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