Time for a break?

Another frustrating piking blank the other day has just about finished me off. When I fished with Nige Grassby a lot he had a knack of picking a rod up, giving the bait a twitch and getting a take. If that didn't work a pike would grab the deadbait as he wound it slowly back. Whenever I tried that I would twitch the rig into a snag. I certainly don't remember catching any pike doing it. Yet twice last time out I had baits nailed as they got close to the bank. Had the high pressure got them on the lookout for moving targets? The first time the pike didn't do much, and I think it might have dropped the bait. The second time it was definitely moving off with the lamprey head. I still managed to miss it. The bottom hook was free of the bait when I wound it in. Maybe it had been loose when I struck. I'll never know.

I'll also never know how big these fish were. Pikers often console themselves when they miss a take by saying it must have been a jack. Sometimes it will be. But what about those times the bait looks like a chainsaw victim? Long, deep slices across it. Missed takes aren't always from small pike. Big ones can be picky too.

With frost forming on the rods, net, unhooking mat and everything else close to the ground I packed up in the dark. The main reason I'd gone in the first place was to see if putting reflective tape on a float would make fishing into dark easier without resorting to isotopes or starlights. Not using bobbins as well as floats it's hard to detect takes which don't steam off and take line when the float is hard to see. The reason I got the last take was because I was winding the rig in  few yards at a time to keep it visible in the gathering gloom. The tape worked. I didn't really need to put my head torch on full beam to pick the float out. A camera's flash really picked it out for a photo. I'm not sure I'll be bothering again though. However I did notice that when the sun shone on the tape it stood out well against a dark background. So there might be more mileage in the idea.

On that downer I decided against a final piking trip today. Regardless of my lack of success I just don't feel motivated to fish for pike at the moment. Daft as it seems I still find myself wanting to catch eels! With that in mind, a mind currently preoccupied with photography plans, I think I'll give the fishing a break for a while. Possibly until the weather warms up, the days lengthen, and I can face spending a night or two each week under the stars. Although I'm sure I'll start getting withdrawal symptoms long before April.

This lack of enthusiasm might also be a combination of having I've fished myself out this year and rapidly encroaching old age. Certainly during the summer I seemed to be going a lot, and catching regularly. There aren't many pages left in my little Black n' Red notebook either. I'm certainly not feeling as young as I used to...

While the sizes of fish I've caught haven't been huge they have been acceptable to me, especially considering I haven't left the county to catch any of them. Lancashire isn't exactly a Mecca for specimen hunters.

• Bream - 7-12
• Carp -21-08
• Eel - 4-01
• Roach -1-10
• Tench - 6-06
• Pike -18-10

If I do manage a good long break, those eels had better watch out because I'll be after them every chance I get!

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Anyone seen my marbles?

After failing to take my brolly with me on Sunday evening's eel session, even though I knew it was going to rain a bit, I discovered my overtrousers aren't as waterproof as they used to be. The eels didn't like the rain much and apart from one stealing one of my baits I was untroubled by them. The chill in the wind and the miserableness of sitting in the rain decided me to give up on eel fishing for this year. That left me in a bit of a state of limbo. It still didn't feel right to go piking, not anywhere close to home and I can't be bothered travelling, so what to fish for?

That wasn't a decision I had to make for a few days because the evil of work prevented me even having the time to get in an evening session until Thursday. Remaining undecided it wasn't until Friday afternoon that I snapped and put the gear in the car to have my first try for the almost-tame sturgeon.  I'd had a look at the palce a few weeks ago, tackle in the car, and got as far as putting the banksticks in before I realised my reels were loaded with the forbidden braided mainline. I managed to avoid paying for a ticket in the few minutes before I left in embarrassment, so it wasn't all bad.

Last minute sessions fishing for something different are always likely to result in something being left behind. I could have sworn I put the tub of sturgeon bait in my Multi-Mat, just like I could have sworn I put a stick of Pepperami in it a week or so back. The Pepperami disappeared into thin air and it looked like the sturgeon bait had too when I came to stick it on my second rod.

I'd arrived around two pm to find three carp anglers blanking away as I walked round the tiny pond. Previously you could have driven round the perimeter of the pond, but after recent rain it looked a bit dicey. I picked a swim as far from anyone else as I could and with firm ground behind it. Everywhere looked as unlikely or likely as everywhere else so I wasn't too fussed about swim selection. This time the eel rods had mono on the reels. All I had to do was tie up a couple of hooklinks to comply with the maximum size 8 barbless hook rule and I'd be in business. The bailiff came round before I had the first rig tied and I handed over the cash.

As I'd taken my eel/catfish tackle box the best I could manage for the hooklinks was 80lb kevlar braid. This proved to be a struggle to get through the eyes of the hooks. But I managed it. The simple plan for this first session was a wafter on one rod and sturgeon bait on the other. While I was rerigging the rods I spotted some bubbling to my left and it seemed as good a place as any to swing out the wafter with its attendant bag of pellets. Then I tied up the other rig and that was when I discovered my bait was missing. Everything came out of the back of the Zafira but still no sign of it. Arse. If I hadn't paid for my ticket I'd have done another runner! Plan B. Fish for c*rp with both rods on the off chance the mug I was after would make a mistake. I had some 16mm pellets in the pellet tub so I chucked one of those out.

There was a definite autumnal feel to the day. The leaves on the distant trees were shades of umber and terre vert, pheasants were scurrying into the maize and a migrant hawker was on the wing. Despite the sun a cool wind was scudding the fluffy white clouds across the cerulean sky and making it cool enough for me to need my fleece.

I'd not been there long when two more vehicles arrived and the anglers walked round the pond. When they got back to their swims it was obvious they were on for at least one night. I'm not sure if I was amused or annoyed by their behaviour. Amused I guess. First the carp cradle was erected, then the chairs, followed by the bivvy, and finally the ritual hammering in of banksticks. It was while watching these antics that another patch of bubbles spread across the surface right where my wafter had landed. Minutes later the alarm sounded and I found myself with the ten footer bent into a carp. It didn't get the chance to take any line and despite pulling a bit was soon in the net where I left it while I got the scales and zeroed them.

Net onto mat, fish into sling, sling hoisted and scales read, fish slipped back. All nice and simple. I only weighed the thing because I'm crap at guessing carp weights and I thought it looked a double, which it was. Rebait, recast, consider packing up. Less than an hour's fishing didn't seem like good value for how much I'd paid and what I'd caught, so I thought I'd stick it until five. Around half three I started watching a chap on another pond playing a fish on the pole. At four thirty I saw him net it. What a lot of fuss to land what looked like a not very big carp.

It was about this time another carper arrived and set up his massive overnight erection two swims away from me. I departed shortly afterwards. Note to self: avoid Friday afternoons here.

Despite the obvious drawbacks of other anglers on a tiny pond I'll be back a few more times when I'm bored. I saw some interesting signs which might lead to something unexpected. But will probably lead to more pesky carps. No matter what happens, I'll be double, and triple, checking that I have everything I need wherever I fish and whatever I fish for next time out!

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Surpise, surprise... Surprise.

You'd imagine I'd have learned by now that one new item of tackle is the kiss of death for a session, so a multitude of new items and new rigs will be apocalyptic. Although it is getting late in the year Wednesday night was forecast to be hot so a trip to Yosemite Lodge to play with my catfish hooks and some other gear was in order. After catching a supply of livebaits I stuck two out, one on a pop up leger rig the other on my slightly modified dumbell rig. The third rod started out with three 16mm halibut pellets on a running leger.

All I've done to the dumbell is fit different sized polyballs. The idea being to prevent the bait pulling the one closest to the lead under as it swims away. It works, to a degree, although I doubt it matters. All rigs were fishing the Varivas Chinu hooks in various sizes. New hooks must be the most certain jinx of all. Or maybe not.

New rods usually mean a string of fruitless trips. If only one rod out of three is new than that's the one that won't get a take in ages. As it turned out the rod I was hoping to put a bend in did get a take. But it was dropped. The legered livebait had been savaged during the night. What I'd imagined were bleeps caused by the bait getting agitated must have been a dropped take.

As it got dark I gave up on the pellets and set up a suspended worm rig. This was using a more catfish oriented hooklink to present a bigger bait than one or two lobs for eels. Unfortunately my lobworms had pegged out. One or two had some life in them but the majority were limp. Thankfully not turned stinky, so I shoved a good bunch on the maggot clip and cast the rig out.

Twice during the night, which was so warm I didn't need a fleece until morning when the wind and rain arrived in the morning,  the worms got attacked by something. The short lifts of the bobbin suggested that something small might be nibbling at the worms. Roach or perch, perhaps. But both times the twitches turned into slow steady runs. Which I missed. Both times the worms were gone. I was reduced to using dendrobenas. As many as I could cram on the maggot clip and more on the hook itself.

This got almost immediate attention. The twitches followed by slow runs and missed strikes continued into daylight. I was beginning to wonder if tiny kittens were the culprits when, at five to eight, I got a surprise when my strike met sold resistance. Whatever it was didn't fancy coming my way and a tug of war ensued. This didn't feel like a kitten. After a few yards it didn't feel like a cat either. That side to side head shaking suggested eel. This was confirmed when a big head broke surface. Amazingly the fish went in the net first time.

All became clear. Although it was a big (for me) eel most of the worms being on a hair rigged clip had probably prevented it engulfing the lot as I'm sure a catfish would have. The small barb on the Chinu made getting the hook out easy. Much easier than holding the darned thing for a trophy shot. Hence the photo below!

With that mystery answered I reverted to the pellets. Once more I got a surprise when they steamed off at a rate of knots. And another when the culprit turned out to be a carp of about seven pounds! Sod that. Time to try squid. My experience of using squid as bait for eels got me thinking of ways to mount bigger pieces for catfish. Another of my ideas was put into practice. The hair goes through the bait towards the head end, a Fox 'Pellet Peg' acting as the stop. The hook isn't nicked into the bait at all. To streamline things for the cast the hooklink is half-hitched around the tapering part of the squid. In the photo below one half-hitch is used, but this was just my starting point. There's more experimenting to be done with hook positions if I start using the bait more in the future.

Both the previous fish had come close in where I'd baited with trout pellets so I cast the squid well out away from the feed. I had a funny feeling that I should have fished the windward bank instead of getting the wind behind me. Then again, when the wind picked up and drove the rain it would have been a touch unpleasant with it in my face. Thankfully the forecasters were on the ball and by tennish the sun was shining and drying things out nicely. Even the wind was warmer.

When the alarm sounded once more and the spool on the squid rod was spinning at an alarming rate I knew it had to be a cat. Wrong. A silly little carp had decided to try a squiddy snack. That was the final straw. Although I cast another bait out it was time to draw a line under the session before I caught any more carp. As it turned out my timing was good. I had barely got in the car when the rain returned.

Three fish landed. None of my target species and all three to the one rod that didn't have new line on the reel and the one which was my least preferred of the three to use for catfishing. The Chinu hooks look like they might suit me, at least in sizes larger than a 2, but the rod and mainline I wanted to evaluate didn't get a testing. The suspended worm rig worked again  for the eel... It looks like it'll be a good long while before I try it for cats again, and that eel has knocked another target for the year off my to-catch list. So I'm back to being stuck for inspiration. Or am I?

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Dreams and nightmares

Despite the carp not being difficult to catch at the Railway Pond the challenge lies in trying to avoid the small ones. With that in mind Monday evening saw me arriving as the rain began to ease off determined to fish bottom baits as there had always been too many ravenous micro-carp attacking anything that floated on the surface. Feathers, weed, bits of plastic with hooks in them. Anything. Sorting out a better fish off the top was a lottery.

Needless to say when I scanned the water there were carp cruising and basking in one corner. None of them the micro-carp. Where was my surface fishing gear? At home... I'd have to stick to plan A. It didn't go to plan though. The rain had coloured the already coloured water even more so I wasn't able to fish my baits on the line where the bottom disappeared, which is where the better fish seem to cruise. But I did my best by fishing close to the reeds with baits that were too big for the micros to get in their tiny mouths and too hard for them to whittle away. It didn't deter the not-quite-micros. A couple of takes were aborted, one fish was hooked ad landed. It wasn't the size I was after, but I hadn't blanked.

Tuesday saw me itching to get out  fishing and feverishly checking the weather forecast to find the driest window for an overnighter. Tuesday looked the best chance. I fancied a tench session but without any hemp, and leaving it too late to go get some I had a last minute change and swapped the tench rods for the carp rods and threw a bag of 6mm halibut pellets in the bait bucket.

It was getting on when I pushed my barrow to the Petting Zoo, my swim choice being made on the basis of comfort as much as anything. Comfort and an overhanging marginal bush to my left. The bush spot got liberally laced with pellets and the sure-fire pop-up plastic pellet got dropped over them. More pellets went out by catty to my right, a little further out, and to buoyant grains of plastic corn were swung out there. The middle rod had a wafter on the hair and a small bag of pellets on the hook. This was cast straight out as far as I could manage simply because a daft carp had jumped out of the lake a couple of times in that direction.

The air was still, the lake flat calm, roach were topping, grebes chasing each other. A kingfisher flashed by. A family of mallards, the ducklings tiny, avoided me. These were nice to see as only the other day I'd been thinking I'd only seen a couple of ducklings this year, and they were only seen once. Were there predators at work on the lake? Fingers crossed for this brood.

Everything was in place and the kettle on by nine thirty. Still warm enough for just the t-shirt it was feeling muggy. Thinking there might be a chance of rain I'd taken the Groundhog. Not much food though. My intention being to pack up around eight in the morning. Grub consisted of a Mars bar and four Northern Energy Bars (Chorley Cakes!). There was an emergency tin of beans and sausage just in case the fish fed like mad and I had to stay on longer than anticipated.

Roland came to see me, picking up pellets I'd dropped by the rods. He didn't keep me awake and I was dozing by twelve thirty when an alarm woke me. It was one of those go up and hold, drop back, go up, hold bites that Brenda and Brian give so I took my time getting to the rod. Sure enough Brian had picked up the corn and was too lazy to move the three ounce lead.

A quick refreshing of the pellets and back to the Land of Nod. When I awoke I was wondering why I wasn't at the lake I'd just caught two small carp from. Coming round I realised debating whether they were worth weighing before I slipped them back had all been a dream. Almost four and the dawn chorus was in full voice. Brew. Energy Bar. Get up, rebait and recast.

Try as I might I couldn't get back to sleep. The grebes were still being aggressive to each other. They can't half shift when they swim just below the surface making a bow wave. They also make a hell of a racket running along the surface to escape! The sounder made a bit of a racket just after five thirty when the middle rod came alive. The rods were angled down and it's tip pulled up as the baitrunner spun furiously. The weight on the end of the line felt as lively as a bream but considerably heavier. The fish did nothing all the way in then went daft in the margin fouling the line of the corn rod. I had to cut the line on the wafter rod and wind the corn rod in. Ending up cutting both lines and starting from scratch after weighing and returning a mirror with a nasty round lesion on one flank. With the mess sorted out I got everything back in place.

Half an hour later I pulled out of something that had picked up the wafter. Forty minutes later that rod produced a three pound plus roach/bream, which felt rather like the fish that had come adrift. By now I could see plenty of bubbling in the area the three bites had come from. Not the sort of bubbles that come up without assistance from the bottom, but clouds of fishy bubbles. It had to be worth putting a second bait out there. I wound the corn in and swapped it over to a pop-up boilie on a rig that no self respecting carper would use.

 Less than half an hour after casting the two longer range baits out the wafter was off again. A repeat performance ensued with the double figure common coming to life in the margins. It really fought above its weight. I was knelt by the rods trying to drag it into the waiting net when... ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ.
Nightmare. The pop-up had been picked up and definitely not by Brenda!

The gloves came off and the common netted. With one foot on the landing net pole I picked up the right hand rod and began to drag the offending fish in. It went solid. I kept the pressure on. It wagged its tail and came free. The weed is coming up now, sparse and grassy at the moment it's easily broken out of. There was no messing about with this fish. The hook was a big 'un so I could give it some stick without worry. Although this one felt a bit heavier it didn't get a chance to do the margin dance. Head up and in the net at the second attempt. It would have gone in first time I'd I hadn't misjudged things. Thankfully the common had sunk down low and was sulking. Lift the net and inspect the chaos. No option but to cut both lines and lift the pair on to the mat.

A quick weigh for the common and slip it back. The fat mirror was going to have its photo taken when I'd got things back to normal.

I got the baits out and put the kettle on for a brew to chill. That lasted until two tench in ten minutes or so created more chaos. Baits back out and finish the brew. Right. Set the camera up, wind the rods in, take the photos. Simple. The tripod and mat were in place, I'd taken a test shot. One rod was wound in. The second was off again! If the camera hadn't been ready to go I'd not have bothered taking a selfie with that tench, but it would be practice for the carp.

Wind the third rod in and struggle with the fat, slimy bugger. Check the photos on the screen. Wipe the muck off the lens and take a couple more. Watch the fish waddle off and get the rods out again.

I have the feeling that while I was messing about with the camera the feeding spell had ended. A light breeze had sprung up and was ruffling the surface. At least I got some peace. The eight o'clock deadline was already passed, so I extended it until ten. That was until another bream came along, this time to the wafter, as I started to tidy things up. One more brew then off at ten thirty unless the fish thought I should stick around for lunch. They didn't. With one of my targets for this summer ticked off I can get the eel rods out now. Or I could get myself some hemp and have another go for the tench. They don't look to have spawned yet.

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Variety

No matter how much fishing you do it always finds a way to prove you wrong. Recently I'd been thinking about my lack of roach on fake baits despite having caught them on other maggots and boilies from waters where I've used plastic for tench a great deal. Then, right out of the blue, I catch roach on imitation baits on two trips to a water. Half a dozen over a pound to fake corn and pellets! There's no rhyme or reason to it. If it hadn't been for the one on the pellet, fished with a small bag of real pellets on the hook, I might have put it down to a bed of hemp and corn. Although I've used that baiting approach for tench plenty of times. No. Fish are perplexing. Which is why we keep trying to catch them.

The first encounter with plastic eating roach also resulted in some plastic eating tench, and some that showed no fear of the scary boilies. It's all too easy to write a bait off as useless on the basis of a couple of blank sessions. I reckon most baits are acceptable to most fish most of the time. The main reason they don't catch is not having any fish find them. The next reason is them being presented in a way that is ineffective. Over a prolonged period some baits may appear to be more successful for certain species than others, but even then it might just be a coincidence.

Not only have I caught roach on plastic corn, I've also had a small rudd pick a grain up. The list of species I've caught on static fake baits keeps on growing.

Catching roach on tench rods isn't a lot of fun when they're towing round two ounce leads. I'll have to have a go for them with the right gear later in the year. I'm not sure I'll be brave enough to go all out on the plastic baits for them, but I might chance it on one rod.

Using bits of foam as surface baits counts as using fake baits in my book. And the chance of some easy action from the suicidal Railway Pond fish is hard to resist when the weather is hot and I've an hour or three to spare.

It seems that the bigger fish hang back from the ravening hordes of piranhas, picking off the mixers they miss. Not that I've landed anything big, big, but big is relative. One advantage of the foam is that the little pests mostly can't manage to get it in their gobs. Trying to avoid the tiny fish is the hardest thing at this place, and what keeps me going back I think.

Common blue damsels are, well, common. Four-spotted chasers and black-tailed skimmers fairly numerous. I've even seen a lone banded demoiselle. Watching these insects go about their business to the aural accompaniment of reed warblers on a sweltering afternoon is a certain sign that summer is in full swing.

I'm gradually getting organised for my short sessions. I still try taking too much gear with me though, and am wondering if doing it the way I do for my winter piking might not be a better idea - sling, rucky, chair. Still, the little bits bag I bought holds my essentials with room for more. I even found a smaller pouch for my compact camera than the one I'd been using. It fits in the bits bag quite neatly, as does my notebook, headtorch, radio, sounder box, permits and sunglasses. It's a two-sided bag with a centre flap that Velcros to form a lid for one or other of the sides. Not perfect, but it'll do for now.

On yesterday's short session, the plastic pellet not only accounted for a roach, it was picked up by the mug tench, which has put on a bit of weight. These two fish managed to christen one of my ten foot Torrixes. Christened but not tested as neither of them did much in the way of pulling back. The tench felt like a bream all the way in until it was under the rod tip. The roach felt like a bit of weed on the hook.

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Tip top

Maybe it's an age thing, having to make a lot of tackle in my youth, but it's rare that I use an item of tackle in the way the instructions describe or without modifying it in some way. Unless it's something simple like a bankstick.

Even though my repaired floater controller is now working better than before I still purchased a spare. The only ones the shop had were the Fox Exocets. A bit hi-tech for my liking, but needs must. Being designed for modern carp anglers it comes fitted with a snug sleeve to take the supplied swivel so it becomes semi-fixed. All well and good, but that way should you want to alter the distance from controller to bait it means changing the hook length. Also, if you are using a hooklength longer than your rod tip it's impossible to fold the rod in half with the hook in the bottom eye of the rod top. I pulled the insert out and rigged the controller between two beads and floats stops to make a fully adjustable, but still semi-fixed, set up just as I do with my old controller.

It works just as well. In fact it took about ten minutes to prove it worked after I started throwing mixers in last night. That the fish fell off was no fault of the controller. A few minutes later the thing got dragged under as a suicidal chub sucked down my bit of foam and set off at speed.

Carp and chub were really going mad for the mixers. Some of the carp looked to be bigger than the average. Six pounds or so. One or two looked bigger still, and a possible double was feeding a rod length or so out. The next carp to succumb to my fake bait wasn't a double, but it was a common. If only all carp looked like this one I'd be happy. Mirrors and leathers would be turned into fertiliser if I had my way in an attempt to purify the carp gene pool.

This was just a snatched session to put a bend in a rod before I headed to The Petting Zoo to fish into dark. Well, I would have fished into dark if I'd not left my headtorch at home. That meant that as soon as I started getting liners and fish were rolling it was getting too dark to see what I was doing and I had to pack up. This is the continual problem of trying to swap gear from one bag to another. I think I'm going to have to find a small pouch to put in the essentials required no matter which bag I'm using. Permits, sounder box, headtorch and anything else I will need. The pouch my new ET sling came in might do!

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GAS

There's an affliction which gets frequent mentions on camera and guitar forums which I've never come across in the angling world, despite anglers exhibiting the very same symptoms. Gear Acquisition Syndrome (GAS) is the craving for shiny new things when you don't really need them. There is no known cure, and while succumbing to temptation is always done on the pretext that the item purchased will fulfil the patients needs for evermore, it never does. As soon as a newer model of the same thing is released to the market the  symptoms return. Without fail.

When it comes to fishing tackle I tend to have my GAS under control. I have all the rods and reels I need for the species I fish for. This is probably why I find myself turning to carp. I don't have much in the way of carp rods and reels so fishing for carp is a good excuse to acquire some new gear! As far as rods go I always justify building myself some new ones on the grounds of R and D. I need to know how rods behave to advise customers what particular rods are suitable for.

I also use my personal builds to experiment with various aesthetic aspects such as handle designs and thread colours. That's why I've recently completed a pair of ten foot 2.75lb Torrix Stalkers for myself! I 'need' them to keep rigged up for short sessions fishing at close range for carp ranging from a pound or two up to a potential of over thirty (an unlikely outcome given my lack of carp catching skills).

I was in two mind how to approach the builds. One the one hand I was tempted to go for a retro look, along the lines of the Hardy pastiche pike rods I built a while back. On the other hand a minimalist look appealed. The latter won out. A butt cap and a reel seat would comprise the handle. I fiddle around with various collars, settling on some plain black Delrin ones. The rings were to be my favourite Fuji BMNAG Alconites which I think offer the best combination of light weight, protection from the wrap-around frame and good looks. But what thread colour?

Black was the obvious choice except I fancied a change. I went for the olive thread I'd used rebuilding a set of carp rods for someone. Before applying the varnish I tried it with a contrasting colour, a brighter olive, as tipping and it looked good. When the varnish was cured the tipping colour was hardly discernible despite both threads being colour preserved. The darker thread seems to have turned out lighter, negating the contrast. Better to find out on my own rods than some for a customer. I'm not sure if I like the thread colour, so there's a possibility the rods might get stripped down and redone at some point. Staring at the rods while the carp ignore my baits will give me time to decide.

If I was suffering a really bad GAS attack I'd be browsing for two reels to go on these rods. OK, I have had a look around... The trouble is that my ideal reels would be Shimano OC Baitrunners in a size between the 4000 and 6000. Which doesn't exist. That's saved me a few bob! This means that it's a toss up between the 3500B Baitrunners currently on my eeling P-2s and some even older Aero 8000 size Baitrunners. At the moment the Aeros are getting rigged up. Partly because they are already spooled with 15lb mono, and also because they don't have shiny spools. They're noticeably lighter too, which is a bonus.

Typically, having got these rods finished off my annual spring slow down came to an end and I have both a stack of blanks to get built into rods already ordered and some new orders to make a start on. Getting a chance to try the rods out had to wait until this afternoon when a short session at the Railway Pond was in order.

The new tackle curse returned in style. Two takes to the new rods resulted in two small carp falling off. I'm sure the one that took the 16mm boilie hadn't actually managed to get the bait in its mouth and was holding on by suction! I'd been confident that a bed of seeds in the margins would have drawn one of the better fish in, but apparently not. The rods remain unblooded, but I think I like the thread colour having seen it out on the bank.

What did go more to plan was my surface fishing. As a rule I don't have the patience for 'bait and wait' fishing. However, having two bottom baits out and the test match on the radio it was no hardship to lie on the unhooking mat firing out pouches of mixers every few minutes on a warm but overcast almost-summer's day, reed warblers and whitethroat making themselves heard and swallows dipping for drinks.

It wasn't long before there were fish taking the mixers, gradually getting closer and increasing in numbers. Out with the old Lure Special rigged with the repaired controller and a plastic bait. The mixers still getting fired out in the vicinity of the bait the frustration began.

The first take came with the rod in the rest while I fiddled in my tackle bag. There was no mistaking it as the baitrunner on the little Okuma was making plenty of noise. It was a bit of a surprise to find one of the skinny chub had been the culprit. But a success for a bit of pink foam! Interestingly, or maybe not, the take came almost as soon as I had changed the foam from a duller colour. This was repeated when I swapped the pink for a piece of beige foam. Almost straight away a common took that.

The same thing happened a bit later when I put on a bit of brown foam, which I pared down to make it sit lower in the water. This seemed to make a difference because I had a flurry of takes, one landed others missed, to the less buoyant bait.

I was rapidly running out of mixers. I put the dark foam out as a sort-of-zig-rig. Another instant take - which was one of the fish that fell off to one of the new rods. At close of play in the Durham test I packed up and headed for the chippy.

In preparation for this short session, and for other snatched sessions, I found a use for those useful boxes. One now holds a few spare leads, the other an assortment of floating stuff. I might have to get myself some more of these boxes. They're really useful.

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Retail therapy

At the moment I'm having a lot of fun snatching short sessions of a couple of hours on the Railway Pond - and less successfully on other places. Saturday was a case in point when I got the daft carp up on floaters again and might have caught some if my controller hadn't broken. Admittedly the swivel has been in danger of snapping ever since I bought the thing some time in the 1990s! I've affected a repair, and cut the weight down a bit so it sits a bit higher in the water. But I think buying a spare might be wise. A handful of suicidal pasties fell for a 10mm boilie fished in the margin to save me from a complete blank.

With these short sessions in mind I wanted to put together a bag that would contain everything I needed. Just a few bits and bats to cover unexpected losses like broken floats. I had the bag, a Korum Bait and Bits bag that will hold a bucket of mixers or pellets, tubs of bait, camera, bottle of pop, weighsling scales and sundry other stuff. Rather than keep swapping the major stuff from bag to rucksack -with the inevitable memory lapse resulting in a longer session being undertaken without a weighsling or some other essential - I decided to double up on stuff.

I have a set of scales, Super Samson spring balance, lying idle but no suitable sling. As I'm still using an original ET weigh sling for bigger fish I popped onto Ted's website and ordered one of the latest versions in the not-too-big size. It's not quite as deep as my original but it's going to be fine for anything I'm likely to put in it. Best of all it comes in a carry bag. As a rule I leave carry bags in the garage but this one will take my scales and a pair of forceps, and even the small tackle boxes I've put the rig bits in.

Rummaging in my tackle cupboard I'd found a box that  was big enough to hold a spool of hooklink material, scissors, hook packets and some back leads. I still needed something to put the smaller rig bits in. A visit to a tackle shop to buy two shortish banksticks (not carp angler short) found me that box when I wasn't looking for it. A neat little clamshell job. It looked like there had been equal quantities of black and green boxes on the shelf, with more green ones left. Black might be hip, but I know from past experience it's hard to see black swivels and so on in a black box, so I bought a green one.

It's always a good idea to carry a cigarette lighter or two in the tackle bag. So when I spotted some with fish motifs on them in the same shop I went for one with a picture of a pike. The carp ones, unsurprisingly, had sold out.

While I was on the ET website I spotted some small boxes that looked really useful. I like really useful boxes so ordered a couple. As yet I haven't found a use for them. But they will be really useful one day, I'm sure! They look more robust than the clamshell box.

Despite all this planning and organising I took my rucksack with me yesterday for an evening session. And a brolly with the forecast being for rain arriving at nine and leaving at eleven. As it turned out the rain came and went half an hour earlier. Which was good as I got away in the dry.

This was to be my last session with carp rods for a while. My intention being to use tench rods for tench somewhere carp won't be such a possibility. Quite when that will be remains to be seen.

I wasn't sure where to fish when I arrived, but seeing a dark pointy fin break surface in the swim I'd dumped my tackle in before going for a wander made my mind up. I'd be happy catching anything. So it was that a fish scarer got lowered in teh margin, a pop-up cast out with a bag of pellets to another margin swim, and Lucky the Pellet cast to where the bream had rolled.

The wind was from the west for a change, warm and not very strong. It was quite muggy too. The trees are almost in full leaf and the hawthorn in bloom - hence me wanting to concentrate on tench until they spawn. It felt like a fishy evening.

It wasn't long before I had what seemed like a liner to the fish scarer. Then another. A longer gap and another liner. I was beginning to wonder if a bream had hung itself on the three ounce lead. Eventually one of these liners pulled the tip round and my suspicions were confirmed. I think the bream had been hooked for some time! You can tell I'm not a carp angler because I netted the bream, put it on my mat, weighed it - and took a photo of it's tubercle covered head.

Even though I sat it out until eleven, still confident, nothing else happened of interest on the fish front. A barn owl made a brief appearance in the gloom of dusk, but it didn't hang around. The resident grebes continued to squabble. There'll soon be young ones which might make the adults even more quarrelsome. Judging by the small fish topping they'll all be well fed.

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Short session

One rod, net, some bits and a mat to sit on. Had fish in front of me but nothing to report, just liked this photo.

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Not so cr*p?

More than half the battle when it comes to catching fish is location. No matter what the species, you can only catch them if you have a bait in front of them.I was going to take advantage of the drier evening no matter what, but if the swim I'd seen produce a couple of carp on Tuesday was free there'd be no way I'd fish elsewhere. I'm not completely stupid! As it turned out the lake was deserted...

There are two spots that are obvious places to place baits so they got scattered with pellets and the baits dropped over them. The closest rod started out with plastic corn on the hook but I swapped it to a 10mm fish scarer on the off chance. Some more fish scarers were scattered around it. Well I might as well throw them in a lake as a bin. The third rod got a boilie type thing put on the hair and chucked out randomly on its own. I couldn't even be bothered putting a bag of pellets on the rig.

The grebes were milling around again, this time the courting couple made a half-hearted attempt at some weed waving. It wasn't quite as windy as the evening before, warmer too but not sunny. Birdsong was prolific and once more I bemoaned my lack of identification skills in this area.

I've been using my lucky sweetcorn for some years now, carefully removing it from a rig when the hook gets blunt and putting it on a freshly tied rig. It's very economical. I think I might have a lucky plastic pellet now. Around ten to eight something picked it up. At first it felt like another bream, then it might have been a carp, but finally it got all jaggy and I knew it was a tench. Judging by the bend in the 3lb Torrix it might be a decent one too. In the net it had me guessing again. Unlike the mug from last week it was rounded out and clean looking. Not the biggest I've caught, and from other waters only worth a mat shot. I might not even have bothered with a self-take as it was, but one of the carp fanatics had turned up a few minutes earlier so I got a 'grip and don't grin' shot for a change.

Check the rig, put on another bag of pellets and out again. Forty minutes later Lucky the Pellet was picked up by something a bit heavier. Twice as heavy in fact, although sadly not a tench. A rather sick looking common was soon in the net. It had red blobs lifting some of its scales and a dull grey sort of film over its body and eyes. As if it was wrapped in opaque plastic. It seemed fit enough though.

Lucky the Pellet

Check hook, add bag, recast. Sit back and relax. I pondered over the success of the new reels and wondered why the usual jinx wasn't working. Two reels christened in two days with two local PBs. Something wasn't right!

Earlier in the day I'd been thinking about my locally caught specimen challenge and how it wasn't going too badly. Nothing large by national standards, and not much prospect for that with the possible exception of a big eel, but compared to what I'd have been overjoyed with in my teens, pretty pleasing.

At nine o'clock the fish scarer failed to live up to its reputation and the third reel got its head wetted. After a decent scrap for a carp, which included the swimming round in circles under the rod tip ritual, I had another common in the net and another local best increased. On the mat and panic set in. The hair was bare. I'd lost my lucky sweetcorn. I looked around the swim for it before remembering I'd swapped it for a fish scarer. Phew!!! Quite a nice looking fish apart from an absence of pelvic fins. Again the other angler obliged with the camera - after insulting my unhooking mat for being too small... The cheek.

This place must be stuffed with carp if I'm catching them, and on my crap rigs. I'd better not tell anyone my hooklink material cost about a tenner for 100 yards, and that kilo bag of fish scarers will probably last me until winter. I'm not mean, just economical with my bait and gear. One thing seems to be working. Using carp gear catches tench, and it means I don't wreck a swim when I do hook a carp as used to happen with smaller fish than I've been catching of late. A nine pounder could wipe out a margin swim using my two test rods but carp twice that size get landed faster on heavier gear.

A pity there are so many carp in the place. The more distant carp waters I've tench fished were bigger and had lower stock levels so the carp were less of a nuisance. Then again those tench were keener on the traditional tench approach than this lot appear to be. Maybe I'll try plastic casters on one rod next time. I've yet to catch a carp on those. Famous last words?

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Cr*p c*rper

Summer had definitely arrived on Monday. With the air temperature over 20 degrees and even a strong easterly warm enough to sit out in a t-shirt in there had to be carp on the surface. The Railway Pond seemed like a good bet for a duffer like me to snatch an easy sucker off the top.

I travelled light with one rod, an original Chorley Anglers Lure Special which I revamped a few years ago, a bucket of mixers, a bag of bits, landing net and unhooking mat to sit on.

The up-wind swims were taken by pleasure anglers so I dropped in the windward bank to see a few smallish carp cruising around. The wind was too strong to fish a controller so I anchored a surface bait in a long hooklink. A couple of carp had a look at it. One was too small to have enough suction to drag the bait down! That's the trouble in this 'non-commercial'. It's full of carp that are two small to be called pasties. They're more the size of party sausage rolls!

I worked my way along the far bank until the other anglers had departed and I could get the wind behind me. Even with my useless skills I soon had plenty of fish swirling away in front of me. The controller back in action and drifting towards the fish. But as usual, despite a couple of takes from fish with larger mouths, I caught nowt. Back home via the chippy and it was time to search the internet for bow-fishing gear...

Tuesday and summer had gone on holiday. Cloudy but warmish. Then, after I collected my new 'carp' reels, loaded them with line and rigged them up on the rods I was itching to give them a try out. As much to get the line bedded in (and make sure I'd put enough on over the backing line..) as to try to catch a fish. That was the cue for the rain to arrive. I went anyway. New tackle has to be played with.

The rain was light as I set up so the brolly waited until everything was in place. Two grains of plastic corn and a plastic pellet in the margins over sprinklings of the respective real baits, and a pop-up chucked out mindlessly. Under the brolly, sat on my low chair at its lowest setting, I discovered my leak repair hadn't been 100% successful. At least it wasn't icy cold water dripping on my leg.

 There wasn't much variety of birdlife to watch, but with nine great crested grebes on the lake, one sitting on eggs, there was plenty of activity. One pair were engaging in their head shaking courtship ritual, but with no weed gathering. The others were milling around, diving, and adopting threat postures before chasing each other. Why there were so many grebes on a comparatively small water I don't know. There were lots of tiny and small fish topping and leaping towards dusk though. So I'm assuming the grebes are there because the food is plentiful.

With carp rods and carp reels in use I felt certain a tench or two would make a mistake as they patrolled the edges and found my loose feed. When a take came it wasn't a screamer. All that happened was the left hand bobbin dropped a bit, went up a bit, dropped a bit, went up a bit... There was something on the end of the line when I picked the rod up. A plastic bag by the feel of it. Under the rod tip it got a bit heavier and felt vaguely alive. I'd forgotten that I'd tried to catch the bream in the lake last year, so it was a bit of a surprise when a dark old-looking bream rolled on the surface before sliding over the net. A fish that was round-bellied with spawn.

Not much of a test for the new reels. It made a change for the new tackle curse to fail though! One thing was for certain; the new reels are smoother than my old baitrunners, a couple of which are making peculiar noises when I'm winding in. Although the old reels are likely to go on my eel rods now as they are not completely worn out.

The last of the particles went in and the plastic corn back out over the top of it. Despite being an unexpected species my confidence increased. Not least because it was not yet dark. Surely a tench, carp, or even another bream would be along soon?

Of course my confidence was misplaced. The rain eased off as I thought about packing up. Returned as I wound the first rod in, but was kind by blowing over as I set off back to the car. Then it came back on the drive home. Another pleasant change.

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Undecided - as usual

A week on and some sunshine fooled me into another evening session. Bank Holiday Monday saw the weekenders departed and the lake deserted. While the sun was high in the sky the wind that still had a bit of north in it was bearable. An hour after my late start I bumped off a small-feeling fish to two grains of fake corn fished in conjunction with a bag of pellets cast into nowhere. I go to the trouble of carefully marking one line and casting the bait over a sprinkling of pellets and putting another bait close in in similar fashion and the randomly chucked out bait gets taken. On with another bag and on the cast the rig spins and drops short. Sod it, it would do.

Once the heat went from the sun the wind was icy. Two fleeces and the waterproof jacket just about stopped me shivering as I sat behind three carp rods. This time the wind did as it was told and dropped with the sun. Things were looking up, especially as there was a short drop back to the marked rod. Even if it was just a liner there were fish moving over the baited area. I wasnt the only one who thought summer was getting closer. There was a swift, my first spot of the year, flying overhead at one point. Plenty of bats both high and low once it was dark, too.

It stayed bearable until tennish when it picked up again. Once more I decided to cut the session short and pack up at half past. Stuff was tidied away when I checked to see just a few minutes left until home time. Then the unexpected happened. The random corn was off again on a steady run. obviously not a carp I took it easy as I wound the tench in. Near the net it woke up. Three test rods are far from ideal for playing tench. Not wanting to tear the size 14 free I had to play the fish off the reel. On a lighter rod I could have put a bend in the rod and netted the fish quicker. A tench in the dark was a turn up, though. Maybe if I let them think I'm after carp I'll catch more tench in the night like carp anglers do? And maybe like carp anglers manage they'll all be over seven pounds too!

On the mat it looked like it would make five pounds, but being skinny it fell short by an ounce. My tench guestimates are getting better.

Still waiting around for blanks to arrive I couldn't face any more boredom on Tuesday and headed to the railway pond for some guaranteed small carp action. The idea being to see if the 10mm boilies I'd bought, and tried a couple of times, would actually appeal to fish. I only went for a couple of hours, which turned in to two and a half fishing the usual margin approach with baits over pellets. I threw a couple of the boilies to a cheeky mallard. Ducks eat anything. Anything except these boilies. It picked on up, played with it and spat it out. Great...

Around five the boilie attached to a hook was picked up by a fish and not dropped. The fish, however, fell off. It only felt bucket sized, but at least something had picked up one of the baits!

Wednesday was another day of frustration spent waiting for Mr UPS. Who didn't bother turning up. More in anger than anything I put some gear together and went to sit in the last of the sun. This time behind three tench rods. Like a pillock I picked the only swim on the bank which was shaded from the sun. Apart form numerous single bleeps, which could have been liners or small fish playing with the baits, nothing else happened.

After dark plenty of roach-like fish were topping and what sounded like a couple of carp had crashed out. Something bubbled away to my left. But positive action I had none. Something gave me the feeling it wasn't worth hanging on too long, so didn't regret packing up before eleven.

I just wish I could decide whether to fish for tench or carp. Trying to do both doesn't really work. The trouble is I'm not sure the tench in the lake are interesting enough to me. And the carp are only interesting as a target to achieve. As fish they are (mostly) horrible ugly things that don't excite me. Time to get the eel baits out, perhaps?

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