Napton Reservoir

Fished Napton Reservoir near Southam Warwickshire. The target was to try for some of the large crucians that live there.
I never saw any sign of a bite for the first 3 hours which was quite hard going when your staring at a tiny orange dot on the surface for that long. Luckily after some other anglers in the adjacent few pegs packed up and went, I finally managed to catch some fish right at the end of my session when I moved swims to one of their swims further along the causeway that had plenty of tench topping in it. Almost straight away after casting in I hooked into a fish that stayed deep and took line off the clutch, steadily it powered its way out towards the middle. Just when I thought I could turn it and start guiding it back in towards me, the 2lb hooklength parted above the hook! I quickly re tied a new hook directly to my 4lb mainline and finally caught one of about 2 or 3lb on the corn before the darkness enveloped me and my surroundings.


I managed another similar sized fish just before the light faded to complete darkness about 10pm. Both landed fish were females (I could tell, as they both started nagging me on the way in !). Napton is a lovely little reservoir definatly worthy of another visit, and looking at the size of the Crucians displayed on the info board in the car park, it will offer a great challenge to try to track down and catch one of those beauties.

Catching in a Summer Gale - more like surf fishing !

I met up with Steve to fish at Lakeside near Hinckley today. The target species and reason for choosing the venue was to fish for Crucians on the float rod, with corn and hookable pellet as bait. In what was very difficult conditions caused by the strong NW wind blowing diagnolly at 45 deg across from right to left, I was just able to set up a float and plumb the depth. After about 1/2an hour enough was enough though and even though I had managed a nice Roach on the corn, I had to move to a more sheltered spot as my float kept dissapearing beneath the waves, not ideal for delicate crucian fishing !




First cast in this calmer swim brought me a lovely Golden Rudd, that glowed with an almost flourescent metallic tangerine orange, mixed with red & brown colours.








I then caught a 2lb bream followed by some more small roach, another larger bream about 5lb that gave an amazing fight for a bream.











Finally I managed my first crucian of the season weighing in at a respectable 1lb 10oz.

I had a small common straight after. It took a while longer for the next crucian to come, and only after I had an inspired thought run through my head about trying further out as the fish may have fallen back there. Sure enough soon after I had my second crucian in the net another fine fish of 1lb 8oz













A good short session capped by achieving the target species - in quite difficult conditions.

Felt like the Winter Blues in July!

Fished the Dove again this week on Fri 11th July. Fished through till about 12:30 am in temperatures, once it was dark, that felt more like February than mid summer!!I tried a swim just upstream from last weeks area, but still blanked - things are getting desperate now. I just need a fish to know that I am using correct methods and to restore my confidence in the tactics I am using. I did see a fish caught downstream from me ironically enough in the swim I fished last week but from a peg on the opposite bank. I will have to keep persevering though as I believe the results are poor all over & not just for me at the moment. Sooner or later things will improve, so I want to be on the banks of the Dove when it does when the barbel will come on the feed full tilt, and I will be able to open my Dove account!!

Dove again, 3rd time lucky - but not with the Barbel

Fished Fri 4th July at The Dove again on the same stretch as last time. Never had any Barbel takes however I did catch my first ever Rainbow Trout on the first cast using a Monster Crab Boilie !! which makes sense I suppose as they are all stocked rainbows in this river and would be fed on pellets etc prior to being stocked.