What the hell am I doing wrong

I revelled with glee when the rains came down the start of  last week. This was followed by a constant monitoring of the EA graphs which gave hour by hour information of the water level of the River Avon.

I watched carefully mulling over when to strike.

It took a day or so for the water to filter into the river, but when it did the levels rose quickly spilling over bank into field. By Wednesday I knew the would be returning back towards normal levels, leaving the Avon looking like willy wonkers chocolate river minus the oompa-loompas.

The day off sorted and Jacky dropped off at work, I arrived to find the river looking perfect and deserted. With no worries for getting a swim I settled in front of the huge swirling eddy aside the weir pool. Even with flotsam spinning around on top of it I knew my lines wouldn't get hung up on any of it as the cut down towards the edge of the flow.

I knew my decision to come here was a risk but it could be worth it. The barbel here seem to average on the large size, even though there doesn't seem to be a huge population. My knowledge of the unseen topography of the area should of helped, but things had changed! New snags had been deposited by the high water as I soon found out.

After sitting on my first casts patiently I reeled in only to snag up in the centre of the eddy, losing everything pulling for the break. I tried to avoid it as the second rig was retrieved found the other side of this large object, and straightened my hook.

I fought it out for a few hours losing a hideous amount of gear in the process, but in the back of my mind I knew hooking a decent fish with that monstrous snag in front would probably end only one way. So I moved on to another likely spot in these conditions.

Here my baits received loads of the wrong sort of attention. Eels tore my meat to bits constantly nibbling away as it lay on the gravel bottom. Pellets fared better but the paste wraps also suffered from the eels and small fish to.

Not one proper bite did I receive all day for my efforts. Two greedy albino skimmers which looked rather embarrassed to be caught scoffing a 20mm pellet, plus a foul hooked boot lace eel was all I could muster.This was very disappointing as the river was in perfect condition, maybe the best its in been all year.

A few days later I joined Martin on a trip further down river to an area with a good reputation for barbel fishing. A large population of mixed sized fish, still above average river conditions combined with getting into one of the best pegs on the stretch made me wonder how could it go wrong.... Not one fish was landed in the entire area all day between a large few anglers.

Bites were received. Chub, I suspected were responsible for cheekily stealing meat baits this time. Only one of those suspected chub bites bent the rod round enough for me to strike, and that went into thin air as suspected the long hair rig prevented the hook from even being in the fishes mouth.

Again this barbel thing is fast becoming a farce. The worst of it is that I have other things I want to do coming up soon, which will start to put pressure on the short amount of time I have to fish for them. So now I am beginning to wonder whether it is actually my methods that is the problem or am I just in one of those streaks of bad luck again!

The Lake #4 Is that done.

I have always been prone to a niggling feeling or two and I already have a niggling feeling that I have may have been over cooking my fishing on the lake a bit. By this I mean that I am wondering that my Dresden style bombardment of ground bait may be effecting the dynamic of my time on the lake.

Sure when I have a prolonged amount of time on the bank as I did on my last visit, a mass ground baiting is perfectly logical. Given time the new feature on the lakes desolate bottom will always attract fish. But there is no doubt in my mind that the initial disturbance sends any fish resident within quite a large area scampering.
So for the shorter evening sessions putting in any amount of bait seems a foolhardy waste. Yes they will more than likely get on it, but more than likely when I am at home supping a cup of tea ruing the blank.
Thinking this has caused an early change of tack, though this experimental idea I will only apply to short sessions where I do not wish to clear the decks for the entire time I fish.

My love of the method ball is undoubted. Having that small concentrated patch of bait with my hook bait nestled right on the top like a tempting cherry to me is the pinnacle of accuracy. Even fishing over a large bed of bait as I have been, the method ball is a must. I always imagine a shoal of fish confidently moving from one pile of free bait to another filling there boots on free grub, when Bang! one of them pick the wrong one and my bite alarm shrieks shrilly before I strike.
This in mind, instead of wasting bait again, I thought I would have a go at softly softly catchy fishy. Though only intending to use a small amount of bait I did opt to super charge it with fishy attractiveness by adding unimaginable amounts of fish meal, fish oil and other potent ingredients.

So the other night I put this into practise for a few hours and snuck back to the lake in the sheeting rain to try this experiment out and see what reaction I got.

The bank was deserted and quiet. Even the local wildfowl were absent on this warm wet evening. Upon opening my bait bucket the tangy fishy stench jumped right down my throat. There was no doubting the pungency of this stuff and hopefully the fish would think so too.

Although simple, my application of it was to be organised. One bait just off the marginal shelf where days before I had spotted the tell tale fizz of feeding tench last time. The second around mid range on the marker still clipped on my rod from the previous session and the third punched out as far as my rod would allow. Should any one rod get more attention than the others, then one by one the others would be carefully redistributed into that area.

Again the night passed quietly and through the low visibitly I did spot what I suspect were rolling bream on line for my middle rod but none of them found my bait, as stinky as it was.
It was the long range rod than finally sparked into life, but the bite never truly developed. It just beeped a few times dropped, then rose, then beeped. Even bream sooner or later make a bite indicator sing when they feel the searing sting of hook.
After hoovering over the rod for an age and checking the area for tufties I finally made the decision to lift into it and was rewarded with absolutely nothing. But once the rig hit my hand the problem was evident and very unlucky. When setting up I split a boilie in two and casually tossed into the bait bucket. Low and behold I had one boilie on the hook and half a boilie impaled on the hook masking the point from whatever picked it up.

That was my only action over the short session and by dark, hunger had become the new psychological battle. Gutted to miss the only action of the night due to an avoidable mistake I made my way back through the damp woods.

Though I feel that this was no gauge of how successful this tactic can be, and it certainly won't be the last chance I give it. I am beginning to wonder if the shorter evening sessions are going to be worth it especially having to fish at range. Maybe if the damn sun ever makes an appearance I might target one of the few lily beds in the shallow bay for a spot of classical lift float fishing on a sultry summer night.

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.