Long Time Comin'

I was quite pleased with my bream success. I had decided on a target of a 12 pounder this year and of course I had met my target on the first fish. A twelve pound bream may not be big by national standards but it's a good fish for here in the NorthWest these days.

My tench target was more ambitious. I wanted a NorthWest 'nine' again and while I knew it would be difficult, it certainly is possible as I've proved in the past. As it turned out though, it was going to be a lot more difficult than I expected. May ended with no tench at all to show for my efforts and I was already lowering my sights. "An eight will do" I told myself.

Why the tench wouldn't come out to play was a mystery but I took comfort in the fact that most other people were struggling to catch them too. Indeed I never even saw a tench on the bank right through May and early June though they could be seen rolling in several places. The weed was one of the big problems. It's grown up much thicker and faster than usual this year and it isn't hard to spot the reason why. This lake usually has upward of a hundred coots living on it but this year I've never seen more than a dozen. The tufted duck are thin on the water too and with so few birds eating the weed it has grown out of control.

Where are all the birds then? Well that's another mystery but I'm guessing that the very cold winter has seen a lot of them off. With the water frozen for several weeks they will have struggled to find food and I expect a lot of them died.

The lake's been very busy too. The controlling club have stocked a lot of carp and the no-hopers who can't catch in a natural water have flocked to it. Every swim is now occupied every weekend - am I glad I work shifts and can fish midweek!

I've fished a different swim every trip, partly to try and find some feeding tench and partly to find an area where I could present some bait without it becoming buried in the weed. I nearly had a success last week when, after fishing hard and feeding maggots for eight hours I fanally got a bite - only for the hook length to part inexplicably in the middle. I was getting desperate and lowered my sights still further, first to a seven pounder and then to a tench - any tench!

Today, at long last I put a couple on the bank. I fished a deeper area - again to try and avoid the weed and as a result I expected to catch bream. I wasn't disappointed there, taking two bream in the night topped by a big-framed male fish. Both of the bream took mini boilies which pleased me rather since I've switched to a new, fruity flavour and this was the first time I've tried them. I was getting quite a few line bites early in the night and picked the two bream up both before midnight so I thought I might be on for a big hit. The clear sky and nearly full moon put paid to that though, all activity drying up once the white face was on show.

In the morning I started to get line bites to the maggot rods at around ten. This went on for some time until at mid-day the first rod was away and I pulled in a plump five pounder. I've never been so pleased to catch such a modest tench but there was better to come. An hour later I struck into a better fish and after a very hard scrap slid the net under a 7lb 14oz female.

I caught two pike too, one of them a double so it was a nice mixed bag.

Things That go Beep in the Night

It's that time of year when I pack away the pike rods and try for something else and as usual, my choice was going to be between tench and bream. It's been a cool, wet spring so far and coming after a particularly cold winter that made me decide to go for the bream first. Tench are certainly catchable just now but I really prefer to do my tenchfishing in warmer weather when I think they are much more on the feed.

It was to be a two-night session this one, monday and tuesday nights to be precise. The carpers that occupy this lake 24/7 seem to favour wednesday onwards so I expected to have my choice of swims and I wasn't disappointed. There were two other anglers set up when I arrived but it's a big lake with room enough for thirty or more so I got the swim I wanted and it was well away from the others. I did get some company as I was setting up though. A family of swans arrived with the cygnets riding shotgun on their mother's back, it was comical to see them hopping on and off as if they were getting the bus home.

The tackle was in a bit of a state to be honest. I hadn't had time to sort it out beforehand and I decided to do it on the bank after the usual rigmorole of plumbing, putting out a marker, clipping up, spodding (for two hours) and setting up the bivvy etc. etc. By the time I'd got everything done I was quite surprised to find that it was after eight in the evening, no wonder I was feeling hungry! Creamy chicken and mash for tea, that was lovely and with the rods out I could settle in for a peaceful evening.

Noises in the Dark

I was fishing three rods, one with maggot and the other two with mini-boilies and corn fished on helicopter rigs. All three were set up with tight lines and heavy bobbins. This makes for quiet fishing since line bites are often not detected this way but it had another advantage. Tench and bream give quite different bites when you're fishing this way. The strong, bold tench always scream off, stripping line from the baitrunner and making the alarm scream but the bream give drop-back bites and often take no line at all.

Sure enough, at around two in the morning the indicator on the middle rod fell slowly to the ground. I pulled into the fish and knew at once that this was a big bream.

12lb 5oz and my biggest from this particular lake, I was well pleased. It had taken two mini boilies hair rigged on a size 12. I put that one back and immediately had a take on the other rod. Sadly though it didn't stay connected when I pulled into it.

The rest of the night passed uneventfully and the day dawned cold and windy. It's normal to pick up a tench or two in the morning when bream fishing this lake but for once this didn't happen and the indicators held motionless for hour after hour. I was pleased really, because as the day wore on it got wetter and wetter. The showers turned to steady, heavy rain and by mid afternoon thunder and lightening paid a visit too. I managed to dart out in between the lengthy showers to bait up, recast and tidy up the general swim but it was never long before another burst of the wet stuff had me running for cover. It was awful, I felt like a prisoner.

The only bright moment of the day was when a green woodpecker came down and started foraging in the undergrowth nearby. These birds are very shy and hard to spot but I even got a picture of this one - albeit a poor one.

Disappointing Conclusion

The rain stopped shortly before dark and the sky cleared which meant that the temperature plummetted. It was a cold night alright and I had to stay wrapped up in the bag all through it. Just one indication, almost certainly a bream since it was a drop-back but by the time I got to the rod it had stopped. I reeled in to try and find out why - it was obvious, the hook was blunt. I must have turned it on a stone whilst reeling in and not spotted it. Attention to detail Eric, that's what catches fish!

I suppose it could be the combination of lots of cold water entering the lake and a cold night that put the fish off. I rather think though that it was just the old bream enigma that did me. No-one has ever really got to grips with this species, though some may claim they have. Does heavy baiting work? Who knows, it didn't this time.

No tench again on the final morning. That's very unusual for this lake but at least it means I made the right decision in going for bream in the first place. I ended up with a good fish, albeit just the one, and that's better than a blank.

Home Thoughts from Abroad

April's a tricky month, full of decisions. Do I continue pike fishing? Do I try for a spawny bream or two? Do I go for early season tench fishing? I usually split it between all three but this year I decided to stick with the pike and take the opportunity to fish a couple of waters in different countries - and neither of them England!

The Welsh lake I like to fish is one I've introduced to you before. A beautiful tranquil place with crystal clear water and the hardest fighting pike I've ever found. The fishing there is usually very good and the pike respond to all methods. I usually use livebaits and lures but this year I decided to try trolled deads instead of the lives. It was a poor choice I'm afraid, the trolled deadbaits failed to raise a single fish but in fairness the lures did little better. A handfull of small pike and a solitary double figure fish of 15lb 10oz was all I could manage. The fifteen was a lovely fish mind, fighting fit and still quite fat for so late in the season. It took a replicant in deep water.

I had been using a new replicant in perch pattern, my old one having been in the wars a bit but I have to say I was disappointed with it. The newer replicants are stiffer in the rubber than the old ones and have to be retrieved much faster in order to get the tail to waggle as it should. This means they are impossible to fish deep effectively. I chucked it around for a while with no response but eventually took it off and put the old, ragged one back on. The response was immediate, the pike taking it on the first cast.

This was an opportunity for me to try out my new echo sounder as well. It's an Eagle 642c with GPS - doesn't it look good? If you follow the track you might even be able to work out which water I was fishing.

Moving On...

The other water was in Scotland. It's a place I've fished before, many years ago, and fancied trying again so I treated myself to a three day session. I have to say that I didn't catch a lot of fish but I didn't mind that. This was an exploratory trip, searching out the water and its depths and filing away the information gleaned for future use. I wouldn't have minded if I had caught nothing at all but as it happens, in amongst the jacks there was a rather nice fish.

Livebaiting is illegal in Scotland so it was a combination of lures, static deads and trolled deads this time. Once again the trolled deads failed to score and while I did manage to catch a fish or two on static deads, the pike would only take them if they were suspended off the bottom.

It was a different story on lures with a fair bit of action. Most of the fish I hooked were small and a good few of them fell off on the way in. I watched a couple of them hit the lures and noticed that they were just nipping them with the end of their beaks.

One fish didn't nip though, it totally engulfed a purple Fox Raider and wasn't I glad it did. Completely spawned out, it went 23lbs 8oz!

It's Goodbye to All That

I've managed three trips to the Big Lake since my last report but no pictures of fish to show you. It isn't that I haven't caught any you understand, I just didn't bother with any photographs. If I'd been with someone else I would have had a few quick snaps but it takes so long to set the camera up for self-takes when I'm in the boat. Anyway, I thought, there'll be a big fish along any minute and I'll take a picture of that. It didn't work out though.

During the last three weeks I've seen the water temperature rocket from 3.9 degrees to 5.7 degrees and finally a balmy 8.2 degrees and it's brought change with it. The biggest change is the dreaded spring bloom. In April, as the sun gets higher in the sky so it triggers an algal bloom. I expect this year's bloom to be a bad one since we had proper turnover this winter, releasing all those locked-away nutrients to feed the algae. So now the water is green and visibility has dropped considerably.

What's more, the last fish I caught, a twelve pounder, was completely spawned out. They don't all spawn at the same time these pike so there will be others there that are still weighing heavy but they won't be far behind now.

So that's it for this season. I'll still do a bit of piking on one or two cold, nutrient poor waters but it's definitely time to wind it down now.

What did I catch in those last three trips? Three jacks and four doubles up to 17lbs 10oz. Not bad really I suppose.

I did have a couple of amusing incidents on the last day. My only take on a lure ended in frustration when the replicant came back minus its tail. The tail of the one that got away eh!

Oh, and I bumped into a very experienced piker who had obviously forgotten the first rule of boat fishing. When launching your boat, remember to keep hold of the rope!

Bye Bye to the Rivers

The last week of the river season saw me return to an old haunt, and while the results weren't spectacular, I had plenty to file away in the old memory bank for use in later sessions. There aren't many rivers where you can launch a boat and fish unmolested but I do have access to one and there's plenty of water to go at. I managed two days and spent most of that time exploring the stretch, finding out places where the pike might hide and looking in particular for the bait fish. The bait fish were easy to find right enough, huge shoals of them on every bend or in any area where the depth dropped off to more than 12 feet or so. Many of the bends on this river are surprisingly deep with holes of 20ft or more relatively common but the flow is quite strong and the pike are often to be found tucked in close to the bank. That said, they have to feed of course and with the bait fish out in open water the pike are bound to venture out there quite often too.

Midweek sessions meant that I had the river to myself by and large and the peace and solitude that was to be found upriver away from the slipway was very welcome indeed. Just one pike on the first day, a beautifully conditioned thirteen pounder that fought incredibly hard after it picked up my free-roving floatfished live dace. I had a few follows to various lures too but they were all from the same fish I suspect, a smallish pike of five or six pounds. It's a mystery to me why pike follow lures like this without striking when they aren't subject to any amount of pressure and have probably never been caught before. It followed a slider several times then after switching to a spinnerbait it followed that as well. I couldn't stay until late on that first day as I had to attend a meeting at work but as well as that the boat retaining strap had broken on the way to the river and I had to get another one made by Bennetts in St. Helens so I was off the water by two o'clock.

Day two, just a day later, was quite a different affair. Heavy rain had found its way into the river and the level was much higher with a greatly increased flow. I struggled to find the pike in these rather more hostile conditions and only had a single take, again on a free-roving dace, hooking a smallish pike that fought like crazy before shedding the hooks quite close to the boat.

My biggest ever pike from this river went just sixteen pounds. I'll be back later in the year to bag a bigger one that's for sure.

Brilliant Blithfield

This weekend was one that Joe and I have waited for for a very long time. It was to be the last of our four weekends on Blithfield reservoir this winter and the one we expected the most from. We were only able to fish one session at Blith last season, the last one, and it turned up a bumper catch for us with a twenty to me and three twenties to Joe so we were expecting big things.

It's been a tough winter there, as it has everywhere, due to the effects of the coldest winter for ten years. Every session has been dogged by freezing temperatures and the dreaded snowmelt - guaranteed to put pike off the feed. Big fish have been caught but many many people have found it hard going and up until this final session Joe and I had struggled too with only one big fish between us, a 22 pounder to Joe.

This session was different though, temperatures had been rising steadily for a couple of weeks and we were in no doubt that the fish would be on the feed. It pays to have a plan and our plan was a simple one, fish the shallows with lures for the first hour or two and then float-troll deadbaits - a technique which we've used to great effect on other waters but which hardly anyone was using at Blith.

They're Off!

We got away from the landing stages first on day one and raced off to our chosen spot ahead of all the other boats. Conditions were good with a steady, warm southwesterly and good cloud cover and we were frantic to get started. The spot we had chosen was free (well it would be, we were first out) but as we approached it I spotted a cormorant surfacing just a little further along the bank. It seemed likely that the cormorant had been feeding and since cormorants and pike eat the same sort of things I switched direction and we dropped anchor exactly where the ugly black beast had just been. I told Joe that we would have a big fish in the boat within the first five casts and clipped on a sinking slider while Joe countered with his favourite burt and we proceeded to lash the surface with them.

One cast, then two and three, still no fish. All too soon the five casts were made and nothing hit the lures, I was wrong then! Cast number six was made and after two flicks of the wrist the slider was hit. I heaved away at the fish, keen to get it to the boat; "Only small." I told Joe, but as the fish got closer to us it seemed to grow, and it pulled back, boring down under the boat. A good hard pull got it up to the surface and I let out a great whoop as Joe slipped the net under what was obviously a good pike. Fat as a pig and in superb condition she went 23lbs 6oz, my first twenty pounder of 2009 ending a twenties drought of some four months - I was well pleased!

Rubber Band Man

We had a couple more boils, bumps and follows on the shallows before it became clear that the shallow water action was over for the day and we set up our rods to troll baits as per the plan. It was quite a while before we had any action on the baits and it was Joe who had the first run but it came to nothing. Missing takes when you troll deadbaits is something that happens a lot. The big problem is that the bait masks the hooks and prevents a good hook-hold. We lost several fish at Chew the week before though and it had set me thinking about how to overcome it. Bigger hooks helps a lot but I had a little trick up my sleeve which I hoped would help. I've invented a rig I call the rubber-band rig. The picture shows how it works and hopefully will save me typing a long explanation but basically the way it works is that I loop a rubber band around the tail of the bait and attach one of the hooks to this rather than sticking it into the bait. This does a number of things. Firstly it sets a nice curve into the bait, causing it to spin seductively as it's trolled. Also it presents the hook clear of the body of the bait so that bait does not mask it. Finally it allows the hook to move independently of the bait on the strike, also increasing likelihood that the fish will be hooked.

I was already using the rubber band rig and after his missed run, Joe switched to it as well. Four more takes followed through the day. The first three produced a fourteen pounder to me and then we had a jack each, all were securely hooked on the rubber band hook. As the day was drawing to a close, Joe's trolled mackerel was taken by something that was clearly in a different league. He dragged the fish to the boat on the heavy tackle and as it surfaced we could see it was our biggest pike for some time.

I scooped it up in the big boat net and at once the hooks dropped out in the net - whew, that was close! 28lbs 9oz, Joe's second-biggest pike, click the pic and look at that smile.

All Downhill From Here
I'd love to be able to tell you that we repeated our success on the second day but it was not to be. the wind swung round to the north and turned bitterly cold making the shallows much more inhospitable for old Esox. Indeed it seems those fish that were caught came mostly from very deep water on slow-trolled soft plastics and our methods didn't turn up the fish. Only one hit between us all day - and it turned out to be a perch!

Losing my Touch?

The cold, cold weather that's dogged us this winter has finally gone away, and I would love to be able to tell you that the fishing has really picked up - but it hasn't. I've been out quite a few times this past week or two but haven't got a great deal to report. Where shall I start?

Bottom-Bouncing at Blith

First it was a two-day trip to Blithfield with Joe. Conditions were very poor with very low temperatures, little wind and a lake full of snowmelt and considering all that, it actually fished passably well. One or two real biggies came out, though not to us but we did manage a few doubles between us. Joe had fish to 13 pounds odd, that fish falling to a burt, his favourite lure on Blith, and I managed a few fish to 17lbs 11oz, our biggest of the session. The seventeen pounder was taken on a deep trolled "Big Curly" lure. They are good lures for trolling deep and slow since they are heavy, so they stay down and the tail is made of thin plastic so it continues to ripple even when the lure is hardly moving.

Colder Still up North
Next came a two-day trip to the lakes where I found the fishing to be very hard. There was still a lot of snow on the fells and of course as it melted it was finding its way into the lake. As a result the surface temperature had dropped to 3.9 degrees from the 5.3 degrees it was a fortnight earlier. This meant that for once, the lower levels of the lake would be warmer than the surface and not srprisingly, this had put the fish down very deep.

One the first day I fished all morning without a run so I decided to try something new and visit an area of the lake I hardly ever fish. That improved things a little and I picked up a few small pike to around nine pounds or so, two on deadbaits and one on a lure. The next day I went back to the same area and sat it out for the day. Most of the fish came late in the day but I did get six runs in all, one dropped, one missed and four fish landed. Three of the fish were over ten pounds with the biggest going 15lbs 12oz.

I though about staying for a third day but as I was starting to talk to myself quite a bit I thought it best for my sanity if I went home.

Not Having a Chew
Next came Chew Valley Reservoir and once again it was to be a two-day affair. Surprisingly this turned out to be the worst trip of the lot. Joe and I both blanked on the first day, in the company of many others and day two was little better. Joe got our only double - around eleven pounds and I had to make do with a solitary jack. I did hook something very much bigger on a float-trolled mackerel but it shed the hooks after a few seconds so I never got to find out how big it was.