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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