A MISCELLANY
I do a lot of fishing now that I'm retired and most all of it, while relatively ineffective as far as results are concerned, is almost always thoroughly enjoyable. Days 'off' are spent contemplating the next trip; fettling tackle and hotly anticipating the possibilities ahead. Just once in a while however, the blue devils descend and I am beaten before I start. We had been looking forward to a morning's hemp fishing on the pole and decided on a shallower area of the club lake.
I couldn't wait; all my rigs were ready, bait was prepared and it should have been a good morning. It wasn't, not for me at any rate. I picked my spot, set everything out within reach and attached the plummet. You have to understand that my cane poles, which I love fishing with, are 19 ft long at best; the equivalent of a modern short pole of 6 metres or so and at that range, I had 2 ft of water. I'd expected four feet and I just got the hump with it all. Before I'd even started I was beaten.
I moved swims; managed to find three feet and started again but my heart wasn't in it. I fished on but hardly had a bite catching just a couple of small roach. In the end, I packed up early and went next door to watch Pete who I found fishing hemp and tares on a 6 metre whip in three feet of water just as I was but catching a steady succession of nice Roach. My catch or lack of it was entirely due to my own lack of confidence. I hadn't believed that I would catch on hemp in the shallowest area of the lake, so I didn't. That was a lesson learned and another came on my next visit.
This time we were sharing a peg but Pete was float fishing and I was quivertipping with a 10 gram cage feeder using bread for bait. Getting bites was never a problem, I had them from my first cast to my last but for four of those five hours I barely hooked anything; I think I had two at most. Again, instead of trying to improve things I'd varied little beyond swapping hook sizes and that to no effect whatsoever. In the end, Pete suggested lengthening the tail beyond the feeder. At first I was reluctant; previous experience had found around 12" to work best but nothing ventured, nothing gained so I doubled it. I caught another nine sizeable skimmers in the last hour or so and my bites had gone from slammers that I couldn't miss but had, to slow, steady pull-rounds that it was hard to miss at all.
I don't know how that change had improved things but it had, dramatically. Maybe it gave the bait freedom to move around as what was clearly a large shoal of fish moved over the bait. One or two took on the drop, maybe a longer fall to the bottom was the difference, I've no idea but it worked, proving that the smallest variation can make a big difference and that a lesson learned over time may not always apply to the situation on any given day.
In between these two visits, I'd had another difficult day on the disused, Grantham canal with Sharkey. Levels were way down and I had barely 18 inches of water in front of me. I had my old standby of bread for bait which I could either use as flake or punch and fished it on my current go-to Tench rig; a single shot 6" from the hook tethering a small crowquill fished waggler style using the lift method. An inch or two from the hook I had put a single number six which just overcomes residual buoyancy in the bait popping up my bread above any rubbish or algae on the bottom.
The water was filthy, there were a fair few clumps of hornwort growing to the surface but in between the bottom was clear enough and fish were bubbling everywhere. As soon as I introduced groundbait they were on it but I couldn't hit them. Slow bites or fast, I couldn't hit them; I must have missed hundreds finishing the morning with one nice Bream and half a dozen small Silver Bream. Yet again, it was a bit of a disaster; yet more proof that despite my best efforts I really haven't a clue. Worst of all I lost five big fish due to bad hookholds. I chopped and changed hook sizes but it made no difference; I lost them on hooks from 16 to 12.
The last two that came adrift offered me a clue as to why; they were both foul-hooked and my only reward was scales on the point of the hook. One was a Carp, the other probably a Bream. I'd recently watched an underwater video where the Tench were wholly focussed on the groundbait crumbs, ignoring or rejecting sweetcorn hookbaits. I have a feeling that this was the problem but then it works well normally.
Just this morning I was back at the club lake trying out yet another cane quivertip creation; this one designed to hopefully chuck 20 gram feeders packed with groundbait. It was slightly disappointing in appearance as I had failed to get the transition quite right and the quivertip itself has a flat spot immediately above the joint. Nevertheless it worked just fine and all was well, or at least it would have been if I could have hit the bites. I tried altering the length of the tail as had worked for me last time but other than altering the viciousness of the bites it made no difference; I still couldn't hit them to save my life.
I was using 4mm pellets on the hook and had them mounted via band to the size 14 hook. I chose that size because it seemed right, the gape pretty much matching the diameter of the pellet so that it wasn't shielded by it. When I am missing bites I tend to go up a hook size so that more of the hook is exposed but a 12 didn't make any difference whatsoever. I went down to a 16 and started to catch a few fish but the most effective size in the end was an 18 and I went from hitting one bite from a multitude of chances to one in four; a massive improvement. It looked wrong to me but obviously it wasn't and that was a result I wasn't expecting.
It's hard to draw conclusions from failure. I've always believed that you learn nothing from blanks and I know it is a cliché but as lure fishermen we quickly learned that confidence was always the best colour in the box. Sometimes there is just nothing you can do, sometimes a small change makes a huge difference but what is going on in your head can often make the biggest difference of all.
So there you have it; if you can't hit bites on the feeder, try a longer tail or a shorter one. Try a larger hook or a smaller one and don't bother striking until the fish has hung itself, it's a waste of time. If the rig is right they will do the work for you.
When the Tench are bubbling and fizzing madly do not expect catch any more or less fish than usual; they are focussed on minute particles but every once in a while one will make a mistake. And, more than anything else, expect to catch something or you rarely will.
I couldn't wait; all my rigs were ready, bait was prepared and it should have been a good morning. It wasn't, not for me at any rate. I picked my spot, set everything out within reach and attached the plummet. You have to understand that my cane poles, which I love fishing with, are 19 ft long at best; the equivalent of a modern short pole of 6 metres or so and at that range, I had 2 ft of water. I'd expected four feet and I just got the hump with it all. Before I'd even started I was beaten.
I moved swims; managed to find three feet and started again but my heart wasn't in it. I fished on but hardly had a bite catching just a couple of small roach. In the end, I packed up early and went next door to watch Pete who I found fishing hemp and tares on a 6 metre whip in three feet of water just as I was but catching a steady succession of nice Roach. My catch or lack of it was entirely due to my own lack of confidence. I hadn't believed that I would catch on hemp in the shallowest area of the lake, so I didn't. That was a lesson learned and another came on my next visit.
This time we were sharing a peg but Pete was float fishing and I was quivertipping with a 10 gram cage feeder using bread for bait. Getting bites was never a problem, I had them from my first cast to my last but for four of those five hours I barely hooked anything; I think I had two at most. Again, instead of trying to improve things I'd varied little beyond swapping hook sizes and that to no effect whatsoever. In the end, Pete suggested lengthening the tail beyond the feeder. At first I was reluctant; previous experience had found around 12" to work best but nothing ventured, nothing gained so I doubled it. I caught another nine sizeable skimmers in the last hour or so and my bites had gone from slammers that I couldn't miss but had, to slow, steady pull-rounds that it was hard to miss at all.
I don't know how that change had improved things but it had, dramatically. Maybe it gave the bait freedom to move around as what was clearly a large shoal of fish moved over the bait. One or two took on the drop, maybe a longer fall to the bottom was the difference, I've no idea but it worked, proving that the smallest variation can make a big difference and that a lesson learned over time may not always apply to the situation on any given day.
In between these two visits, I'd had another difficult day on the disused, Grantham canal with Sharkey. Levels were way down and I had barely 18 inches of water in front of me. I had my old standby of bread for bait which I could either use as flake or punch and fished it on my current go-to Tench rig; a single shot 6" from the hook tethering a small crowquill fished waggler style using the lift method. An inch or two from the hook I had put a single number six which just overcomes residual buoyancy in the bait popping up my bread above any rubbish or algae on the bottom.
The water was filthy, there were a fair few clumps of hornwort growing to the surface but in between the bottom was clear enough and fish were bubbling everywhere. As soon as I introduced groundbait they were on it but I couldn't hit them. Slow bites or fast, I couldn't hit them; I must have missed hundreds finishing the morning with one nice Bream and half a dozen small Silver Bream. Yet again, it was a bit of a disaster; yet more proof that despite my best efforts I really haven't a clue. Worst of all I lost five big fish due to bad hookholds. I chopped and changed hook sizes but it made no difference; I lost them on hooks from 16 to 12.
The last two that came adrift offered me a clue as to why; they were both foul-hooked and my only reward was scales on the point of the hook. One was a Carp, the other probably a Bream. I'd recently watched an underwater video where the Tench were wholly focussed on the groundbait crumbs, ignoring or rejecting sweetcorn hookbaits. I have a feeling that this was the problem but then it works well normally.
Just this morning I was back at the club lake trying out yet another cane quivertip creation; this one designed to hopefully chuck 20 gram feeders packed with groundbait. It was slightly disappointing in appearance as I had failed to get the transition quite right and the quivertip itself has a flat spot immediately above the joint. Nevertheless it worked just fine and all was well, or at least it would have been if I could have hit the bites. I tried altering the length of the tail as had worked for me last time but other than altering the viciousness of the bites it made no difference; I still couldn't hit them to save my life.
I was using 4mm pellets on the hook and had them mounted via band to the size 14 hook. I chose that size because it seemed right, the gape pretty much matching the diameter of the pellet so that it wasn't shielded by it. When I am missing bites I tend to go up a hook size so that more of the hook is exposed but a 12 didn't make any difference whatsoever. I went down to a 16 and started to catch a few fish but the most effective size in the end was an 18 and I went from hitting one bite from a multitude of chances to one in four; a massive improvement. It looked wrong to me but obviously it wasn't and that was a result I wasn't expecting.
It's hard to draw conclusions from failure. I've always believed that you learn nothing from blanks and I know it is a cliché but as lure fishermen we quickly learned that confidence was always the best colour in the box. Sometimes there is just nothing you can do, sometimes a small change makes a huge difference but what is going on in your head can often make the biggest difference of all.
So there you have it; if you can't hit bites on the feeder, try a longer tail or a shorter one. Try a larger hook or a smaller one and don't bother striking until the fish has hung itself, it's a waste of time. If the rig is right they will do the work for you.
When the Tench are bubbling and fizzing madly do not expect catch any more or less fish than usual; they are focussed on minute particles but every once in a while one will make a mistake. And, more than anything else, expect to catch something or you rarely will.
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