cob scratching its arse on a tree, whilst I sat agog at what had just happened. By waiting till well into dark I did scratch a couple of tiny chub which came back into my swim as the dust settled.

Though I considered other outings the only firm plan I had made was to do the night at Coombe again at the start of the weekend. Eels once again my target species I trudged my kit around to the early pegs on the Lindley bank. It's not a long way, but it ain't an easy way either! Even with a well mown path the general unevenness of the ground topples even the best stacked barrow. Hence I carried my kit in two trips.

After a fruitless previous visit on a different part of the lake, which in hindsight I think may have been a little featureless, I set up in a the more feature filled narrow section of the lake hoping it might be a little more conducive to eel fishing. Just down the bank was an excited carp angler who upon arriving had found a large group of basking carp in residence and who informed me the area was alive with fish of all species. This seemed just right to me a duly I set up slowly aiming to cast out an hour before dark.

It turned out to be another duff night of eel fishing although I have to say it was by no means quiet. Having made the decision to only fish worms I soon discovered much to my annoyance that the large numbers of fish out in front of me were all determined to eat my bait, no matter how small they were or how big my baits were. From the moment I cast out till the time they had pecked my worms to bits my bite alarms constantly bleeped. Fishing baits off the bottom made no difference and by two in the morning I had been casting repeatedly all night and all I had to show for my efforts was a single shocked bream.

With wanting to catch no more than a forty winks, I in the end gave up and left them to the worms until the buzzers fell silent. After awaking naturally around six I decided to recast and let the rods fish until I was packed up ready for home. Once again the buzzers began and disheartened I began to strike camp. But! Just as I had my head in the shelter folding up my bed my left hand rod sounded a slow but constant take. Its always the way it is just as your about to leave something takes an interest.

I don't think I could believe my eyes when the small but determined fish surfaced out past the reeds. It was another Coombe carp. Anyone who does not know this lake will think me a little mental for getting excited by such a small carp. But quite truthfully I have heard of carp anglers fishing for years and never catching one and here I was with my second albeit a tiddler.

As I travelled the short distance home the presence of all those fish kept coming back into my head. On the session I had just fish they were no more than an annoyance. But if I was to return with lighter set-ups and if they were still in residence, maybe I could make a little hay whilst the sun shone. It is not that often that you find this water coloured up and with fish willing to feed with such gay abandon in day light hours. So I decided to return to the area within twenty fours hours with a good nights sleep in between.

The day between the two sessions bought to light an uncomfortable truth I hadn't realised! Not being a massive fan of mosquito repellent I try and avoid using it where ever possible and instead rely on mosquito nets and staying well covered where possible. I had as far as I was concerned been very diligent on this occasion. Turned out I hadn't been so careful as I first thought... No less than twenty seven red lumps arose all over my body. My left hand which must have been uncovered for some time well led the way with eleven bites all in a row. Some horrid critter had even bitten me through my trousers which I didn't think was even possible. But far the worst of all was a single bite just under my left eye brow which I suspected might be troublesome and was, as you will see later.

Sunday morning I returned and luckily no one had moved into the area. Maybe the news a carp had been caught hadn't got around as normally one whiff of a carp coming out and the carp lads are running for the area. I even got back onto the exact spot and even dropped a bait onto the same clear patch I had found in the weed a day ago.  

Not wanting to over do it I baited one long and one short spot lightly and plopped a method feeder on each. Initially I fished popped up corn on both rods but from the general liners and nudges on the feeder I was getting I soon switched over to bottom baits. Fish were topping all over the area and soon enough the bream turned up and I landed three well conditioned fish up to seven pounds. The last of which I did a self take of. It was after I had recast and went back to have a quick look a the photo that I realised my left eye was more than little swollen.

After seeing that picture I suddenly became aware that my eye was well on the way to closing up with the swelling and maybe I might need to seek some attention before it got much worse. That was until I had a screaming run on my inside line. That run came to nothing but that combined with a tench rolling over the fresh cast bait confirmed I would take my chances and stick it out for a little while longer.

There was certainly tench around and the were certainly driving me crazy fizzing all over my baits whilst not taking a single one. Desperately trying to garner a hook up I went through the entire choice of baits available to me until I finally switched to the last few remaining lob worms I had from my ill fated eel session just passed.

Whole or split worms got interest but never produced. It wasn't until I cut a worm into small sections and threaded it onto a hair rig that I cracked the problem. It was only skimmers that fell foul of this rouse first but just after I decided it was my last cast three different tench fizzes surfaced all at once and I held off leaving...

The bite was one of the worst I have ever had jingling the bobbin up and down a few times and when I struck it felt like a skimmer had once again got hooked up. Half way back, which wasn't far at all the fish increased power tenfold causing me to quickly loosen my drag. A big swirl on the surface changed my mind on the culprit and I then suspected a small tench. It did a pretty spectacular run at the reeds next to my swim then turned and swan straight at my already submerged net. The fight had only been seconds and suddenly it was over the net so I lifted quickly shocked at what had just eased over the cord.

"eeeh!" those were my exact words as I looked into the net. I wasn't long but it was like a breeze block across the shoulders and when I lifted the net it was satisfyingly heavy. Then on the mat it was so deep and perfect I could hardly believe my eyes or eye for that matter. There has been reports of some big tench caught at Coombe this year and I saw a few swimming around the season just passed but this looked huge. Then when the scales stopped flickering I was really pleased. A new PB tench of 8.2lb and the fact that it came from this rock hard water and it was so perfect made it so much better.

I never cast out again after that as even though the fish looked amazing in the photo my eye seemed worse. So after packing up and yomping back to the car I headed off to spend the rest of the afternoon at the walk in centre waiting to see a quack to get to treatment for my eye.

The lake #11 A reel test ends in a double.

Over a year ago found myself in the market for a new pair of bait runner type reels. After weighing up the options of the available on the market in my price range I opted to purchase a pair of Korum Kxi 60 freespin reels which really looked the part.

In the time that has passed since accruing these I have used them in just about every situation and weather imaginable, from Spring tench fishing on large gravel pits, right through quiver tipping for Zander on the Warwickshire Avon in Autumn, and in all situations they have performed admirably. 

It was not until my early Spring campaign of this year that small foible developed in one of the reels. Very occasionally the free spool became a little temperamental at the very lightest setting. Although intermittent it became a little worrying that sooner or later it might let me down just at the wrong moment. Then more recently the second one also started to show signs of going down the same route. At first I pondered contacting the retailer. But when I ran the scenario through in my head 'I bought a pair of these reels well over a year ago. I've hammered them in every weather come rain or shine and now I think there is something wrong with them' I got the distinct impression that how they would reply would start in a laugh and end in an expletive. So rather than be made a fool off I instead contacted the manufacturer via their website and explained my situation.

Their response was nothing less than amazing considering I was just some bloke who had emailed them via their website. Straight away they asked me to send them back to their service department where they would check them over and repair them, no questions asked. Well a week after returning them I received a parcel I assumed would contain my freshly serviced Kxi's. 

But what was in the box was not my serviced reels but.... A brand new pair!!!!

Not only did they supply me with the new reels but they considerately returned my spools from the old set. Meaning I now have four aluminium spools per reel. To add to that they even chucked in a few goodies including a fetching green baseball cap that I will certainly be sporting for the rest of the Summer.

I have to say that considering the reasonable price I initially paid for these reels, Korum's response has been truly amazing and has left me in no doubt that they actually care about how their products are perceived and whether the anglers that use them are satisfied with there products. So all I can say is thank you very much everyone at Korum. Job well done. 

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Having a newly spooled pair of brand new reels seemed the perfect excuse to hit the lake for a night session  and test them out. So after attaching them lovingly to my Avon rods and setting up the rigs with probably more than due diligence, I headed off to make camp on the shores of the lake.

With the entire night at my disposal there was no way I was going to hold back, it being Summer and all. With no doubt in my mind that the lakes residents would get onto the feed I mixed up a smorgasbord in two large buckets. 4k of green crumb, 2k pellets, 3 tins of sweet corn, 2 pints of hemp, 2k stewed pigeon mix and a few choice flavours gave me around 12 kilos of bait once it was all damped down and ready to be balled in.

A quick lead around found a large clear patch in the weed an easy cast out in an area the seem to be residing in at the moment. Then with a marker float bobbing around central to the patch I fired out ball after ball all over the area. Even dropping them in on a high arc to try and get maximum impact on entry so as they never made it to the bottom whole. As one last cherry on top of the cake I finished off by scattering half a kilo of 10mm Boilies loosely over the baited area to try and get the fish looking for those bigger tasty morsels.

With lines marked and rigs cast out I settled down in my shelter thinking that after all that racket the swim would take a long time to repopulate and this would give me a good four or five hours of dozing before any action occurred. It did take sometime for the fish to venture back in. But no where near as long as I have seen before on the lake and I had not go so much as one wink of kip before it happened. Once the light faded my it was like a switch flicked and the frenzy began.

I was straight into a good size fish on my first bite and that one hadn't even crossed the rim of my landing net before another bobbin began to rise and fall slowly indicating a second fish. The first fish looked huge in the bottom of the net but I never had chance to do anything with it. So I left it in the edge whilst I attended to the second rod. Now with two bream in the bottom of my net I did for a moment consider going for a brace shot. But the second fish literally half the size of the first so I opted to just release it straight away so I did not have to worry about it whilst I weighed the bigger one.

After weighing the fish at a little over 9lb I attempted to get a photo. This turned out to be a little hard as you can see from the state of the photo as my third rod, which I should just say was on a smaller separate spot just down the edge, started to bleep as I was trying to take it. This again turned out to be a smaller 4-5lb fish and after releasing both fish I turned round to see the carnage that was my spot. Three rods all out the water, nets mats and me all caked in bream slime and this was only the beginning.

For the next five hours I worked feverishly to try and keep rods in the water. I do not think at any one point I actually managed to have all three rods in the water at one time. As they just rattled off one after another time and time again. Every time I looked into the bait bucket my bait seemed to dwindling more and more the feeders were going out so fast.

I do not know how many fish I had landed but by two in the morning I was in a real state. My casts were getting less accurate and I repeatedly forgot to clip up. Fatigue was getting the better of me and quite frankly the fish seemed to be getting smaller as the night wore on. It was hard, but I had to make the decision to pull my rods out the water just so as I could get some sleep. It is not an easy thing to do, to stop fishing even though this was one of those time when they can't get enough of it. But I had to do it before I did something really stupid, like standing on a rod or something in my totally dazed state.

I can't even remember throwing off my top or crawling in my sleeping bag. But somehow I did manage to remember to set my alarm to go off at five so I could recast and hopefully fish whilst dozing in the morning.

It is surprising how refreshing only a few hours of sleep can be. My eyes pinged open instantly the moment the sound of my alarm began to build and got straight on with business of getting the rods back out. All three hit there spots first time and I got the feeling the fish were still around as I felt two liners as I set the bobbins.

The fishing was a little less frantic in the light. Which enabled me to sleep for probably thirty minutes between bites. The first takers were pretty average for the lake, falling into the 4-7lb bracket but a couple of naps in a very slight bite yielded a very solid resistance. We all know bream fight like wet sacks but this sack felt like it still had spuds inside. Compared to a lot of the previous fish I took it very easy on this one as it wallowed in. Just of the net I saw a pretty big tail, then as it rolled over the cord it looked big.

I have now caught so many bream from the lake that I have seen probably every possible different shape on one fish or another. Long ones, short ones, thick ones ,and thin ones. But this one had all the positive attributes it needed. Massive humped back, deep pigeon chest and although not a super long fish it was defiantly  wide.

The scales confirmed my hopes. At last a double from the lake. Though only just at 10.2lb!

Weirdly that was pretty much it as the bites went and the first and last fish I caught were the biggest of the whole session and interestingly younger looking fish than a lot of the average ones.

I have racked my brain to try and figure out how many fish I landed through the night. But the best I have come up with was that I lost count somewhere between fifteen and twenty. But I now I landed lots more of all shapes and sizes. A conservative guess may be around twenty five fish through the night. Add to that the confirmed six in the morning. Using some very rough sums and average weights plus the two definite weights has me thinking the total weight could well have been anywhere between a hundred and fifty to two hundred pounds. Though I could never confirm the exact weight I certainly had a few hundreds pounds worth of bream slime caked on my kit which I had to try and clean off.

Oh, and as for the new reels, they were faultless!

The lake #9 Short sessions. Am I getting it

The matter of short sessions on the lake has for me been a pragmatic one, with my initial angles being not particularly productive, and I can now in hindsight see how poorly aimed they may of been. Big quantities of noisily deposited bait needed long periods of time for the fish that know it's there to come back in on it. Paradoxically smaller more precise deposits seemed too little to attract any interest. Or so I thought! Whilst on my last visit lift float fishing amongst the weeds in the edge of the lake, I watched a shoal of five tench both small and large, move around my swim through the clear water. The first thing that struck me was how five fish could actively move around my line which cut diagonally through the water and not register there presence on my float at all; and secondly - and far more interesting - was their behaviour. Not at one point did they actually get their heads down hard on the bait, even though they were obviously aware of it being there as it seemed to hold some attraction for them.

I watched in sheer wonder as they picked up odd offering here and there.  I racked my brain to fathom this feeding out. Now before I throw out any bait I always first plop either a ball or a handful into the edge of any water I am fishing just to see what how it goes down, how it looks on the bottom and what happens to it over time. Referring back to my earlier deposit only a foot from the edge I noticed something I had not clocked before. The tomato sized ball I had dropped in had, after a few hours, broken down fully into a small carpet as I expected, but in doing so had left a three inch deep crater lined with bait in the silk weed that covers the bed of the lake.

This was a epiphany, and after trying my rig in the same area I realised that the six inches from my hook to the heavy pinning down weight was in fact nowhere near long enough, and when the weight landed in the weed the bait was pulled into the silk weed or to within a very short distance of my mainline. On this occasion two modifications to my rig helped me wheedle out a fish. The the length from hook to weight was lengthened to ten inches and I also changed my normal shot to a blob of tungsten putty which I flattened to help it stay on top of the weed. Both worked well in the edge.

Away from the lake I applied this theory, plus the way those tench fed, to my method rigs and concluded that unless my rigs landed in a clear patch it was highly unlikely, given the trajectory of my entering rig, that my bait would end up visible at all, and given the browsing nature of the tench at least maybe if they weren't rooting around hard they were never going to find my hook bait.

So I made up two new rigs which employed longer eight inch green mono hook links with a highly buoyant bait on the hook, which should be able to find its way above any silk weed and float above the attractive ball of free bait just above.

I couldn't wait to try this new theory out and short evening session seemed the perfect scenario to do so. Being out on summer nights is one of the true pleasures of fishing. The mosquitoes that swarm around the lake are not. Just setting up I could feel their beady little eyes staring at me as they pondered which part of me to stab with their proboscis.

Eventually after casting both rods out I sat back nestled between two reed beds to settle down with fresh bottle of insect replant. Upon spraying onto my face the smell hit me like a blast from the past, evoking the memory of my folks going out for the night and the smell of mum's perfume as she kissed me good bye at the door. As nice of a memory as that was, smelling like the perfume my mother wore in the late eighties is not that nice for a thirty five year old man who has a bank side reputation to uphold. To make it worse I still got bitten anyway!

The floral sent emanating from the reed bed did not deter the fish either, and soon enough a run bleeped into life as a respectable old looking bream picked up my bait.

As I was not putting any amount of bait out I regularly recast the rods into different areas in the hope of trying to land on or at least close to some fish to maximise my chances of capture. Only moments after repositioning both rods, another one was away; this fish dithered not and the bobbin slammed into the alarm ferociously. Not only do tench and bream bite differently, but they fight in very different ways. The bream just try to resist being pulled in by turning sideways, whereas the tench make massive kiting runs, keeping low right until they are under the rod tip. This was certainly a tench. Sure enough the round dorsal fin broke the surface just before the net was slipped under it.

Sadly after this fish the skies turned very black and the summer rain hammered onto the surface of the lake, seemingly ending the session instantly. I have seen little evidence that the tench feed that well once the light has gone, and considering their proclivity towards just browsing I wonder if they favour sight feeding over sniffing out food.

Though two fish a theory does not confirm, it does seem to have made a marked difference to the fortunes of my short sessions so far and is something I will stick with until my now lake obsessed brain thinks of something else as I continue trying to fathom those murky depths.

The Lake #3 Patiently waiting.

The water that makes the lake is clear, very clear. Add to that the fish are wise to our tricks and it can make a rather unsavoury daytime outlook for the dedicated few who sit sentry on it's banks. Certain inhabitants can be incited on cloudy days, but most seem dormant till night fall. This is why evening and night becomes   the focus of my attentions.

Upon arrival the sky was blue and as always, when hiking some distance, the sun beat down upon me as I laboured to the lakes edge. However just as I arrived, foreboding black clouds drifted towards me. Shelter became my only concern, with casting a distant intention; spending the entire night damp in the humid mozzie filled air that shrouds the lake does not appeal. Camp struck, the time had come for me to prepare traps and execute plans, as after all I was here not to camp but to fish.

I have grown to quite enjoy using a marker set up the last few years. Unlike some fastidious anglers I have watched diligently making detailed maps of the water in pencil, noting down the topography of the bed, I prefer to just feel around whilst trying to imagine what the underwater scene looks like. Major features and their locations are committed to memory and once I find something I fancy, a few repeat casts just confirms its suitability to my cause.

Certain areas of the lake are at the moment patchy with dense carpets of silk weed covering large areas. The clearer bits in between the swaths of dark green weed are made up of silt covered gravel and sand. The weed in the area where I had just made camp is apparently sparser. Between thirty and fifty yards out there was a band of pretty constant weed which faded out up to the sixty yard mark. Beyond that was totally clear as if a road had been cut through the weed. This was the perfect place for my traps to be set.

It has become evident to me already that fishing on the lake is a waiting game. Depositing liberal amounts of free food seems to always attract attention but inevitably you have to wait. On my first session over a week ago I offered up a large amount of bait which took four hours to mature on a cloudy day. Today a much larger deposit was going to be made as the whole night was mine, and I didn't want a poultry few balls to be ignored.

It takes a fair amount of time to ball up what I was about to chuck out into tennis ball sized globes. It also looks pretty funny sitting there all piled up like apples on a fruit stall - not that you would ever consider eating one - and when it goes in it makes a hell of commotion.
I think all men love playing with catapults. It is a throwback to childhood and I am no different. When I get my whoppa dropper catapult in hand I cannot help but start to form a wry boyish smile as if I am going to do something naughty. I had no intention of trying to be accurate. Instead I purposely loosely fired the balls out around the bright pink float bobbing on the surface, spreading the bait as best I could over a tennis court sized area, which would give a big target zone for blind casting later.

An hour and a half after arriving the traps were set and the waiting began. I had brought a copy of John Steinbeck's 'The Pearl' to pass the time, but the allure of the lake pulled my eyes away constantly, so reading was sidelined in favour of watching. If Jacky saw me doing this I know she would accuse me of just mooning. But I could assure her that my seemingly trance like state would have easily been broken by the slightest disturbance to the water. I had no idea how long I stared transfixed by the lake but eventually I got that strange sensation that everything other than the water was bending slightly too the right.
I knew this was to be a serious waiting game and day faded to dusk, then dark soon followed whilst I patiently waited. Soon enough I crawled into the warmth of my sleeping bag, with only the slightest hint of human left peeping out so as to avoid the mozzies.

Not until seven hours had passed and the lake was shrouded in total black did anything happen. Then a shrill electronic sound cut through the night and woke me from my slumber. It was as if someone had just yanked one of my lines then let go. Half out of bed I stopped still watching the red light a few feet away. Was it just a liner? Then it went off again as something moved slowly off with my bait. Striking into a fish a long way out into the lake in the middle of the night is always exciting. The initial solid resistance yielded quickly and turned into an odd sensation that something was swimming backwards! Straight away I knew it was an eel and this excited me even more as I do love a good eel. It felt a powerful fish and the rod bent in that healthy but not worrying way. When my head light caught a flash of white in the edge I was confused. That was until a pair of whiskers and a massive gob broke the surface.

I had heard rumours that the lake contained a few cats but to bag one on my first night on the lake was amazing. I have wasted plenty of time trying to land my first cat on heavily stocked waters not one hundredth this ones size, and here I was with my first one in hand on a lake I would never have thought would ever produce one for me.

Having never caught one before left me feeling like a kid again. They are essentially just a mouth and stomach attached to a massive tail, and this little moggy had been using that massive mouth to good effect scooping up my bait wholesale. Through its soft skin I could feel my hard packed freebies, boillies and all.

I hadn't even got back into the my sleeping bag when another bobbin dithered up. Another 8lb bream was dragged in from half way across the lake and in under fifteen minutes I had gone from dry and warm to cold and covered in slime. 

My sleep for the night was over now because a shoal of bream had moved in and they had their heads down in a big way. Both rods cast on the baited area were constantly going off as the shoal noised around the swim, grubbing up my lines even though they were pinned hard too the bottom. The disco tech going on at the front of my rod pod at first was amusing, but all too soon I got the distinct impression that I was beginning to disturb others over the lake. Even with the volume right down the sound cut through the still night air like a gun shot. I had to turn them to silent and rely on the flashing led lights and the bait runners for indication before I was lynched. A slew of seemingly ever more slimy smaller bream slipped over my net for the next two hours before they just carried on through the swim and the bites stopped as quickly as they started.

Even with a good few hours sleep prior to the fish arriving I was knackered. I made what I now know to be two poor casts towards the spot, turned the alarms back on and crawled back into the warmth of my bed. I awoke naturally just as the sun hinted at it's arrival and the mist began to steam up of the surface of the lake.

Refreshed I got up and recast the rods more accurately onto the spot and it was a good job I did!

At first I thought the line was just settling as the bobbin slacked right off, but then it jerked up before hitting the floor. The strike met a seeming powerful fish that hugged the bottom all the way to the edge before trying to bore into a nearby bed of rushes. This fish felt like a tench until a huge humped back broke the surface.

Lying in the net it didn't look as big as the previous two eights I had landed but when I lifted the net up I got  that 'this feels a bit heavier' feeling, and sure enough it's weight laid across it's width. Laid on it's side it looked like a pig of a fish and was easy six inches thick. With a hefty weight of 9.7lb made it the best of the session.

Two more six somethings followed it before the swim died off again. These few fish must have been from a different shoal which arrived late to the party. Even half asleep I had noticed that over the night at least half the bream I landed were two tone. Phil from http://barbelblogger.blogspot.co.uk commented on my previous write up that the two tone colouration is believed to be caused by stress, and I wondered if the presence of cats in the water has anything to do with it.

When it quieted down, I again slipped off into the land of nod only to be woken again. This time however it was the warming and more importantly drying sun which filled up my shelter.

I felt how a cat must when it bathes in the sun contented by whatever mischief it has just perpetrated, satisfied at a good nights work.

The Lake #1 Fishing with caged flowers

In the week just passed, the itch in my mind caused by my walk round the lake has turned into a rash that is now red raw from mental scratching. It got to the point where I had to remind myself of my patient and simple outlook towards this endeavour in order to stop myself over complicating things when I did finally arrive.

Soon enough though I found myself atop the grassy hill looking down towards the lake in the early hours of the morning on a cloudy and dull day. As I retraced my tracks back down to the lake the grass did not fold softly beneath my floating feet as before, for this time I was slung heavy with tackle, like some beast of burden; a few weeks free from lugging this around had given my body time to forget how heavy my fishing tackle can feel.

As we anglers often do, I had conceived visions of where I would make my first casts. This was not due to some mouth watering feature such as an island, because the lake beyond the bank is quite simply as featureless as a plain piece of paper. Instead my choice of spots was more governed by the simple attractiveness of what would be to my left or to my right. But as always with preconceived ideas they never work out, and upon rounding the bending approach to my spot, a dew covered bivvie was sighted.

Further down the track through an arch formed between two old oaks I had seen an quint little glade with short mown grass, which days before had caught my eye and now carried all hopes for my morning ahead.

Quiet and uninhabited upon arrival my second choice seemed the perfect place to begin this journey. I paused for a moment before passing down under the trees into the bank side glade. I like to think this was to take in the beauty of this place, but in actual fact it was more to do with me figuring where to place my feet on the bare earth leading down to the waters edge so as not to start the day on my bottom.

The first thing that hit me as I ventured out of the trees was that this was not in fact one little spot but the gateway to a sub bank which boasted four neat swims amongst one continuous reed bed. The second thing was what looked like a small chicken wire cage half way down the path about the size of a loaf of bread.

What animal would be so fierce that it should need it's own cage to protect passing anglers, I wondered. Maybe an out of control cricket or a shrew with an attitude problem was contained within. I had to investigate! Upon closer inspection no savage miniature animal raged within the wire. Rather it was seemingly filled with grass. Not until my nose was within inches of the wire did I spot the tiniest of pink and white flowers poking from within. The cage was not to protect me but to protect it from mine and others clumsy great size twelve feet, or possibly from the millions of rabbits which inhabit the area. 

The imprisoned tiny flower was an orchid no bigger than the top section of my finger. Call me a pansy but it seems a shame to me that something so rare and beautiful and wild should need to spend the rest of it's life behind bars. I actually decided to fish next to the little caged beauty and all through the day I pondered it in its little cage as my rods fished silently away close by.

My intention for my first trip had always been to attack from the off and although my initial intent for a twenty four hour session had been sidelined for the sake of my still niggling back, I stuck with my plan firing some twenty five cricket ball sized balls of mixed munga loosely around a marker float some sixty yards out by way of invite to the lakes illusive populations.

I would love to say that my ingenious ploy heralded an instant response but that would be no more than a common lie. Instead I sat snugly tucked under a convenient ash and watched as the wind built up through the morning and the ripple turned into waves, white caps and all.

Four hours in I was thinking I had over cooked it with my Dunkirk style approach, until the briefest of bites indicated the presence of something of the scaled variety. Thirty minutes later another dithering bite turned into a slow and steady run. Lolling round on the surface right over the baited spot out in the lake this had to be a bream and it was! sixty yards out fighting like a wet sack full of silt. A mighty fight it was not. But a mighty fish it will be one day.

Deep, long and young, this was great start to a new campaign. 8.3lb was more than I expected when I dragged myself out of bed this morning. If this is an average sized fish then I may not of been as mad as I thought I was when I handed over the money for my ticket.

Covered in a liberal layer of slime I sat smiling at what can only in this lakes terms be deemed a successful session. I have taken so so many blanks on this lake that a bite alone can be considered success. But that was not the end of it! A second dithering bite was struck too early before I again hooked a second bream. Although smaller by a third this fish was that oddity that seems only to exist in the world of abramis brama.

The poor and rushed picture gives enough of the bizarre phenomenon of the two tone bream. I have never fully understood why every so often one bream amongst a shoal of most likely siblings should be half light and half dark.

They were definately getting onto the feed towards noon but I had a date with a red head so was unable to reap the the benefit of what I had sown. However two fish and a few bites in a five hour toe dipping on this frugal old lake is certainly a good way to start, and bodes very well for up and coming longer sessions. And as for the poor little caged flower, I will stop by whenever I pass by just to have a look and watch it blossom.