Last Gasp

I was back on my local hole in the ground yesterday. It felt like it had been ages! The corner near the enterance is not my favourite swim but when I arrived a warm wind was pushing the fish straight into that corner so I had no choice. I tried a zig rig, a pop up rig and plain old bottom baits and nothing seemed to be working. Eventually I had a screaming run on an S7 pop up which turned out to be a fin perfect mirror carp of less than 2 lb. Just as I about to call it a day and escape with a technical blank a gnarly little common of just under 10lb raced off with a bait positioned down the margin. Job done and I packed up and went home. A short session on the hottest day of the year could have been a lot worse.

Chubbing

I decided to have a complete change and do something different so I headed back to Low Dinsdale on the River Tees to stalk some chub. The only trouble with the stretch is that the banks are very steep which makes sneaking up quietly on the fish almost impossible. I singled out some swims at the top of the stretch and quiver tipped luncheon meat hook baits. the session kicked off well and I had 4 chub to just short of 4lb and then it all seemed to get hard work. It took another couple of hours to get another 2 smaller chub. I spotted my first ever otter which was definitely not a welcome sight and wonder if it was him stalking my fish that killed the swims off. On a bright note I had forgotten just how hard chub fight. I'll definitely be back.

Capenwray 2

I was diving at Capenwray again with my eldest and was struck by several things. Firstly the size of the roach, the fish we were diving amongst would be easily in excess of 3lb. The second thing that surprised me, and I hadn't noticed before, was the small size and few in number of perch. There was an almost complete absence of fry or prey fish.

British Monsoon

Because of commitments I didn't get onto my local lake until a bit later than usual so I decided to leave my carp gear at home and head out in search of some big perch. I decided to approach the job in hand with a float rod fishing with worm and a ledger rod with ultra light bobbins trialling half a frozen sandeel as bait. The ledger rod went out first and as I was tackling up my float rod I had a savage take which was dropped before I could reach it which is a shame because it was never repeated. I decided to leave my gear under my brolly at the top of the slope as I was fishing very close to the bank, this would have been fine if it wasn't raining. This wasn't ordinary rain this was torrential! On the plus side at least it was warm. I was fishing a worm hookbait slightly over depth under a waggler and feeding with maggots which paid off from the beginning. The perch came thick and fast but not the specimens I know live in the water but the biggest reached about 4oz. To make things a little more interesting a few small carp, tench and my very first crucian carp came to the net. All in all it was a very pleasant evening and one I aim to repeat before the end of the summer.