Meanwhile ..back at the palace

A trip down to Blenheim Palace with your mates is a great day out, messing about in boats and flinging a few hopeful baits into the water. However the day had started off with a bit of a rush down the M40 to get there as I managed to completely  misjudge the journey time and arrived 30mins late meaning Andy my boat partner had already loaded up the heavy motor and battery onto our vessel, and was waiting ready to go when I  eventually turned up with my kit ( oops !).  We set out onto the eerily misty lake with thoughts of monsters as we headed to the Grand bridge to meet up with the the lads in the other two boats in our group.

The bridge attracts pike and perch at certain times of the year, but not today it seemed as we all failed to find anything despite the whole area being well covered for a hour or so by our three boats.

 

 

Having the Fish finder on board helped to confirm where the depth changes were but I was a bit surprised how shallow and uniform the bottom is in that area, but still with an average four to five feet it's quite deep enough to hold fish of any size. We searched for the old river bed channel under the main arch to find a change in depth to fish to.



it's gotta be a whole inch deeper here !

After a certain amount of inactivity you do tend to get the inevitable itchy feet and then a move is usually called for. We were soon headed back towards the boat house to check depths along the margins. Parallel to the tree line we found depths now in excess of 10 ft and some nice humps and drop offs down to about 14ft were noted as we headed down towards the deep end of the lake near the waterfall.  

We anchored near the dam wall and chucked out the float ledgers whilst casting about with the lure rods.  It wasn't too long when Andy remarked " I never feel that these soft jigs are going to work"  just in time for his rod to hoop over right on cue. "Fish on" came the shout and he wasn't even winding me up ! The fish broke surface and in my head the expected jack suddenly turned into a large perch ? no, surely that's not a carp is it ? no no hang on it's a feckin Trout !

Andy was pretty mortified to catch a trout but I thought it was quite a nice brownie and must have been a good 3lb or so.

 

 

After that little bit of excitement the fishing was slow again and we were soon heading back up the lake towards the arm. We saw one of the other boats ahead of us but reports confirmed that they had not had any luck, however Dan on the third boat had chinned out a nice scraper double on the lure rod which was encouraging news.

the dead cormorant tree

We stopped at various fishy looking spots and found more humps, bumps and drop offs that "felt right"  but didn't produce any signs of a fish.

 

Dozens of spots like this along the way - but all appeared devoid of fish ?

Finally we turned left and headed up the left hand bank of the arm, but hang on what was that ? The fish finder just indicated some fish by bleeping at us!  Then it did it again. We cast around with the lures only to constantly snag them on the sunken branches littering the lake bed a few feet below us. Luckily I managed to get my jig free each time as with strong braid you can simply pull the boat up to the point it's snagged and yank it free.  Andy wasn't so lucky though and lost a couple of wormy type jigs including the trout catcher. After a fruitless search of the arm, and deciding that the fish we found tight to the snags must have been a shoal of bream or silvers and not a shoal of four pound perch, we headed back to the bridge and found Dan working the area meticulously with his light lure set up.

A bit of R&R time

After a chat with Dan and a little siesta it was decided to head back to the boat house for last knockings, The other lads were already in position on the right side of it so we manoeuvred over to the left side allowing room for any boats to come in that wanted to.

Andy soon piped up again with a Cyril Chauquet'esque "Fish on" and landed a jack of 3 to 4 lb.  It was now pressure on for me to get on the score board and try to maintain my clean sheet of non blanks at Blenheim. The other lads looked like they were giving up, but I was still optimistic of a late take especially as we were just into the last hour of light, the witching hour, which is always a special time. Then my float twitched, the bow in the line pulled tighter from tip ring to the float. It fell slack again, I thought it might be from boat movement, then the float moved to the side and line started to tighten "Shall I hit that" ? I asked knowing I was going to anyway and wound the slack up and felt the rod bend into a fish. It was soon up on the surface but was not the hoped for big girl,  just another jack.

However all was not as it seemed, this was only the same bloody fish Andy had just put back 15 minutes before. It must have swam away from the boat up the lake and towards my waiting bait.

on a lure

 

Or on half a herring  - this was one hungry Jack
( check anal fin and eye pattern in both fish)

 That was the last of the days action as we soon hauled our gear from the boat and back up the hill to the cars and headed up the motorway.  No big pike were landed but one of the lads on the other boat reported a good solid run that didn't connect, whilst the other had a run that did connect but unfortunately to a diving cormorant ! I presume it spat the bait and flew off a little surprised !

 

I expect I'll be back again at some point in the future as it's such a serene place to fish, difficult yes, but even if you blank you would do in surroundings that are certainly easy on the eye.

 

 

 

 

A mixture of fortunes

Listening to the traffic report as I got in the car to leave work meant a quick change of plans had me heading down the A46 towards the River Avon at Stratford, instead of heading up to the Trent on the M1, that had now ground to a halt on the section where I would have been travelling along it.  

The river looked low and clear, lower than my last visit a few weeks ago and the vast beds of weed could be seen clearly from my view crossing the foot bridge.  The swim I fished last time was occupied with a couple of hapless noddys, all plastic bags and cheap folding chairs, but luckily the other swim I had in mind was free, so I set up there.  Roach was the first target, so the feeder rod was quickly set up and cast in, bread on the hook and a crumb groundbait mix in the small cage feeder.

The action was pretty slack in fact I struggled to get any bites in the vastly reduced flow of the weir. The fish were there though, they were topping left, right and centre of me but they just couldn't be induced to take the bait.  I switched over to a smaller hook to try maggot and redworm and this gave instant results from the shoals of small perch.  Soon though I hit something that felt a bit better and I quite expected to see a 4lb bream rise up through the top layers and into my net.  I was surprised and then quite pleased to see a small eel wiggling its way towards me instead. Just a shame it was one of the smallest eels I've ever caught, not many points for that ! I contemplated using it as bait for my zander fishing later but decided to do my bit for eel conservation and let it go back.

A whole 7oz of wriggly slime !

Darkness was now drawing in fast so I thought about getting the zander rods ready. I realised that I'd left the deadbaits in the car ! not to worry though as the noddys had now vacated the other swim where I thought I'd have a better chance at some zander. I packed up the tackle and made my way all the way back to the car, dumped the gear I didn't need to lighten the load on the way back, remembered to collect the deadbaits then headed back to the zander swim.

I set up the rests for my preferred long drop bobbin indicators and cast the rods in both together. Just as I was just settling the second bobbin the first rod was away already. The rod hooped round into a satisfying fish and I was into my first river zander. The fish was hooked right in the front of its mouth, the whole rudd engulfed down its throat, thanks to the suggestion from merv to try hair rigged baits - it works, and no deep hooking!

4lb 10oz

After the first fish it was a hectic next half hour that saw me miss the next take on the second rod, then I connected to what I thought was another small zed. It was only when I peeled back the folds of the net that I realised this second fish was very spotty and brown, my first ever brown trout was banked. Not by conventional methods I know but it still counts to me.  Shame it's not worth any challenge points though,  maybe we should include all the game fish next time eh!

1lb 11oz Brown Trout

That was the last of my fish for the night, apart from one more aborted run that didn't hook up. I think the hair was too long on the second rod, the hook  just a little too far from the bait to be as effective - note to self, check length of hair next time.