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| First fish of the day - Well, it is a fish! |
At last, I managed to get a day on the bank. The last couple of months have been bedlam here. It all started with a visit to the doctor's practice to let them know I was still here. It turned out that I had not been since 1996! As you can tell, I am not one for running to the doctor every five minutes, maybe I should have done, and now they won't let me go. Visits to the practice nurse, doctor and a whole series of tests have determined I have Type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure. Great! I am not going to go into any details or spend any time discussing it online. This blog is about fishing. I am far too young to discuss my ailments. I only mention it as it has been this that has been responsible for keeping me away from my fishing.
While all that was going on, to compound the lack of time, my brother (Tim, the other bloke featured on this blog) decided to move flat. Now, although this meant more time spent away from the bank, it has an up side. His new flat... Hmmmm... 'apartment' as well as having a huge integral garage, just happens to back onto The Medway and he has private fishing! Yes, the jammy-beggar has a couple of jetties that he can fish from. Looks like it could be an excellent dropshotting venue. Roll on next weekend when the rivers open again.
Back to today. The weather seemed reasonable, so I sorted out some gear and bait last night ready for an early start this morning. I was on the road by 06:00 and on my way to Beaver. I have not been back there since March, and I was keen to see how it was looking as well as how it was fishing.
The guys there work tirelessly to keep the place looking at its best. The fishery is set in natural woodland, and that accompanied by good ground management works really well. Just enough mowing and trimming to keep it looking tidy without looking like a hole in a field. A lot of the lakes/ponds look very natural indeed.
Due to a broken down car on the M25, there were miles of slow-moving traffic. How just one broken down car can make such a hold-up never ceases to amaze me. This had its bad points, not least of all was being held up for at least twenty-five minutes, it also had a good point. I missed the dustcart doing its Thursday collection on the A22, meaning a straight run from the motorway to the fishery.
A greeting of " 'ello stranger" a request to see my current licence and the surgical removal of a brown note from my wallet, welcomed me to the fishery's office. After some discussion, I decided to fish the back of Maze Lake. This was the same place I fished back in March when the only fish to grace the bank was a rouge pike.
Today was different. I wanted to just spend the day relaxing. No pressure and no targets. The plan was to catch anything that wanted to be caught. Due to so many aborted trips, I have been caring for a couple of pints of maggots for the past four or five weeks. In fact, they have been around for so long, even the missus was growing fond of them. referring to them as "your mates", as in "Have you taken your mates out for a walk today?" To my astonishment, I managed to keep them going with only a few fatalities - probably fewer than a dozen out of a couple of pints.
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| A nice little perch, just for a change |
I started off using one of my elasticated tele-poles. Out of all my gear, these really cheap poles, modified by fitting a bung, elastic and good quality bushes have given me hours of fun. Fishing at five meters means fishing an area that is often overlooked, and as today's adventure confirmed, it shouldn't be!
It couldn't be any simpler. I used a 0.3g float on light line with a twelve-inch hooklength tied to a No.18 hook. The rig was plumbed to dead depth, and one of 'my mates' was just about to find out what going fishing meant for a maggot. Lined up with a tree on the opposite bank, the line was lowered into the water together with a maggot wriggling like mad, trying to remove itself from the hook.
As the float settled a few maggots (half a dozen at the most) were lobbed out to land on and around the float tip. Lifting the float just clear of the water and lowering it again, introduced my hook-bait into the small cascade of maggots making their way to the bottom. Straight away I had a bite. That tell-tale 'rattle' of a small fish thrashing to get away was confirmed by the appearance of a small roach.
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| The fish were getting bigger, not by much but this little rudd was a nice fish |
The fish got bigger as time went on. They were punctuated with the odd perch of similar size. Nothing bigger than five or six inches long but all good fun, all the same. I varied the hook bait by adding more maggots to the hook and/or mixing the colours. I had red and white maggots mixed in the bait box. As I mentioned earlier, I had bought these maggots weeks ago, but the fish did not seem to mind. No sell-by dates for maggots!
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| The 'far' margin is not far away, a simple lob got me there |
The fishing was very easy, and the fish were getting slightly bigger. As lunchtime approached I put the tele-pole down and thought I would try a spot of feeder fishing. Out with the Two Dog groundbait and my go-to hook bait; Primrose Bacon Grill. It was starting to cloud over, so I dropped the feeder in the far margin and had a bit of a tidy up just as a light shower of rain decided to make everything wet. The bait, and especially the maggots, were covered with a towel to prevent the grubs getting wet and staging a mass escape, as the moisture gifts them with the power of traction enabling them to climb the sides of the bait box.
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| A bed of lilies were just about in range for my short pole from the swim next door |
The rain diminished into a few drops, and I started to devour my lunch. The feeder was bearing little fruit, so I went back to the tele-pole and spent an hour or so fishing the next swim along, which had a good spread of lily-pads. They were almost close enough to reach with my little pole. I had not been fishing long when the first fish big enough to stretch the elastic took the bait. It was a bream, and I had left the net at my swim next door. I walked the, now playing dead fish, back to my swim and just as I attempted to net it, it suddenly came alive and slipped the hook. "Oh my, that's a nuisance." (cleaned up version) I exclaimed.
Just as I was pondering this missed fish over a cup of coffee, a few big drops of rain started to come down. I sat it out for a bit and eventually gave in and donned the wet gear. As I was sitting there watching the rain get heavier, Ben (one of the fishery's bailiffs) arrived on his push bike, a short discussion ensued as the rain got heavier. At this point, Ben decided the rain was too heavy to stand around chatting and went. I too had had enough and decamped to the van with all the gear. It was raining so hard that I could not see out of the windows.
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| Rain... It got worse! |
After about ten minutes it eased up, and I decided to move for the rest of the day. I drove around the venue to Jeff's Lake only to find that all my favoured swims had been taken. When I arrived this morning, I was asked not to fish my usual side of Maze Lake as they had intended to do some strimming there. This they had done, and when I checked if it was okay to fish there now, I was given the green light. A three-point-turn and I was on my way back to Maze, this time fishing on my preferred side.
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| The bream were playing ball... |
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| ...and getting bigger |
Again I started with the tele-pole and I was back to catching small silvers on every drop. Although this can be fun for a while it can get rather boring. I picked up my light swim-feeder rod and had a go with a small cage feeder filled with groundbait and maggots. A light lob and it was fish on. More silvers. With little thought I snipped off the line to the feeder and installed a 30g method feeder which I filled with ground bait and a Bacon Grill baited hook. There is a lot more water in front of me here so a decent cast was possible. I pulled the rod back and cast to the sound of CRACK! At first I thought I had clipped the edge of the tree next to my swim. If only. To my horror I realised I had cracked the shaft of the rod a couple of inches below the quiver tip socket. The resident ducks stopped in their tracks. the bird life stopped flying and just looked at each other while the maggots stopped wriggling. "Oh my, that's really is a nuisance" I said in a firm and very sincere manner.
My fault, the feeder was far to heavy for my lightweight rod. I swapped the reel over to a much heavier feeder rod, and now I was in business. Nice long casts and a few more bream added to my collection of slime, on me and my net.
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| The bigger ones were caught right under my feet |
For the last couple of hours, I decided to experiment and fish in the near margin. I have tried this before with a float rod, and it works so long as the drag is let as light as is possible but still maintaining a slight curve in the tip. This worked really well, better than I had expected in fact. I must have caught a dozen or so bream in the last hour or so, and all of them contributed to my slime pile!
Ralph.
