THE ART OF THE GENTLE.
The Leam project is not going well it has to be said but that is a story for another day. Suffice to say it is unfishable more often than not and today was no exception. The club water is always there as back up though and I've already been diverted there twice in the last week with little to show for my efforts beyond the odd fish and a plethora of missed bites.
Last winter on the rivers was very similar and back then I managed to catch quite a few pound plus Perch on the club lake, fishing maggots on the float. It seemed sensible then, to try the same combination that has caught me some decent Perch from the canal recently; namely caster and worm.
Generally speaking I prefer to floatfish whenever I can. Bites seem easier to hit probably because a well shotted float offers both less resistance and greater sensitivity; when the weather is crap though I'm much happier tucked under my brolly with my hands in my pockets watching a quivertip.
I've been doing that a lot lately and gradually refining my technique with no great success. On Wednesday I fished a peg that was new to me and while I caught just one goer Roach, the number of bites that I missed was embarrassing beyond explanation. With that in mind and with the Leam all over the shop again I decided to use up a pint of two week old maggots fed through a 10 gram black cap feeder and it was a revelation.
For three and a half hours, from my third cast on, I had a bite every single cast landing on average a fish every nine minutes. Not only were these results almost unheard of in my angling diary the fish, while not being of specimen size, were all netters and that is all I ever ask.
The obvious conclusion is that the bait made the difference; two maggots on an 18 being far less of a mouthful than a large dendro. With bites aplenty there were multiple opportunities to refine technique and I found better ways to set the tip up offering far less resistance; the most effective of which was to let the feeder sink on a tight line. Then when it had landed, tightening the line until it was sunk and then letting either sub-surface drift or the weight of the line take up any remaining slack. After that any bites that didn't develop were fed a couple of inches more slack. Way more often than not, the tip would eventually go round and stay round or just rattle continuously and a fish would be caught.
Last winter on the rivers was very similar and back then I managed to catch quite a few pound plus Perch on the club lake, fishing maggots on the float. It seemed sensible then, to try the same combination that has caught me some decent Perch from the canal recently; namely caster and worm.
Generally speaking I prefer to floatfish whenever I can. Bites seem easier to hit probably because a well shotted float offers both less resistance and greater sensitivity; when the weather is crap though I'm much happier tucked under my brolly with my hands in my pockets watching a quivertip.
I've been doing that a lot lately and gradually refining my technique with no great success. On Wednesday I fished a peg that was new to me and while I caught just one goer Roach, the number of bites that I missed was embarrassing beyond explanation. With that in mind and with the Leam all over the shop again I decided to use up a pint of two week old maggots fed through a 10 gram black cap feeder and it was a revelation.
For three and a half hours, from my third cast on, I had a bite every single cast landing on average a fish every nine minutes. Not only were these results almost unheard of in my angling diary the fish, while not being of specimen size, were all netters and that is all I ever ask.
The obvious conclusion is that the bait made the difference; two maggots on an 18 being far less of a mouthful than a large dendro. With bites aplenty there were multiple opportunities to refine technique and I found better ways to set the tip up offering far less resistance; the most effective of which was to let the feeder sink on a tight line. Then when it had landed, tightening the line until it was sunk and then letting either sub-surface drift or the weight of the line take up any remaining slack. After that any bites that didn't develop were fed a couple of inches more slack. Way more often than not, the tip would eventually go round and stay round or just rattle continuously and a fish would be caught.
It was an eye-opening morning's fishing for me. Every fish was a netter; the final tally consisting of a dozen Skimmers between one and one and three quarter pounds, seven nice Roach to a frustrating fifteen and a half ounces, and four nice hybrids to two pounds six ounces. I've two more mornings left to put some of today's lessons to the test before I head south for a fishing-free week. One will be spent on the canal and the other a return to the club lake where I shall no doubt discover that the only lesson I've really learned is that you can catch them when they are feeding and that no matter what you do, you can't when they aren't.
Yes, a netter is always better.
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