A spot of commercial success.

What do you do when you have only a small window of time to fish on a damp dull Saturday afternoon? Had it been June I feel I would have gone stalking carp or maybe had a few hours throwing surface lures, but it wasn't June it was February and neither of the afore mentioned options were open to me. I did consider chub fishing on the upper Avon, but that seemed more an option for a freezing day rather than a day like this which was a balmy 10c. There was though something I had been meaning to check out again... You see I was told a short while back by a match fishing friend that one of the commercial fisheries I sometimes fish for big perch had not thrown a single one up all through the winter league and that it looked like they might have done that thing big perch do after too much pressure and disappear.

I kind of have it my head that these commercial giants might not have disappeared but instead got wise to the methods by which my match fishing compadres were catching them on. From that I surmised that more than likely big baits would be the way to go as not many match anglers use anything bigger than a lob tail or dendrobena to try and catch perch. Whereas I think I might be getting to understand these fish and believe them to be lazy slobs which have grown fat chuffing down leftover dead fish after matches, that are more likely to slowly slurp up a whole massive lobworm than to be bothered to chase a fish around to eat it.

Only thing is with these commercial fish is getting to them, as the list of fish you might have to catch your way through is never ending. The cold normally helps shorten the list by a few species, but when I arrived at a barren commercial pool the sun was out warming the water and carp were boshing out all over. I chose to fish a peg that I had fished before that's got good form in a bottle neck between the two halves of the pool. I like fishing this area as I feel that any perch patrolling have to pass through the area.

Sitting up well back from the edge I set up my fourteen foot float rod with a light float rig and plumbed up carefully to find that the entire area was flat as a pancake. With the lack of features in mind I baited up in a line about four feet long in line with my rod using broken lobs, crushed/whole caster bound together with mole hill soil and liquid worm. With the wind pushing a good tow around the smallish pool I felt the scent of my bait would soon be dispersed at least over a good bit of water. Fishing my float on a very short line from the tip of the rod helped me keep the section of worm I began fishing with tight to the centre of the baited area even with the tow pulling it around.

It was always going to be fifty-fifty on the success front as these shallow pools can fish terribly in the winter months and changeable weather can be the worst thing for them. Luckily it seemed that I had made the right choice for once and quickly something started showing interest in my bait. So began the promenade of various silver fish this lake holds. You would have thought the delicate biting roach would have been last on the list of takers for my large worm section fished on a size eight hook tied direct to four pound line, but no that was not the case. The roach were the first to show up and they were quickly followed by all manner of mixed silvers...

I always feel confident when I am getting bites as I just think it becomes a numbers game before my target turns up. On this occasion though time weighed heavy on my mind and with two hours gone out of the three I was thinking the silver fish might never push off. At this point I went all in, literally! Rather than keep putting bits of bait in I decided to feed hard, leave the swim alone for a while and hope the mass of bait combined with the failing light might spur a perch or two onto the spot. After dumping everything I had bait wise apart from a few hook baits onto the very centre of where I'd been baiting, I left it alone and went off with the dropshot rod I bought along to check out a couple of features.

After spending a short while trying to make a Savage gear 3D bleak look as much like a dying fish as possible in a few choice spots, I returned to my spot baited my hook with the two halves of a split lob worm and swung it onto the spot that I'd been watching all afternoon. What do you know! I watched the float as the worm fluttered down to the bottom, where the float popped up as it did. The float was only still for seconds as the baits arrival had not been missed. Unlike the lighting fast roach bites the float bobbed deliberately before beginning to move away then slowly sinking to the right. My strike found heavy resistance instead of the panic that all the silvers gone into. The fish was powerful but not crazy carp powerful and straight away I knew it was what I was after. Before it was even ready I was fussing with the net trying to get it out of some reeds it was resting on. A brief tussle, a quick slacking of clutch and a big stripy flank rose out of the muddy water into my net.

It was not the biggest perch I've caught from a commercial pool but at well over two pounds it made my day a commercial success and proved that there might be a bit of mileage to my theory that this big commercial perch are still in this venue and that maybe they just need much bigger baits to catch them.

The Lake #32 Not the best of starts.

Two winters, two springs and a summer have passed since I last fished Coombe. Though I haven't really had time to think about it, there were odd moments when my mind drifted back to it and I pondered what was going on over there. This year though I seem to be finding a bit of time and pre June 16th I surmised that a season ticket might be a viable option, although night fishing still feels to be a little out of synch with my life. A day season ticket though would enable me to spend some time on the bank and possibly enable me to catch the fish here or there.

If I have concluded one thing about this lake that is key over all else; success hangs simply on the knowledge of where the fish are. I've wasted many a random day turning up to the lake and going where I think there might be fish, rather than where I know there is fish. Bearing this in mind I have begun my efforts this year gently, snooping round the banks clad in green peeping through polarized eyes.

The first look on the private bank one Saturday afternoon was informative yet worrying. With the sun out and from a slightly elevated bank I could see right through the shallow water all across the lake and not many fish were seen at all, bar what I suspect was a group of three tench in a bay, drifting along in the late afternoon sun. I must say at this point that my mooching is being combined with a little surface lure fishing for the resident pike, and it would seem this might have some mileage as I raised two nervous follows and one wild attack from jacks that were lurking around bank side patches of weed.

Having seen little to whet my appetite on the first visit, a second reccy was to be on the public bank. This time I hoped that the dense lily beds might hold both information and pike. It's been a good while since I did the long walk, but as I stepped through the gate I remembered how evocative the path leading to the lake along the reed bed can be. Though the sight of it also reminds me how soul destroying it can be on the return journey after a blank.

In truth the first twenty pegs seemed as barren as ever. I did not spot so much a lingering perch in the vast weed beds and even as my weed free frog lures were working perfectly in amongst the pads, I couldn't locate any pike. I did however finally see signs of life further round the lake. From about forty meters out the water was being coloured up by what had to be feeding fish. The wind and ripple was pushing the coloured water into the lily pads and after watching for a good half an hour, I began to see the pads sending out ripples as hidden fish fed amongst them.

Happy from finally seeing a few feeding fish, I continued round the bank to a more open area where I fancied I might be able to have a go with some larger surface jerk baits I had just purchased and was desperate to use. I removed the plastic frog and huge worm hook from my trace and gleefully dug out a 24 gram mirror lure He dog from my lure box. A little flick out to see what it looked like in the water and to check it floated and I was ready to fire out half way across the lake.

I remember positioning the rod over my right shoulder and them pushing hard forward loading up the rod blank against the weight of the lure, then... CRACK! I actually felt the tension on the rod give and reactively closed my eyes waiting for something hit me, but nothing did and my eyes tracked along the rod to see the top eighteen inches hanging on the line above the lure. In the blink of an eye my one piece Shimano AX player had become a two piece rod, split unevenly between a four and a half foot butt section and the now swinging eighteen inch top section.

The break was a bit perplexing in truth. I've broken a few rods over the years: first was a float rod I was using as a ledger rod as a kid, that crunched much as you would expect cheap carbon too; years later a carp buckled over a fiberglass pole I was using, making a very similar sound to the first; the last was a barbel rod which I destroyed by wrapping round a tree after pulling for a break in a snag, although I can't remember the sound that made the end result was the same, splintered rod. This one though was different though! The crack was loud, very loud and the break as you can see was almost clean.

Whatever the result was my fishing for the session was cut very short, and after checking out last area which was devoid of life I began the long yet resplendent walk back to the car with a very perplexed look on my face and broken rod in hand.

The next day I popped back to the tackle shop that had supplied me with the rod to let them have a look at it. In their opinion it looks like there may have been some kind of fault in the blank that hasn't been picked up in manufacturing and in moving up to a much heavier lure than I have used before, the pressure has just been too much for the fault to take. So the broken rod is going back to Shimano and hopefully I might get a replacement soon.