Thursday, 5 September 2013

Bradshaw Hall Fishery 19/08/13


Finally a day off work with nothing else planned, the perfect opportunity to head out fishing. I haven't been out on the bank anywhere near as much as id like to this year so I wanted to try a few things that I had researched during my off time. I woke up at 9am, after many snoozes on my alarm, and rushed to get my gear together before it would be too late to head to the lake, as it usually fills up early and I really didn't fancy the other lakes that are there.
 

The fishery of choice is Bradshaw Hall Fisheries in Bolton Lancashire, this is a day ticket fishery with the option of getting season tickets. There are 9 lakes in total, offering something for everyone. Lake 2 is my usual lake of choice as it is the specimen lake for the complex with carp up to 28lbs and around 28 pegs. I pretty much always get here later than I want and usually never get the peg I want but I still do well.
 

After grabbing my gear I arrive on site at about 10am, after getting my ticket and speaking to the bailiff on site he informed me that lake 2 shouldn’t be too busy. He also told me that the lake was doing OK but not as good as usual and the biggest carp in there hadn’t been out for a while.
 

On driving round the lake 2 car park could already see that my usual peg had already been taken, I knew I should have got there earlier! Not to worry, I decided to go round to the long side of the lake and set up as close as I could to the showing fish. There was already someone on that side on the usual hot peg but the peg I picked was 2-3 pegs to the left of them, so I wasn’t too worried about disturbing them. After baiting up with a few handfuls of cell boilies I was finally setup and ready to cast by 10:30.



My first spot was for my left hand rod, this was about 3 rod lengths out and roughly halfway between my peg and the peg to my left, this rod I decided to try solid PVA bags with a mix of different pellets, my hook bait for now would be a sticky baits 16mm bloodworm dumbell. For the actual rig I went with a 2oz in line lead with a Fishing Gurus method feeder ready tied rig, these make great PVA rigs. I cast this rod out to the spot and felt it down with a satisfying bump as it hit the bottom, I then sank the line before putting it on the rod pod with my Delkims sensitivity set to medium.
 


I then decided that the right hand rod would be best out straight in front of me at around 5-6 rod lengths as here was a fair bit of activity here on and off and I have known people to catch a fair bit from here on my previous trips. The right hand rod was setup with about 2 foot of Korda Dark Matter tubing up to a safety lead clip and 2oz lead. Rig wise, I decided to go for a D-Rig made with Korda IQ2 in 10lb onto a size 8 Korda Kaptor curve shank barbless hook, now you can buy these rigs ready made but after the last Korda free DVD I decided to make a load of my own as they weren’t out in shops at the time, I did also have the ready made 1s with me but I thought id try my own first as its always more satisfying catching on your own made rigs and bait. Which leads me to bait for my right hand rod, I did have some ready made cell with me but I almost never use it as my hook bait, instead I make my own hook bait boilies. For the first few casts I thought id try my latest batch of boilies which has caught me fish on there before and I doubt anyone else will have.
 

The boilies in question are made from Mainline Cell ingredients with pineapple and tangerine flavours and coloured pale blue, but they are also made with part polaris popup mix so they are critically balanced when on the rig. This rod went out shortly after the left hand rod and also landed with a bump, line sank and finally I both traps were set. My thinking with placement of rods was partly that it was near where people usually catch but mainly because it was a the top end of the lake where it gets narrow and heads towards the shallows under the trees, carp on this lake usually patrol the lake round the day, going from the deep part at the centre of the lake, round the margins, up the shallows and trees and back to the other end, hopefully my traps were in the right place to get their attention on their patrol route.
 


Almost instantly after both rods were setup and fish were having a go at my baits and line bites were constant, time to turn down the Delkim sensitivity and let a bit more line out, even then liners were constant.
 

At around 10:35 the right hand rod was away but after a few minutes the fish was off, damn! Clearly they still like the blue boilies that I made, which was great and the D-rig is still my rig of choice so ill put this one behind me and recast back to the same spot.
 


5 minutes later the same happened with the left hand rod, clearly fish are doing me over, oh well. New PVA bag  setup this time with a nice helping of Korda almond goo but before I could cast it out there was another run on the right hand rod which was lost as soon as I got to the rod. A few minutes later both rods had now been recast to their spots and a scattering of a few cell went out to them.
 


The line bites continued over both and small amounts of cell went out little and often to each rod, but it looked like it was dying off a bit in front of me.
 

At around 12:11 a nice mirror jumped just over my right hand spot, great! They haven’t gone! A few more cell went out to both spots and a scattering to the left and right of each spot, making a nice trail from the tree line, to my spots and through to the deep water. The wind then started to pick up, a stronger north westerly started to hit the lake, not by any means a gale but it was stronger than it had been so far. Time for a bait change on the right hand rod I think.
 

The right hand rod came in at 12:20, after a bit of pondering I decided to go with another of my new batches of boilies. I normally use white banoffee cell critically balanced boilies while at Bradshaw but this new batch was my new pink versions which I haven’t tried before, ah well here goes. I decided that this bait would be on a stringer with 4 more cell boilies as I’ve heard this does well.
 

Before I could get this rod out the left hand rod was away, finally a fish that hasn’t come off just after the take. After playing the fish for about 5 minutes the fish finally came over the cord of the landing net and I was finally off the mark with my first fish of the day! It was only a small mirror but it was very welcome. Unfortunately I didn’t have my scales with me but that didn’t bother me, the thing that interested me the most from this trip was how my new baits were doing and how well PVA solid bags did.
 


After checking the fish over, taking a quick photo and popping it back in I thought it would be best to get my rods back out as the fish were obviously taking bait! By 12:40 both rods were back out on their spots and the PVA bag has the almond goo again to see if it made a difference.
 

Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t the first time I've used goo and if I would have had some krill oil I would have been using that instead but I really wanted to try it out and give it a fair trial. Previously I have used different flavours of goo on this lake and had no success but I strongly believe that different lakes respond to different flavours of goo. One of my mates uses corn flavoured goo on a different water and has noticed a difference there but he hasn’t noticed a difference on Bradshaw. Almond was my ace up my sleeve for this lake, I hope!
 

No sooner had I sat down and started watching the line bites on the rods had someone else turned up to the lake and decided to set up to my left, damn, I would have to move my left hand rod even though I had been getting success from this spot. After talking to the lad who came round I brought my left hand rod in and repositioned it to the centre of my swim, as this spot hadn’t seen much bait and I had seen a few fish near the surface I thought this would be a great opportunity to try out zigs. Ive only used zig rigs a couple of times before and had no success but this time I had some Fox Zig alignas and a nash zig sub float.
 

As the left hand rod was not near the middle of my swim I decided to move my right hand rod to the far right hand side of my swim. Lets see how this goes. Fish had been showing over the deeper water all day on the surface and the people setup to the right of me had been catching a fair few from the surface but I couldn’t seem to pull them over to my spot, even though I had been spraying pellets over my zig rig little and often.
 

By 15:19 I had decided to give up the zigs and switch back to PVA bags on the left hand rod, this time my hook bait would be Cell dumbells that I had soaked in mainline active ade bloodworm syrup for about 4 months as I've heard the carp in there love bloodworm flavours and of course with almond goo. This was then recast a little further to the left of my swim, closer to where it was before.
 


At 16:00 the left hand rod was off again, after a nice fight the fish came over the cord and I had my second mirror carp of the day on the mat, this was a fair bit bigger than the last 1 so I was happy, the kid who setup next to me popped round for a look and we had a chat about what I was using after the fish was placed back in the water.
 


After he went back to his swim the PVA was back out to its spot and the right hand rod was repositioned a bit closer to the bank, around 2 rod lengths out. Fish continued to show all over and the left hand rod continued to get line bites but the right hand rod seemed a little too quiet.


At around 17:30 just as I was thinking about bringing the right hand rod in for a change of bait and reposition it went off after a short fight mirror number 3 was in the net, the first fish on the right hand rod of the day and the first catch for my pink banoffee boilies.


By now the kid to my left had gone so both rods were repositioned back to their original places but unfortunately due to putting pellets out over the zig rig earlier I was pretty much out of pellets, this would be my last PVA of the day.
 


The last bite on the left hand rod came in at 18:28 and it felt like a much better fish, better than the others that I had today but just as I was gaining ground on it the hook pulled and it got away, gutted! As I was out of pellets I decided to put this back out without a PVA. By this time the bites had dried up and I decided to call it a day.
 

While I was packing up the bailiff came round for a chat and gave me a few tips for next time. Looks like ill be making another batch of boilies with a different flavour soon!

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