The silence of the a-larms....

  Another evening session on the lake tonight......and the second without any success.

My confidence wasn't dented too much though because there were several others on the lake and all but one blanked.  The one who did catch, managed a single 3lbTench.   There were some well known names fishing opposite me, so I was glad that I didn't make a twat of myself by falling in or casting into a tree or something.

The waiting begins.....

The weather has improved vastly since last week, but why the fish are not responding to anglers baits is a mystery. It did cross my mind that there were a lot of may fly around, could the fish have been preoccupied feeding on them, but there was no sign of fish topping out in the lake at all. The only one I saw porpoised two feet in front of my RH rod.

more waiting in action...!

This is a water of changing moods and will probably fish its head off in a day or two,  when I can't be there !

Hopefully I can time my session better next time !

Back to the lake again....

The day started with some last minute revision (cramming) for an economics exam !  So after spending the afternoon, among other things, desperately trying to remember what the Keynesian cross graph is trying to tell me, I finally headed to a local lake in pursuit of its Tench population.

The weather on arrival at 5:30pm was sunny and pleasant but the cool north westerly wind was still present keeping a sharp chill in the air.

I chucked a marker float around in a familiar area to see if the weed was making any impact yet.  There was nothing to worry about on that front as I had a clear area in front of me for 50 yards at least.   I picked out a level area at the top of a gentle slope rising from 7ft to 6ft and fired in 10 balls of groundbait.  On top of this I spodded in a mix of hemp, pellet, maggots and corn.

The rods were set up, one with a popped up corn and fake maggot cocktail, the other just fake corn.   I cast them out and sat back to take in the lake, checking for any topping fish.  

The next few hours were uneventful, I saw no fish and sat there adding more and more layers of clothing until I was dressed in the same outfit I had on in January !   I didn't expect to catch anything, however saying that the lake temp was 15c so there was always a chance that the odd fish may decide to feed.

As dusk arrived and it slowly but surely got darker, I started to see the odd fish show.  I packed away the non essential items leaving just the rods and net.  The air was now 2.5c on the thermometer, the water 14c.   A fish rolled over my baited area,  "give it another 10 mins" I thought.    Another fish rolled nearby and I half expected to hear an alarm scream any minute.  

The alarms remained silent and the fish still rolled on and off.   I reeled in the rods as it was time to go now (no night fishing allowed).  I'll be back next week though to try again, you have to work hard for your fish on this lake sometimes.

Pressure was 1013 hPa rising trend

More small tales from the canal ...

I mentioned in my previous post that I haven't had much time available for fishing at the moment.   Despite this I did manage to fit in a couple of hours on the canal on Tuesday for a quick session after Perch and Zander.

I tried a new stretch of canal which was very rural and surprisingly quiet in boat traffic.   The recently harvested lobworms were used on a size 4 hook to a running  feeder on 4lb line straight through. This was cast under an overhanging bush on the opposite bank, in front of a reed bed gradually emerging from its long winter slumber.   The Zander rig was my usual float set up with a roach head on a size 2 single hook.

The worm was the first to show indication with a short rise of the bobbin and a double bleep on the alarm. The bait was obviously dropped however and the tail end was missing on retrieval.   The float rod was away next and another small Zander was soon netted, this one putting up more of a fight than usual, giving me a bit of excitement for a moment.   The fight defied its size though as it was only around the 2lb mark.

That was about the last of the action except for one more short tug on the bobbin as a fish checked the worm.   I wrapped things up soon after about 9pm.

The next plan is to get my Tench campaign underway hopefully by next week.   I am practically chomping at the bit especially after reading about all the cracking Tench coming out so far this year.