Hard Nylon eel traces

Making hooklinks on the bank, in the dark by the light of a headtorch, isn't the easiest thing to do! So much so that I've packed an LED light to put on my camera tripod for my next session. It'll only be needed if I run out of the spares I'll be making at home!

Years ago I bought a spool of Mason Hard Type Nylon to make leaders when I was fly-fishing for pike. Leaders, not tippets, the flies were attached to wire which was attached to the leader. It's strange stuff. Very tough, very stiff, and very 'coily'. It's also difficult to get hold of in the UK. Mine came from Veal's, and while they still have it listed on their website it is currently out of stock and has been for some time. There must be an alternative but buying unseen could lead to a lot of money going down teh plug hole. Is the stuff carp anglers use for Ronni Rigs the same? 

Other than the nylon everything else is simple. One hook, two double barrel crimps, a rig sleeve.

 

Not all of the tools shown below are essential. In fact the crimping pliers are the only ones you cant do the job without. I use the lighter to put a blob on the tag end of the nylon before pulling it snug into the crimp at the hook. It isn't a big deal to leave it sticking out without a blob. Crimped correctly the line won't slip. The tag end can be left longer at the loop end as that will be sleeved over.

The nail clippers are what I use for trimming all nylon lines. they're especially good on tougher and thicker monos I find. The knot testers are used to test the connections, and have the added benefit that when doing that the curve in the nylon is pulled out.

 

 

Just a close up of the jaws of the pliers. 

 

The crimp should be placed 'crossways' in the groove of the pliers, so it squashes the two barrels together flattening each barrel. Ideally the crimp should stick out of the jaws at the loop end to give an angled transition for the nylon. I suspect this is more critical when using heavier gear to big game fish than it is with this sort of tackle. The crimps I'm using are very small and fiddly enough to align correctly in the pliers without having to get a bit to stick out - the crimp length being the same as the width of the jaws. There's no chance in the dark! To give an idea of size these are one inch squares on the cutting mat.

I'm using quick change swivels on the end of my mainline hence using a loop on my hooklinks, but a swivel can be attached just as easily. Crimping is ideal for people who have to have all their hooklinks exactly the same length. Much easier than trying to do that with knots - although having a loop at one end works.

These are only used with worms or other non-fishy baits. Anything that I think has a greater chance of being picked up by a pike is fished on wire.

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Progress?

The tight finish in the opening Ashes test match left me needing to chill. I rigged up two of my latest eel rods, sorted the gear, put the worms I'd bought last week into a bucket and set off. There was no rush, I wasn't expecting any action until half nine on a still, hot, and sunny day. After a short look around I took the easy option and started setting up in the peg nearest the car park.

My approach hadn't changed from last year. the running paternoster was dropped close in to my right, the running leger cast out close to the pads. What had change were the hooklinks. Both were much shorter than in earlier years. I've been reducing the length of my eel hooklinks for some time, but now they are only about four to five inches long. It's quite tricky tying such short hooklinks in any material, but the Hard Nylon I'm favouring is a bugger to knot at any length. It can be done. More on that later.

By 8.30 I was all set up and settled in listening the the birdsong and watching the sun sink low enough to stop dazzling me. Bang on cue, an hour later, I had a take on the legered worm and soon swung my first eel of the year in. Only about a pound, probably less, it was still a start.

The second eel took the off-bottom worms at ten past ten. One eel each to the new rods on their first outing. So much for the new tackle jinx! From then on indications came regularly. Some the annoying twitches that resulted in pinched worms, some proper runs that spun the reel spool. Most were coming to the leger rig.

It was half past eleven before I landed another one, half an hour more until the third, and ten past midnight when the smallest of the evening came in. All to the bottom fished worms. I packed up twenty minutes later to the sound of a distant owl hooting.

One of the eels had mangled my hooklink forcing me to tie up a replacement. This didn't go well in the dark. First of all I had run out of the size 6 hooks I'd been using. Go larger or go smaller? I went smaller for an eight. The first knot was messy. So was the second. Eventually I got a rig tied up. Then I had a light-bulb moment. I'd used the hard mono to make lead links by crimping it. Why hadn't I thought of crimping it to use as hooklinks? D'oh!

Wednesday morning saw me sat at my desk crimping up hooklinks. I couldn't find my cup-to-cup crimping tool so used the one I'd bought for crimping wire traces with single barrel crimps. It's not supposed to work on double barrel crimps but I couldn't pull the mono out. With a few hooklinks made up I rigged up my third new rod and swapped all my hooklinks to the crimped ones with size 8 hook.

Another empty car park saw me take a longer walk to look at swims. One looked really inviting but cramped for three rods. It could wait for another night. In the end I chose one where I could cover a lot of water with the baits spread out. As I was setting up a very loud bird sang briefly in a hawthorn behind the swim. Not a song I recognised but I guessed it to be a warbler. Once more it was the paternoster in the right hand margin, the two legers out to pad edges. 

Another thought I had during my first session was that a semi-fixed leger might be worth a try. Nothing ventured, nothing gained I had one in operation on the longest cast. After a later start I was fishing by 8.45 only having to wait half an hour until the spool spun on the off-bottom margin rod. I failed to connect. 

 A couple more times I was startled by the loud birdsong. Eventually I caught a glimpse of a little brown job flitting away. I made a note in my diary about the call, a visual interpretation of it that only I could understand,, and resolved to search Youtube to find it.

It was shortly before ten when the indications started to come frequently and a sub-pound eel fell for to the paternoster rod. Twitched, runs, and everything in between. eventually the takes dried up and I packed away the rods at midnight. the semi-fixed rig hadn't been a success. Winding it in for recasts the three dendrobenas had disappeared every time. Stick with it or not?

Thursday morning I was on Youtube searching for 'warbler sons UK'. I found one video that claimed to haev the songs of every British warbler and clicked 'play'. I decided not to watch it but just listen. A few song in there it was! I replayed it. Yes, that was the song. I searched for other videos and other sites for the bird's song just to be sure. No doubt about it. I'd heard and seen my first Cetti's warbler! Not too uncommon a bird these days, in the right places. It was still a new one for me.

In the afternoon I did my 'big shop', calling in at the tackle shop near the supermarket to see if they had a pair of pukka crimping pliers before ordering a pair off the interwebby. They did. And they were cheaper! With the freezer filled for another month, and my bank account depleted by more than I expected (that's food inflation for you) I set about making up another batch of hooklinks. Tea eaten, the miserable Archers saga listened to (if only Helen could have a freak chess-making accident to put an end to it), I was eager to try my rigs out.

A couple of vehicles in the car park this time but nobody in sight in the area I fancied. I still had a look around before climbing down into another peg which offered a range of opportunities. This time the running paternoster was cast to my left, to a gap in the pads. The running leger went straight out to a pad edge, and the semi-fixed rig was cast the farthest to a gap between to lots of pads. I must have been keen because it was only eight o'clock! As I was setting the rods up I heard the Cetti's Warbler again. Not having been on this spring I'm left wondering if it has been around for long.

An early start didn't bring early action. Well, not too early. ten past nine saw a proper run to the running leger. Fishing three small worms I always wonder if it is an eel that has taken the bait when I strike at these runs. Anything is liable to pick up worms and there have been quite a few carp mooching about.

Ten minutes later the only sign of action to the semi-fixed rod was very small twitches of the rod top. Even with my Delkim on maximum sensitivity there was no sound and the bobbin moved not a millimeter. I picked the rod up and... There was an eel on the end, neatly hooked in the bottom lip! I stuck with the rig as the only way to judge its efficacy is to give it a long enough trial. I know other eel anglers are making it work.

After ten the action picked up apace. I landed five more, yet again all a few ounces either side of a pound at a guess, bar the final one which was most definitely a bootlace. Around eleven I had three takes at once and missed all of them. All the takes cam to legered worms, and one on the semi-fixed rig was a proper 'screamer'. I was sure there'd be a carp on the end when I lifted the rod!

All told an interesting few sessions. Eleven eels is a good start in terms of numbers. Not so good on teh specimen hunting scale though. The short stiff hooklinks are working a treat. The small hooks haven't proved detrimental. Quite the opposite. Semi-fixed rigs do work. Not much action to the off-bottom bait, which is unusual. Eels do have the ability to make you think. The rods have all been christened, but are yet to be tested with something worthy of landing net, let alone a photo session.

The next step? Get some different baits. Fishing three rods with worms is boring!

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Downhill all the way

Full of new-found enthusiasm I couldn't wait to get back after the eels. Two nights later I was walking round looking for a swim to fish. one problem with this particular place is that most of the swims are made to accommodate someone sat on a seat box fishing a single rod. If set up to fish 'carp style' with self hooking rigs and rods on pods this isn't an issue as the fish hang themselves and sat up on the bank you can still get to the rods without fish dropping the bait. Same for piking really when even an 'instant' strike doesn't have to be as instant as striking  a quick dip on a float from a shy biting rudd.

Eel fishing for me is all about striking takes quickly. I don't seem to get the non-stop runs that I used to. even when I did a smart strike might be required to hook an eel before it found sanctuary. when I first fished the canal for eels I was casting baits tight to far bank reed beds. By the time I could grab a rod the eel would be deep in the reeds and everything was solid. I switched to fishing my baits under the rod tops to give me time to strike before sanctuary could be reached. Even sitting close to the rods some eels still made it all the way over the far side!

 

 

As the pegs here are all nicely stoned getting individual banksticks in, my preferred way of fishing, it has to be a pod. Some of the pegs aren't even wide enough for that, let alone have room to put up a chair. This all limits my choices. I didn't want to fish the same swim as my first session so ended up dithering between one I've never fished for eels and one I have caught from. The one with previous got the nod.

Conditions were similar to two nights before and I was soon having to replace missing worms. The eels were active again. As predicted my initial success was not to be matched and the average size of the four I landed was well down. I was catching though, which was encouraging. Despite some activity to the deadbait it was the worms getting the majority of the action, both on and off the bottom. By half twelve my stock of worms was getting down to the regs so I packed up satisfied and planning to restock at the earliest opportunity.

That opportunity came on Friday. Get worms in the morning, fish in the evening. Sorted. That was the plan until my car packed up on the way to the tackle shop. Bugger. I was going to change the motor last year but when Covid arrived there wasn't much point as I wouldn't be using it much. Anyway, long story short the car was fixable but the garage had one in that suited my needs and budget. Rather than spend money fixing the Zafira I chopped it in. problem was I couldn't get my hands on the replacement until this Thursday.

A whole week later than planned I was heading back to the lake. Normally I'm not keen on Friday night sessions as it can see carpers setting up for the weekend but as there was a football match of some sort being mentioned all over the internet and news media I thought I might have the place to myself. As it turned out there was one carp angler setting up near a swim I really fancied. I fished my second choice instead.

It was a few degrees cooler than the previous week, but still plenty warm enough as I arranged my gear in one of the more accommodating swims. This one gave me a good choice of features from pads to marginal rush and open water. All easily fishable from a pod.

Baits out by quarter to nine and the bleeps and twitches started soon after. This time it was a night of frustration as even the steady runs were missed. Fishing the off bottom bait close in my strikes almost saw the rig flying out of the water at me a couple of times! Plenty of takes from twitches to runs but no eels landed.

After my first session I'd been rethinking my rigs. In particular my hooklinks. While I like the Kevlar catfish braid I've been using for worm baits it is a bit tangle prone. Rooting in my eel/catfish box I thought it might be worth tying up a couple of hooklinks with the 20lb Mason's Hard Mono I used to use for making pike fly leaders (the bit before the wire leader the flies are attached to before you get the wrong idea...). It's tough, abrasion resistant and stiff. Not easy to knot though. While I was at it I had a change of hook pattern to a shorter shanked more round bend hook. Owner C-5X in fact. Using this hooklink on my leger rig caught me a couple of the small ones on my second session and damage to the mono was negligible. Certainly an option worth persisting with to see if it does significantly reduce tangles.

This is the rig I use for fishing off bottom. The boom is glued into a drilled out John Roberts Paternoster Boom, the end of the boom being flared over after heating to stop it pulling right through. The lead link is heavy and stiff mono for a couple of feet ending in a loop to which I tie a weaker link to take the lead. The length of the hooklink is shorter than the boom to go some way to reducing tangles on the cast. I've been using 70lb Kevlar catfish braid for the hooklinks when using worm baits, but when this does tangle it can be a real bad tangle. I'll be giving 20lb Mason's Hard Mono a try next time out.

 

Whether the blank session was a result of some change in conditions, the presence of only small eels in the swim or a new tackle curse I'm not sure. Does a 'new' car count as tackle? if not maybe it was the new box I'd got to keep my spare batteries in. It's a neater solution than the box I used to use. takes up less room and stops the batteries rattling about. Although it's designed to hold four PP3 batteries the slots in the rubber insert will take two AAs for my radio and just about three AAAs for my head torch. I was glad of the PP3s when the sounder for my Delkims started making the low battery noise.

Now I'm stocked up with worms I'll be out eeling again soon. I have two swims in mind which I have yet to fish which I think might produce. At least they'll be a change of scenery!

On the rod building front I've had a few unusual builds to keep my interest up and which are options for future consideration.

White painted rod tops are not my thing but I get requests for them on a fairly regular basis. After many years I've got a technique sorted for doing them which I am happy with. It's time consuming but gives a good looking result. I still can't decide if white tips look better with white thread on any rings that go on it or with the same thread colour/s as used on the rest of the rod. This one has two small isotopes added. The customer went with the black/copper thread option.

At he other end of a rod, in this case a lure rod for bass fishing, I came up with a way to fit a full shrink tube handle to a slim blank and make a Fuji butt cap fit and look good. Again a bit of a faff but worth it. Putting the shrink over a hard Duplon cone at the back of the reel seat is another neat and functional touch, I think. If I ever rebuild my trusty P-5s I'll be going for something like this for the handles, only with plain rather than X-weave shrink tube.

Finally, don't ask me to build float rods. Not only do I hate fitting all the fiddly little rings while trying not to break the delicate tip sections I can't find a set of rings which meet my aesthetic preferences. Thankfully I only get asked to build one or two a year, so reducing this to none at all, ever, won't be much of a loss!

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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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Tinkering

I've been messing about with my eel rigs these last few days. As ever when it comes to rigs my aim is to simplify them. For the last few years I've been using quick change swivels at the end of the mainline, with a rig sleeve on the trace covering the open eye of the swivel. Although the swivels are strong enough they are a bit long, and rig sleeves never seem as tangle proof as they should be. Is a swivel really necessary? I'm not sure that any other than ball bearing swivels actually snivel very much in use. As I wanted to retain the quick change facility (eels manage to trash traces!) I tried out a Q Link (other brands are available...). I swapped my previous rig sleeve for a stiffish tail rubber and covered the rest of the link with a buffer bead.

The lead link is made from 20lb Mason Hard Type Mono, which I've found is far more tangle free than standard mono. A large eye swivel has taken the place of a leger ring as braid grooves plastic and I've used these swivels on my barbel rigs for years. The tail rubber over this swivel is optional. Even without it the rig has proved tangle resistant. A small polyball or cork ball could also be used to cover the knot if weed is present.

The other end of the link has a paper clip for the lead as a weak link. One word of caution with paper clips. They can snag in micro-mesh landing nets. I'd never had this problem with my wide mesh barbel net, but my eel net has caused me problems. I'm concerned that sleeving the paper clip might prevent it opening out on a snag, so for the time being I'm putting up with the occasional net tangle.

Hard mono is more difficult to knot than ordinary nylon or copolymer, simply because it is so stiff. When using it as a hooklink or on a John Sidley rig (which I'm still unsure about the need for) I take the trouble to carefully tie a Uni Knot for strength, but for lead links I use a knot that I have recently stumbled upon on the web. The Davy Knot is untidy, and possibly not very strong, but it is simple and quick to tie. Ideal for weak links.

Back when my friends and I started using big jerkbaits the braided lines in use today weren't available, so we used mono of 25lb or more. Because of the repeated force of casting heavy lures the trace knot needed to be retied a few times each day to prevent unexpected crack-offs. I carried a pair of clippers for trimming the knots in this line as they made a better job of it than scissors. Scissors struggle a bit on hard mono too, and I worry that it could blunt them. You can buy line clippers, but they can cost a tenner. Nail clippers from the chemist's at under two quid do just as good a job. The ones I have also incorporate a file - so I can give myself a manicure between runs!

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Slimed

That trip to the river didn't manage to enthuse me but somewhere along the line I got a belated burst of enthusiasm for some summer predator fishing. I think the heatwave a couple of weeks ago must have given me a fever.

First of all I got the urge to catch a catfish after a break of nigh on twenty four years! This lead to a frantic search through my tackle museum (the mess of rig stuff I keep in various boxes around the place) looking for suitable hooks and hooklink materials. A search which proved fruitless on the hook front. I'm sure I must still have the original Cox and Rawle Uptide Extras I used to use. Somewhere... At least the Quicksilver doesn't appear to have rotted.

Next I embarked on a period of research. Thanks to the interwebs finding out about catfish waters and catfish tackle is a lot easier than back in the old days. What became obvious is that there are lots more waters available to catfish anglers than there used to be, and the size of catfish in them is much larger. Along with my cyber-searching I looked back through some early Pike and Predator magazines in which my old catting partner, Geoff Parkinson, wrote about venues where a thirty pound cat was a possibility. Nowadays a would-be cat angler wouldn't entertain a water that doesn't hold forties or bigger!!

While there is certainly more readily available catfish tackle there isn't much choice. When it comes to hooks, the things I lacked most, I couldn't find any that I really liked the look of. I ordered some on-line which had been recommended to me on The Pikers Pit, but when they turned up I thought they looked a bit on the small side for what it said on the packet. A rummage around in the remains of my pike-fly tying gear found me some sea hooks I'd bought but which proved to be a bit on the heavy side. They looked bob on as catfish hooks. The barbs were a bit rank though. Checking out current prices I wasn't surprised to find that sea fishing hooks similar to catfishing hooks are considerably cheaper.

Despite the passage of almost a quarter of a century catfish rigs haven't altered much. Mind you pike rigs haven't changed much in even longer. I thought I detected the hand of the carp angler in a lot of them, though. The needless addition of bells and whistles to what should be really simple rigs. I thought I'd stick with what I know and make up a version of my popped up livebait rig which I'd originally developed for perch fishing.

The only change I made to it from the past was to use Amnesia for the hooklink and Mason Hard Type Mono for the polyball link instead of Quicksilver and light mono respectively. This, I hoped, would eliminate tangles. Two other changes I made were to use a tiny swivel instead of a Drennan ring to slide on the hooklink, and to finish the link in a loop to allow the changing of polyballs (to suit varying bait sizes) with a pellet stop to hold them in place. The weight, instead of being attached directly to the run ring, was tied to another hard mono link. This can be altered though if the bait is to be kept closer to the bottom. For safety's sake a paper clip was used as a weak link for the lead.

My deadbait rig is the same leger set up but with a Quicksilver hooklink without a polyball link. A third rig would be used to fish the dreaded halibut pellet. Actually four of them on a hair, 'snake' style like I use with smaller pellets for barbel, also using Quicksilver as the hooklink. The dumbbell rig was new to me as the idea of fishing subsurface baits for cats hadn't really caught on when I last fished for them. It should go without saying that I made my own dumbbell rather than buying one in case I fancy giving it a go.

If I get round to actually fishing for catfish this year rods won't be a problem. I have plenty to choose from, rods which customers have landed cats over 80lb on. So I should be okay on that score! Likewise I have reels which are up to the task. I might need a bigger net and mat though. It'll all depend on where I end up fishing. Then again it might have to wait until next summer. At the moment finding time to get away is the main problem as there are no prolific catfish waters within short session range. And I'd like to ease myself in with a few chances at least. In the meantime I can scale things down and get some eeling done.

Doing more reading up it was apparent that quite a few of the commercial catfish waters don't allow livebaits. The next best, easy, option would be a bunch of worms presented off bottom. The worm rigs I Googled all looked arse about face to me and tangle disasters waiting to happen. A variation on a Dyson or Bellars rig seemed a more sensible option. Eel anglers like these rigs, more than the pike anglers for whom they were developed seem to, and eels share more behaviour traits with cats than do carp or pike to my way of thinking. I can't see a reason catfish anglers haven't taken to these rigs. Or maybe they have. More likely those coming from a carpy background have never heard of them.

Playing about with rigs is always fun but the temptation is to get carried away. The more time you spend fiddling the more bits get added to them. I reckon that's why carp rigs are so complimacated - too much time spent fiddling and not enough spent catching. It's easy to get lured into thinking that the reason you aren't catching is because your rig is rubbish. More likely it simply isn't in the right place at the right time.

All I wanted was a rig that wouldn't tangle which presents a free running bait. Over the last few summers I've tried Dyson/Bellars variations for eels and had trouble with tangles on the cast. The Dyson can also be a pig to cast accurately. Analysing how the rigs worked it seemed to me that the key is making the hooklink dangle away from the lead link. Paternoster booms do that. I use them for paternostering deadbaits and on a long casting rig when pike fishing. After much messing about I thought I'd extend the tube of the boom a little and slip a polyball on the 'leg'. The tail rubber neatens things, holds the polyball in place and slightly extends the leg. Once more I used hard mono for the link. The hard mono terminated in a tiny swivel to allow me to add either a paper clip or a length of weaker standard mono should I want to present a bait further off bottom.

I found a hot, muggy evening irresistible and decided to try the off-bottom worm rig locally for eels. If it catches eels it'll catch catfish. I was also interested to find out if fishing worms off bottom might avoid the attentions of the tiny eels which have plagued me in the past on the water I had in mind.

The baits were out and being ignored by twenty to eight as the sky clouded over keeping the temperature up as the sun set. It felt like it would be a good night for eels - if I didn't have to leave when it got dark. No bad thing in the circumstances as I had to be up early the next morning and being tempted to stop 'one more hour' might have proved irresistible.  The lack of twitchy bootlace takes to the worm rod was encouraging. The piece of squid (this time on a hair rig type set-up I'd come across when looking up catfish rigs) on the other rod was also being left alone. Around nine thirty I missed a run to the worm rod. The rig was working. Not quite half an hour later the worm was taken again. This time I connected and the 10ft Torrix stalker I was using was hooped over. Looking down on the eel as I laid the net in the margins it was clearly my biggest from the pit. One of those thickset eels, and pleasingly long.

As this was only a short session I'd taken my Korum Multi-Mat to carry the rods, net and bait bag. With its raised sides it proved useful as a retainer for unhooking the eel which was free to writhe around without being able to escape while I grabbed my camera. The fold in the padding also proved useful for laying the eel on it's back. The scales didn't lie and my biggest eel for a couple or three years was soon returned.



The Multi-Mat, I now discovered, has one fatal flaw. While it is handy to throw a jumper and fleece in when walking to a swim on a hot evening, it's not so good for holding those items after an eel has slimed it up! I kept the fleece on and sweated my way back to the car.

One eel on a rig doesn't prove much, but it has given me the urge to try it some more. So while the weather remains summery I'll be sneaking a few short evening sessions in, I think. There are a couple more eel/catfish tricks I want to try out. And the eels will have to be the guinea pigs for the time being.

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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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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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Hat magic

Checking back through this blog I see that my current baseball cap has been covering my bald patch since March 2007. No wonder it was looking tired. It had been looking tired for at least eighteen months if I'm honest. Faded, frayed and falling apart it has character, but it's getting annoying having to trim bits of thread which  dangle before my eyes from the peak. Into the home for retired fishing caps it goes. Obviously it's pristine replacement would be a sure fire blank inducer.

Luckily when I arrived at the lake the wind was cold enough for me to require a woolly hat. One with a proven fish-catching track record. The baits hadn't been out half an hour when the boilie rod was in action. I was fiddling with a replacement rig at the time and when I got to the rod the run stopped. I knew that rig was a poor one for tench. The rig swap was made and out it went with another bag of mixed pellets of uncertain origin.

It wasn't long before the bobbin dropped back on that rod and this time I connected with a small-feeling tench. It fell off half way in. Bugger. A third cast and a third take which stayed attached all the way to the net. Despite being a small male that wasn't much more than two pounds at a guess it was my first tench of the year.



The wind had dropped, the sun was shining and the evening was warming up. Time for a hat swap and on with the new cap. The alarms stayed silent as I watched first a flock of sand martins, then one of swallows, feeding on high. I counted seven great crested grebes, three pairs and a singleton, on the lake. The midges were far too numerous to count, no doubt providing good feeding for the hirundines and the bats which appeared as darkness drew in. With the sun setting so the air chilled and the woolly hat was dug out again. This was the signal for another take to the boilie rod. Who says lucky hats don't work?

A slightly more feisty fish, a little bigger I guessed the female to weigh around four pounds and used the sling and scales to check. I had overestimated by half a pound. The length was there but she was a skinny fish. Looking at the fish in the net I could easily imagine a non-tench angler guessing a pound or even two more than I had. Carp are a different build to tench, rounder in cross section if you will, and so weigh heavier for a similar length. Hardly surprising so many seven and eight pounders get caught by carp anglers from waters where tench anglers struggle to catch anything close to those weights.

Guessing weights accurately comes with familiarity of weighing fish of a particular species. That's why I never decry newcomers to pike fishing weighing the jacks they catch. Some hardened pikers seem to make a big thing out of never weighing anything less than ten or twenty pounds, depending how much they want to impress their acolytes. Unless they have weighed fish less than those weights in the past, how can they judge when a pike is worth their while getting the sling wet for? Even when you have the necessary experience an unusually fat or thin fish will come along and throw you one way or the other.

I fished on into dark for nothing more than two or three liners, only one to a bait that wasn't the boilie. I much prefer catching tench using tench tactics, but if they want boilies I'll give them to 'em. I just hope the pesky carp keep away from my baits.

One plus point to take away from this short session was that the cheapo flat leads I'd bought work a treat in PVA bags. They also seem to plane up on the retrieve, an added bonus. Considering I bought them originally for piking I'm well chuffed.

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That big pike feeling

 Monday was one of those days when looking out of the window at a perfect winter's day drove me to drop my plans and go piking. I had that feeling. I even knew that I had to fish an area that doesn't get much attention. And I knew the spot I a had to end the afternoon in.

As I headed towards the first swim from which I was to work my way back to the soon-to-be-hotspot a pair of bullfinch flew ahead of me, looking a little like miniature jays showing their white rumps to me.

It was sunny and mild. Being by the water soaking up the earthy colours of the reeds and alders made perfect sense. Three baits were spread around the swim. One was the inevitable lamprey half, the other two were  a bluey tail and a pointless sardine. The more distant baits got twitched back at intervals. Another pointless exercise that seems to work miracles for other pikers.

Two duck sprang up from the flock of mallards hugging the far reeds that didn't look mallardish. When I managed to get the bins on them I was surprised to see a pair of pintail circling before disappearing into the distance.

After the usual hour I moved and repeated the procedure of positioning baits and working a couple back for another hour before the final move. With the baits out in the last swim of the day and the light fading later than it had been, both because of the days passed since the solstice and the clear sky, my confidence was high. It was only a matter of time before one of the floats moved. Shortly after four the close in lamprey head was away. It hadn't gone far before stopping as I stood up. It moved again, nice and steady as I got to the rod. That was its cue to stop. Dead. It moved no more. I wound the rig in and the teeth marks in the bait were dripping blood. Hard to tell if that had been the big fish I had the feeling about or not. Back it went.

I still felt like there was a chance. Even as I wound the rods in at five o'clock, a more civilised hour to be wrapping up at, I expected a float to wobble. It was not to be. Walking back to the car in the dark the dew on the grass was shining brightly in the light of my head torch like the reflective tape on a fireman's uniform.

Work commitments kept me away from the water on Tuesday and Wednesday, and were set to do the same today until that feeling came back. A five o'clock finish meant I could squeeze a couple of hours in after boxing off what work I could do. No time to fill a flask, and no need for such a short session. I was in two minds about where to head for. I doubted there'd be a second chance in the missed run swim but the wind seemed to be blowing off that bank and I fancied a change of tactic on one rod.

I think the Law of Sod had more to do with the wind actually blowing across the swim than from behind it than the Laws of Physics. I still made the change to my rig anyway. Although I had left my mini-drifter behind I felt sure that floating braid would enable a simple float to drag a small herring through the water under one of my dumpy pencil floats. The sardines and blueys remained in the freezer meaning that I had sensible lamprey and mackerel baits on the float leger rigs

For just this eventuality I had bought some jumbo split shot. My do everything rig was soon relieved of it's ounce and a half bomb and two shot clipped onto a loop of nylon which took its place. The small herring was secured to the trace with a few turns of red elastic and the whole lot was cast out. The sardines and blueys remained in the freezer meaning that I had sensible lamprey and mackerel baits on the float leger rigs.

The drifting bait was recast to cover different lines, the far bait was twitched back. I moved for the final hour and repeated the process, except the drifted bait had the shot replaced by a longer link and a bomb to hold the bait over some remaining weed. There didn't seem to be much in the way of birdlife about. Not even fieldfares or blackbirds. Just a few coots and tufties on the water and a couple of blue tits in the hawthorns. On such days pike are often absent too. And so it proved.  That big fish feeling had failed me. That's blank number three, which should see me change venue or species, but as the first blank was last year and I did have a run on Monday I'll call it one blank for now!

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New Year Blues

When I'm not in the mood for fishing these days I don't go. Whether the resounding four swim full day blank on the second day of the year deterred me, or the never ending rain (on days when I had spare time), is hard to say. At least I saw a pike on that session. I'd stuck a lure rod in the quiver and one lure. A weighted Squirrely Burt is as safe a bet as any in my book when it comes to picking a banker lure, so that was what I packed. Indeed a small jack showed up as a late and lazy follower. Nothing touched the deadbaits despite the conditions looking and feeling great.

It wasn't until mid-morning today that the urge to fish washed over me again. Must have been the sun breaking through on a day with little wind. This time the Burt was ignored. I'd given it a try in a couple of swims before breaking out the deadbait rods in another. Two cups of tea after settling in I needed to empty the bladder. No sooner had I zipped up than the sounder in my pocket began to burble.

With the sensitivity turned up on the Delkims every run sounds like the fish is rocket powered. When I got to the rod the spool was turning quite slowly. Pick the rod up, tighten down. Wind the bait in. I never felt the fish. Tiny teeth marks suggested it was a little nipper. The bait was dropped back in the same marginal spot and the other bait given a twitch.

Half an hour later and the margin float fell flat before moving slowly and steadily to the left, turning out then stopping. I'd crept to the rod as the float was less than a rod length from the tip eye. The float dithered and I wound down again. This time I felt something before winding the bait back in yet again. There was a slice mark in the lamprey, but I reckon that was caused by me pulling the bait through the jack's teeth. the weight I felt was minimal.

I'd hardly sat down when the float fell flat once more. This time the pike had dropped the bait. Time for a move. Followed an hour later by a final move. Rain had been predicted for six o'clock by the interwebs. I was hopeful of getting away before it arrived with dark falling an hour before that. The interwebs got it wrong. The rain arrived fifteen minutes before packing up time. Thankfully it was no'but drizzle. enough to soak the landing net and brolly so they needed taking out of the quiver on my return home.

Given my dismal failure of late it seems a bit daft to describe the rig I've been using for my roving. But it's not the rig's fault I've been missing takes it's mine. I first mentioned the set up a couple of winters back but don't think I illustrated it. The following photos should be pretty self-explanatory.

This first pic shows it rigged to float leger a deadbait with a semi fixed lead, which is how I use it most of the time. You can use braid stops or tie stop knots. The choice is yours.

The stop below the float is to prevent the float tangling with the lead on the cast. It also stops the float and beads sliding off the line when changing traces - I hate attaching traces to the line with snap links as I find they always tangle.

My floats are simple sticks of one inch balsa dowel, shaped, painted and varnished. I find 'dumpier' floats easier to see than slim pencils and reckon they hold up better in a flow or a chop. As the floats are fished overdepth they rarely get pulled under when a pike takes the bait, so resistance isn't an issue. The fish will be towing an ounce and a half of lead around anyway! The swivel in the base is fitted on a split pin pushed into the balsa and epoxied in place.

Lead and float are clipped on using the Korum links which can be removed from the line. This enables the rig to be used as either a semi-fixed leger by removing the float, or a running leger (as in the pic below) by removing the float and repositioning the clip the lead is attached to.

If you think the lead might snag up then insert a silicone tube sleeved weak link between it and the clip, or maybe a paperclip.

To create a float paternoster rig remove the lead and clip, then tie a weak paternoster link between the top treble and the lead.

Want to float fish an untethered bait? Take the float leger and clip on a lighter bomb. I've even made a mini-drifter to use with the rig. More of which if I manage to get a take on it. It does drift though!

Fancy wobbling a deadbait? Take the lead and float off.

For drains, canals, and small stillwaters this set up has been pretty good to me so far. If the interwebs are right I might get to give it another go on Thursday. Should I be in the mood.

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