Well, I did manage to drag myself out of bed, on Sunday, load the van and get on the road before 06:00 AM. A good run out of
The Smoke and even the M25 was moving. I got to Beaver just as Ben (Today's host) was driving through the gate... That's handy! I followed him in and the gate closed behind me - Result! While Ben was sorting himself out, I started to set up our gear and went back to pay our day tickets - No sign of Bro...
Just as I finished setting up the phone rang...
"Hello?"
"Ello Bro"
"Where are you?"
"Here!"....
I think you can guess how the rest of that went - Plonka!
I told him to turn around and waved at him. That seemed to do the job. Tim got back in his car, drove up and parked next to my van, that was obviously hard to see initially, being light Blue against the green backdrop of trees. I was wearing my camouflage pattern hat - maybe it does work after all.
Tim had missed out on all the feeder fishing and had not encountered the Two Dog ground bait first hand until now. I gave him a quick catch-up on what I know about feeder fishing, explained clipping up and showed him how to cast. I then put a hooklength on my rig, loaded the feeder and showed him how to use the push-stop hair to carry the hook-bait. Cast out and was about to say about leaving for forty seconds, if nothing happens... when the tip bent double and it was fish on, with the first cast. Tim was impressed. He then replicated the same thing also taking a fish on his first cast. Another F1. That did the job, the look on his face says it all.
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| "I got one!" |
The interesting thing here is that Tim has never feeder fished before in his life and yet he pulled out over thirty fish (and that is being conservative) with very little effort. He was using my Two Dog groundbait, 9mm punched Bacon Grill hair rigged to size 12 Guru MWG hook on a 4 inch, 6lb hook length. After a while he was moaning because he was not getting a chance to drink his coffee! Although we were targeting F1's Tim managed to catch a couple of bream, just to slime up my nets. He also discovered how slippery they are.
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| One of Tim's bream behaves itself just before it slid back into the net and was helped back into the lake |
Considering the time of year we have been privy to some high night time temperatures preventing the water from cooling down too much. The fish seem to be feeding well at the moment down here in the south. For this reason we were using the full strength Two Dog mix on the 30g flat backed method feeders. I think Tim had a good day. He caught more fish than he has ever done before and from looking around the lake, more fish than anyone else too. In fact most of the others fishing the lake gave up and went home just after lunch leaving us with the lake to our selves other than a couple of children and their dad (?) dabbling away in the far corner. As far as we were concerned it proved the Two Dog mix really does work. Tim was catching as rapidly as I was on his first time out.
We packed up as the light was fading and a good, no, a great day, was had by all. There you go Tim, I told you I would not mention the fact that you broke my feeder mould and my favourite 11ft feeder rod - you know, the one I have been using all year...
Ralph
