Too hot to sit at a fishery all day...

Road trip around the Kent countryside in search of tackle shops in the luxury of Tim's air conditioning - Sorry, I mean 'climate control'

Tim and I decided to abandon a trip to Monk Lakes today, on the grounds that we might just end up cooking ourselves in the sun. Instead we decided to stay at Tim's place and have a lazy day visiting the local tackle shops we had not checked out yet (since Tim moved to Maidstone), trim some of the willows, that are getting in the way, and spend a few hours fishing in the river at the bottom of his garden.

To be honest we did more mucking about than fishing. I had recently managed to get hold of a second hand Preston X5 seat box for twenty quid! Okay it is the old version with blue fittings but for that money I couldn't say no. I was only interested in the drawer section to upgrade my old seat box to a five-drawer model. I rebuilt and cleaned up what was left to make a second box (X3) for Tim. With the same lot came an 8.5m margin pole, again for no money, which I also passed on to Tim. As Tim had never pole fished or had a seat-box before it was a bit of a struggle to get him set up and fishing. The pole turned out to be very difficult to use off one of the jetties due to the over hanging trees, deep water and an abundance of tree roots close in.

We got the basics sorted but decided it would be much easier to continue this exercise at a commercial where we had a bit more room and fewer trees! By now it was mid afternoon and Tim got a rod out and rigged a ledger. Patience paid off and he managed to catch a couple of small (not tiny) roach. This made Tim's day as he had never been successful with corn before... He is still learning and enjoying every bite.

Now, either that is a big net or a small fish - Tim insisted it was a big net!

While Tim was fishing I had spent a couple of hours just watching the water. Throwing in two or three maggots close in attracted a flurry of excitement as a good number of dace moved in. I put in a small handful and the water erupted. I had been fishing a swim feeder earlier with heavy gear as I know there are some big fish out there. The heat makes me lazy and I could not be bothered to walk back up the garden to completely re-rig, so I removed the feeder and hook length from the 12lb line and with a loop-to-loop connection I added a ultra light hooklength with a size 18 B911 hook. One white maggot was impaled on the hook and slowly allowed to sink into the water. Almost instantly I had a fish. I could have sat there an pulled dace after dace out of the water all between four and five inches long.

I have not caught so many dace in one go before. I think next time I will use a lighter set up and a small float, as most of the fish had taken the bait in and I had to use my fine disgorger to free them. I think a float will enable me to strike before they have a chance to devour the bait.

All in all it was a good day and it was not too hot sitting there under the trees.

Ralph.