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.

Canal carp - a crisis of confidence.

Everyone who fishes canals will have some kind of tale or tome of canal carp to tell. I suspect it's the linear nature of canals that helps information travel down them to be dribbled like honey into people's ears by passing travellers. Personally with all the time I've spent on canals I reckon I must have heard thousands of stories about monsters hiding on the far bank cover over the years. The truth of the matter is that all canals contain carp, be them born or bred, dumpers, stockies or escapes, they are there and beyond all the bluff and bluster you hear about how to catch them there is one single box to tick in order to attain success as far as I am concerned; location. Quite frankly you could fish in a carpy looking location for the rest of your life and not catch a single fish if it is simply not their chosen home.

With regards to location, I can think of six spots on three different sections of canal that I have either seen or caught carp from. I have spent a fair bit of time on these spots in years past and as much as I reckon the fish have probably grown, I'd like to find a few unknown fish to me, so I have started looking at few more likely spots with supposed form to target. The first is a very well known supposed carp haunt of the Grand union were fish of preposterous sizes are reported to swim and I gave it a look on an evening session recently when the weather was fine enough for carp.

I like to keep things simple when carp fishing and on the canal, rigs hidden in PVA bags are always the way to go. Firstly you can cast them into any tiny space you want with little fear of tangles, secondly they sink slowly without the lead burying in the deep silt that can line the bottom and thirdly they are great for fishing for one bite by presenting a concentrated pile of smelly bait. All that said it seemed on this occasion my simple tactics might not have been reliable, as I did not generate anything near a bite in five hours. I had a few liners but definitely no contact with the rigs, which was concerning. Without dwelling on a blank I moved on to the next session along with my new compact kit.

I feel I should mention the new set up I am using this season for carp. You know I've always felt taking twelve foot carp rods and big reels down the cut to a bit of overkill. Then a while ago I bought a 9ft Nash dwarf rod for stalking carp and after seeing how great this little rod was I invested in a second one and matched them up with a pair of Korum KXI reels. I then bought a specific rod bag for the Dwarf rods which is not much over three feet long and also carries my 36" carp net with handle that splits into two. All the rest of the stuff I might need packs into my Korum day sack which leaves me with a kit so compact that no spot is too far away.

My next canal session was a disaster and that was pretty much all my fault. I agreed to meet Mick on a very reliable section of canal where he was going to fish for zander and I for carp. Anyway to cut a long story short I decided to hang out with Mick and have a chat rather than head straight down to the banker spot. As nice as it was catching up with Mick, it allowed some else to get on my spot. Frankly I was shocked as I have never seen another carp angler there ever and here was one right where I wanted to be. When I arrived and after chatting to the other angler I set up shop a little way up the canal  in a spot of lesser quality which produced zip all once again.

Confidence in any sort of angling is key in my opinion and at this point I had none. Worst of all though I had opted to use a new bait for this canal carp caper and as good as it smelt to me I wasn't sure it was doing the business. I expected those starving canal bream to be on it like a tramp on chips and so far I was saving a fortune on bite alarm batteries. With this crisis of confidence in both bait and me I had no choice but to have a session on somewhere a little easier. So with a spare afternoon off work I went over to fish Jubilee pools, or specifically horseshoe pool.

These pools suffer a bit of an image problem if you ask me and some of that is down to their name I reckon. Though referred to as pools they are in fact pits where sand and gravel were extracted from along with Ryton pool and Meadow lands. Should they be referred to a jubilee pits then certainly in carp fishing circle they would command a bit more respect than a lowly old pool. That aside Horseshoe for one looks like a gravel pit if you look beyond the wooden stages that line the lip of the pool like teeth. And the fish do behave more like gravel pit fish as they swim around the clear weedy water. The only way this pool differs from most gravel pits is in stock density. Being the coffer fillers they are, the controlling club keeps them well overstocked with fish as to please the day ticket paying masses. Weirdly though the fish seem to exhibit different habits. The small carp are nearly always lingering in the upper layers of the water, where as a totally different size class patrol the margins like nervous submarines, and it was those nervous submarines that I wanted to test my confidence out on.

After walking round the lake a bit and finding most of it empty of anglers, I fed four swims on one bank where I had seen a few groups of bigger fish nosing around. These bigger fish love nothing more than coming into the margins in the evening and mopping up all the discarded bait, and that's exactly what I wanted my freebies to look like. After putting out a handful of corn in each swim along with a few broken boilies and whole boilies I waited and watched to see which of the four swims offered the batter chance. Random fish kept coming into all of them but one swim had a couple of groups of fish the others didn't repeatedly stopping by, so thats where I decided to set my trap. Once all the bait was gone I quickly nipped in and set up my rods and alarms on the path leading into the swim. There was a large clear area all around the platform so carefully placed one rig on the further edge of the clear spot and the second right under the platform. After making sure my line was pinned down tight to the bottom by a few blobs of tungsten putty and a small back weight I re-baited with more broken boilies and corn and retreated well away from the peg. 

The fish were soon back and I waited a good hour before the water finally erupted and the alarm screamed as a fish found my sneaky two halves of boilie bait and sucked it in. It took a while for the fish to fully get its head round its circumstance and when it did the rod really started to bend.

After an epic tussle which destroyed the swim and my other rod, I finally dragged the net out of the brambles and slipped it under a stunning little common which filled my confidence jar close to the brim.

After I released that low double a few swims away I returned to carnage. In the panic of the fight everything had gone everywhere. My second rod was lying on the floor with the line still over the buzzer. There were mats, selfie sticks and half the contents of my bags strewn all over the floor. As I walked towards the second rod on the floor the alarm beeped once and thinking it was about to go off I froze. From just at the edge of the swim I could see a real strange group of fish had drifted into swim and were picking up odd bit here and there. There was a golden tench, a tiny common carp and a huge mirror. I would have said they had all arrived separately until the golden tench moved off and its buddies followed it. Quickly I got both rods out a again this time with a PVA bag on each. Both were in same positions as before when I saw the golden tench reappear followed by its two carpy friends. None of them dipped onto the baits but they all paused a moment as they passed over them. I watched those three fish drift in and out again and again, each time the mirror seemed bigger.

Soon my time was running out and worst of all their confidence was building with the more time they spent in the swim. With little over thirty minutes till I had to be off the water I watched as the two carp homed in on my close in bait. I watched willing them to dip down towards it... then Bleeeeeeeeeep the moment was shattered by the bite alarm I watched confused as the two carp shot off to the left and my line on my right had rod surged out into the lake. Whilst watching the fish I wanted to catch near one line someone had snuck in and taken the other. It turned out to be a very boisterous common not to dissimilar to the other apart from this one was rushed in a bit which meant it was very lively on the mat hence the crap selfie with it.

This trip to Jubilee pits was well served to boost my confidence in both what I was doing and in the bait I have decided to use. Now all I need is the weather to warm up a bit and I should be able to start homing in on a few canal targets myself.