A few of hours...

With all the moving in and the fact that I strained my arm lifting a part of my new-to-me woodturning lathe (but that is a different story), I have not been out fishing for the past few weeks. Today, I got up, grabbed a rod and a few bits. Armed with a box of maggots and a tin of sweetcorn, I took a quick trip to the estate lake. What a difference to living in London. Fifteen minutes later and I was sitting by the water fishing. It was, by now, about 06:15, no one about and the water was flat-calm.

No breeze and flat calm water, first thing

The first cast produced a fierce bite that took me by surprise and instantly broke me off. I am sure that was a tench. After re-rigging I was back in the water and guess what? I caught a small bream. This poor guy had had a run-in with something, at some time in the past. It looks like a heron strike, maybe.

To one and only fish of any size caught today

John arrived a few hours later, and we fished for another hour or so, but although he found a reasonably sized bream to save the blank, that was it as by now, the wind had got up, and the ripples were making it very hard to see the float, even with a big carp float.

What a difference a few hours made

To make it easier to make the decision to leave, there is an event happening in the gardens soon and the riggers were setting up a stage. The clanking of scaffolding, and accompanying loud music was not what I came out for. Just after 10:00, we packed up and called it a day. I had not intended to do a long session today, so it was not a problem for me, I was happy that I had made time for a few hours by the water.

Who parked that by the lake?

With the lake out of action for the next week or so, I will have to look into signing up to the local club and getting some river fishing in. This will be a good way to use the maggots I have in stock. next time I visit the lake, I will have meat, corn and maybe bread with me. Maggots just seem to produce too many small fish st this venue.

Ralph.

At last, a day out by the lake!

The first of many bream...

Here we are at the end of the first week in July, and I have eventually found a day to go fishing. The house move has happened, we are now living in a seaside town, one road back from the seafront. The house is full of unpacked boxes, and there are a million and one things I should have been doing, but I went fishing!

The last time I ventured out, it was Easter, and since then all sorts of things have happened to prevent me from getting out. The main reason for the extended break was, of course, the house move. After living in the same house for just a few months under forty years, it takes a bit of packing and moving. That was massively complicated by the new owner of our house offering us the workshop if we wanted to dismantle and remove it. This we did, and the full story can be found on my workshop blog starting HERE. Follow the 'Newer Post' links at the bottom of the post to follow the whole story.

Tim (the other bloke in this story) actually found time to spend a day on the bank, so I got a concession to take him to the Estate Lake where I had fished at Easter. Tim arrived at our house at around 08:00 and transferred his gear into the van so we could take the one vehicle.

The lake is a short fifteen-minute drive from our new house. What a difference that makes. When we were in London, every trip required a really early start, just to get through the local traffic, then it was always an hour or so each way. Day-ticket costs made me want to get the best out of the day, so that meant a more or less 'enforced' all-day stay. Now with so much more water on my doorstep to fish, and most of it free, syndicated or club waters, I can be far more relaxed about how long I fish for.

We got to the lake, well before 09:00 to find my mate John fishing the lake already. he had done an early one and had been their three and a half hours by the time we arrived. He had caught a few fish early on, but the bites were now slowing as the sun got up. Not deterred by this, The other bloke and I set up camp for the duration.

The first cast as often happens here, produced a bite, and the first bream of the day was landed. This was followed by lots more all of the same sort of size. Tim managed to catch a few too. He seems happy to sit there using whatever rod he has to hand. Today he was using a massive carp rod and sturdy line, proving that it really doesn't matter what gear you use, it is still possible to catch fish!

Who needs fancy gear, Tim still manages to catch fish, and he looks happy!

The best fish of the day for me was the lovely little cursion I managed to catch on a piece of corn. Using maggots on this water is a waste of time as it only produces tiny rudd after tiny rudd, there must be thousands of them in here. Occasionally, the odd small perch or skimmer gets hooked, but that is about it.

Nice little cursion carp was a welcome change from bream after bream

 By late afternoon, we had had enough. Time to pack up, collect our 92-year old Mum and take her back home for dinner and a chat. All in all a very enjoyable day was had by all.

Ralph.