Four Crosses Fishery, Moat Pool 22/05/08

I arrived at about 7 o clock and after a few quick chats with some people already fishing it appeared the day was going to be slow, nobody seemed to be having bites and there were carp thrashing about everywhere clearly spawning. A little put off i set up two rigs; the first, on size 12 elastic 4.75lb line through to a size 14 hook. The second a straight forward dibber on a 14 elastic through to a size 12 hook for larger baits fished in the margins later in the day. The pool has an island about 10 metres away from almost every peg on the pool (resembling a moat, hence its name) and was relatively shallow in my peg being between 2 and 3 feet all the way across. I opted to fish about a foot away from the reeds on the far side as there was a bit of activity.

This is what i could see from my Peg:

I cupped in two full cups of fishmeal pellet with a few pieces of sweet corn and left it to settle for about 10 or so minutes. For the first hour i fished corn over the top, having only 3 bites landing one fish, which was a Skimmer about 12oz's. In the next half an hour the situation had not improved and i had added only 2 F1's when the float slid under i was into a much better fish the elastic slid out, bottomed and the hooklength pinged before id even had chance to think about shipping on extra sections. Not the greatest of starts. I rerigged and upped the rate of loose feed going in over the top and it seemed to get the amount of bites up and i was soon catching some more F1's and a cracking Crucian Carp/ Brown Goldfish (unsure of species) which weighed 2lb 11oz. Fortunately a mate had come up to see how i was doing at the time so i managed to get a decent photo. See below. Shortly after a Bream of around 2lbs was also in the net.

A few more small skimmers and F1's followed. Then, again, the float slid under and before i had time to throw my pole backit was buried in the reeds and another 5lb hooklength snapped in an instant. Another hooklength on and i continued in the same vein, i was catching fairly regular small mirrors commons and F1's between 4 and 16 oz's.

However it was the evening that yielded the best sport, as the Tench began to feed and at around 5pm i was having them one after the other to about 1lb and one that was about 2lb. They continued well into the evening and i was catching them so quicky i discarded any ideas about fishing in the margin swim i had been feeding for an hour or so. The tench continued with one or two Brown Goldfish coming to the net amongst them as well. A sample of the Tench i was catching are below:

At about half 7 it had begun to die off and I had another half 5 start the following morning to fish Calf Heath Reservoir so i packed up after a very pleasing day. The start had been slow but I had caught steadily all afternoon and had some nice fish in the pocess. Had i have had a keep net in i might have struggled to take it out come the end of the day. So all in all are very enjoyable day save for the disappointment of missing out on two clearly bigger fish.

Tight Lines.

Danny

Hanley Park Lake 13/05/08

Having seen my higher education all but put a stop to my fishing over the previous 6 months or so, I was itching to get back on the bank and shake off the cobwebs. Having finished my exams just a few days previous. I decided to fish a local free water around 300 yards from my student accomodation, located within Hanley Park, Near Stoke on Trent. On speaking to one or two anglers i had seen fishing the place, it was apparent there wasn't a great head of fish in the water, however I was told that there was still a healthy amount of skimmers and roach that average about 2-3oz's with a good chance of getting amongst one or two tench in the process. I was also told there were large carp present but they were very elusive and rarely caught.

So i was up at around 6am, (a comparitive lie-in from my fishing of yesteryear!) after a quick breakfast and a brew i arrived at around 6.45 -7am and after a quick survey of one side of the lake i opted for a sheltered peg with a great deal of shrubbery and bushes to my right and spread my tackle to the left in order to givemyself plenty of room.

This is what i could see from where i was sat.

Pic 1

Pic 2

I began to set up, rather slowly it has to be said, as it took a while to get back in the routine of everything that need to be done. Once my pole was unpacked i set up two different rigs on my 6 and 8 elastic. The 6 rated rig a shallower rig for use at around 6 sections out and the 8 elastic rated for fishing between 11 and 13 metres if the dried up further in as a back up.

I carried a slection of baits with me as it was the first time i had attempted to fish the place. Amongst the baits were red and white Maggot, some Casters, A tub of corn, Hemp, Earthworms dug up the previous evening, and some Supercup groundbait which i mixed 50/50 with some breadcrumb.

Before i plummed up on my pole, i set up my quiver tip rod with a straight forward running leger rig, with a 12 inch or so hi tech 0.13, 5lb hooklink tied to a size 12 Animal in order to give myself some sort of chance if one of those elusive carp came along as well as keeping a nice low diameter line to not spook the smaller fish. I lobbed that out with half a fat earthworm nicked with a red maggot towards the island under the Willow tree (the left of picture 2, above), in an attempt to catch a better Bream or a Tench.

I plummed up my pole rigs and opted to feed a couple of nuggets of ground bait and a cad pot full of hemp, and fish over it with double red maggot on the 6 elastic on the near line. It was about 4 foot deep with no real underwater features to speak of. I was into a few bites first put in, and failed to connect with any of them. I rebaited my hook, dropped the bait in and connected with a small skimmer of around 2 oz's. As i shipped back, my clutch on the quiver tip began to scream and all of sudden i was in a right state! I slung my pole back on the roller and quickly unhooked the skimmer and put it into the keepnet whilst trying to absorb the lunges from my rod between my knees.

I turned my attention to the quiver tip rod and began to play what felt like a reasonable fish, and certainly a nice one for the standard in the water. After a minute or so i had a nice olive flanked Tench splashing above the landing net, for something like 1lb 12oz - 2lb possibly more. (see below) The early signs looked very promising for a water that was allegedly quite difficult.

To give an idea of the acale the box of dust shot i placed in the net with him are 9cm in diameter, apologies for the photo not being great but i wasn't willing to take more than one picture in order to minimise stress on the fish.

I used the same tactic on the quiver tip and placed it about 5 yards shorter than the cast previous and tightened up. After all the commotion i lobbed another nugget of groundbait in with a small spray of hemp on the pole and began an hour of the most frustrating fishing of my life. Bites were fairly regular, some of them on the drop, others within one or two minutes of the float settling. I would often connect with the fish hit them for about 5 seconds or so then theyd spit the hook. I added 3 or 4 bream and roach to my net all of similar size to that first one within an hour or so which left me rather disappointed. A typical example can be seen below.

I opted for a smaller hook (20s) to try and remedy the problem, with my logic being that perhaps the fish were not mouthing the hook as well as the bait but again the same problems. So i opted for a larger hook (16s) to see if that made any difference, bites were slower but i connected with a higher average of fish but it was still frustracting missing an awful lot of bites. This theme carried on towards midday when bites began to dry up in the heat of what ,was in truth, quite a nice day. I tried further out which i had been feeding for the majority maggot and hemp in a slightly more sporadic pattern than my tight feeding area closer in, essentially to notice which type of feeding pattern was more effective. There were even less knocks but i had one or two better fish between 4 or 6oz's.

(unfortunately i don't think either of the pictures below are done justice)

This theme of fish spitting hooks carried on all day and after opting back to my shorter line, bites were getting harder to come by and even harder to get on the bank! There was no more action on the quiver tip rod save for two small skimmers picking up double sweetcorn. So I tried a cage feeder with the Groundbait previously mentioned but they weren't interested in it.

However as the sun started to set, the place picked up a little bit, bites on the pole line were far less finicky and the Quiver Tip rod was more alive than ever, taking a few more Tench again on the same combination of Earthworm and red Maggot. As well as a Tench coming to the pole line after i fished double caster. A couple of them can be seen below, although they were all much of a muchness somewhere between 12 and 20 ozs. I then proceeded to add quite a few fish to the net and the day had begun to feel a little more worthwhile.

However, once the time hit around 5.30 the lake switched off as quick as it switched on and i was left trying to hit few and far between bites adding just a couple more fish to my net. So at 6.30 after a fairly exhausting and frustrating day fishing, i decided to call it a day.

Weighing in with a net weight which bottomed the 11lb scales i had with me, although in all truth and honesty it wasn't by much. I think a 15lb net of fish would be a little bit of a generous estimation so im going to settle with a guesstimate of somewhere between the two.

However, despite the frustration at the lack of hitting bites, i still had a good day in respect to the other three or four anglers fishing further round to my left, bemoaning just about everything as to why they hadn't caught many, the most quoted as being caught was a man with 3 tench and around 10 skimmers in about 6/7 hours. I had 6 tench the largest being the one i caught in the morning and the samllest around 12oz and around 50 silvers to add with it I think with hindsight next time i might fish with a rig that gets the bait down a little quicker as well as having a large amount of tip showing, as thinking about it afterwards fishing with a dotted down float i was striking at what i thought were bites and in fact weren't. I'd definitely come here again however, as it's a satisfying place to fish knowing you're not fishing 5 feet of water and 4 and a half foot of fish. I'll post a report again next time. Until then....

Tight Lines!

Danny