Roach Fishing on Pole and Pike Vlogs go live...

A warm welcome to this weeks blog update i hope i find you all well and your nets wet.  Been a bit of a week for the old Dannys Angling Blog in terms of expanding into new areas and also a new blog sponsor but there will be more on that in the coming weeks.  The fishing this week is another session for roach on the pole but this time i have a game plan.

Pike Videos Go Live on Youtube......

So yes i finally bit the bullet last week and headed off into the night with my phone and a phone older in tow.  Driving along the road i pressed record and began speaking.  It came surprisingly easy the first recording and it seemed to flow nicely, a few fish on the session helped greatly to put together a nice video.  As i mention in the video it is going to take time to get to grips with the new format and learning to capture little clips on the bank that will fill the gaps between fish and give the video another dimension.

First Pike Session Video:

After publishing the first video the second soon followed and you can find that on the channel there as well.  There will certainly be more videos coming on the channel so subscribing is also an option if you so wish.  The videos have done better than i could have imagined with over a few hundred views between them and some nice comments on the videos.  It really has taken me back to when i first started this written blog and remember getting 100 views in the first months blogging and being over the moon and i am hoping in time and with patience this addition to the blog will develop the same way.

Pike Blog 2016/2017

I have decided to again write a pike blog of the season in diary format.  It makes the season read as a story from start to fishing and the weeks where i do a vlog will make putting the pike blog together really simple.  It keeps the piking on its own little bit of the blog and gives it the respect the time and effort i put into it deserves.  I put as much effort into my piking as i do my other fishing so for it to be just a add on bit on the end of the normal weekly blog feels a little like i am doing the trips an injustice.  Keep your eyes on the top bar of the blogs page for the 2016/2017 pike blog going live in the next week or so.

The pike season so far has been really fun with a few pike on the bank despite the barmy warm day time temperatures we have been experiencing of late.  Some mornings have been as low as 44 degrees rising to close to 70 degrees when i was leaving at 3pm, it might have been bad for the piking on dead baits but wobbling has put fish on the bank.  More on that in the pike blog though.

on to this weeks fishing...

Roach Fishing on The Pole

As we walked back to the car on the previous session we got talking to a guy who had fished the area extensively and he did mention a few interesting bits of information that added weight to our findings during the session.   Our session had thrown up over 30lb of mainly roach with the odd perch and gudgeon thrown in for good measure.  This guy mentioned about bronze bream shoals and having to put the bait in to get them to come in and feed.

With this information still ringing in my ears i set about a plan of attack for the venue.  I was going to try and ignore the fact the fish could be in the really deep water down the middle and hope that the fish would be willing to come up the shelf in the warmer conditions to find my bait.  Speaking of bait it was 2 pints of maggot and a pint of hemp seed all to be mixed into my ground bait mix which was 2kg of ground bait with about 40% of that being mole hill soil mix.

Again moil hill hunting gained a few funny looks..

Sat on my box i took my time in setting up and getting my ground bait mix right.  Plumbing the depth i found around 8ft on my top two plus one section of pole and it slowly went out before it really dropped away.  I knew i had to keep my feed on the inside of my line and knew i would probably end up chasing some bites down the gradual slope as the session went on.

So lined up where a few big balls of ground bait laced with hemp and maggot.  to me it was quite a lot of bait to be feeding before i had even started fishing but i was a man with a plan today and i knew from the previous session that the river held enough fish to clear this little big of bait up.

Although only fishing my top two kit and my number four section out i knew accuracy was key so i fed with the large cupping kit on the line and fed in line with a tree on the far bank.  In went to balls of ground bait and in two of the cups i also added a good helping of maggot.

The swim fed it was time for the first cast and i remember the first 10 minutes being really frustrating with me hooking fish but them coming off.  I then remembered i had used the rig from the previous week and checking my hook it was about as sharp as the thick end of a piece of wood, no good.  A quick chance of hook and i was soon turning bites into fish.

Roach after roach was coming on the line i had fed and i was now left with a huge question, how do i feed the swim?  Remember this river fishing on the pole and ground bait is all new to me and although ground bait plays a huge part on my canal fishing but i have not done much fishing on rivers with ground bait and certainly never mixed up 2kg of ground bait for a session!

I decided i would set myself a routing of feeding and every 30 mins regardless of bites or the swim i was going to feed the swim with 1 or 2 balls of ground bait.  I started to pick up the odd small skimmer adding fuel to the mans comments the previous week about the river holding bream, not that i didn't believe him of course.

As the swim developed and progressed some nice Rudd began to show shallow and with them some better roach.  There was signs of fish feeding in the swim with bubbles coming off my ground bait area but to this point none had found my bait.

I was catching steadily and the lulls in action where short before i began picking up fish and i knew i was amassing a nice net of fish that i hoped would beat last weeks total of 16lb.  A hour or two of the session to go i was thinking i had done so and when i had a chat to my uncle i was thinking around the mid teens in weight in the net.

During the last hour i upped the feed rate to every 15 minutes a big ball of ground bait went in and in it a decided to mix some micro pellets and this made a huge difference.  I began to catch some skimmers to around the pound mark and these extra fish in the sack i felt confident i had beaten last weeks total.

That dreaded time of the week came round, 3pm this time of year on a Saturday, time to pack in and begin the trek home.  Always a time of the week where you know the adventure for that week is over.  Lifting my net out i could tell i had a decent net when i strained to lift it out the water, into my rubber mesh landing net on the scales they went, just under 28lb of fish. I was over the moon.

My uncle had also caught steady all day on the pole and his net added 16lb to the total.  A combined weight of over 40lb of silvers form a completely new waterway.  I had recently been in a conversation with someone on facebook who claimed to know how to fish, so didnt need my help, despite them asking where i was fishing,  i am still awaiting his net to be posted with the co-ordinates of the swim ;-)

till next time

i wish you all tight lines

Danny