Pondip Blog Live and New Swim Trecks!

A warm welcome to this weeks blog update i hope i find you all well and your nets wet.  Well i arrived at the bait shop on Friday and unfortunately there was no replacement rod section waiting for me, no fault of the shops just no Preston orders had come in that week, fingers crossed for this week.  A tough start to the working week today as i feel the pain from a weekend trampling through the undergrowth and of course that monday morning blues feeling of no fishing for a few days.  A third cup of coffee of the morning just arrived on my desk so fingers crossed that this much needed caffeine gets me through this afternoon.

Since the birth of our children my fishing has remained structured but the writing of the blog has been all over the place but i finally feel that i am finding some much needed structure to my week with writing my blog on my dinner hour in work.  Jotting my ideas for the blog down over the weekend while fishing means i am now starting writing the blog on the Monday and hopefully this will see me starting to publish my blog on Friday evenings.

On to this weeks blog update.. http://blog.pondiptacklebox.com/coarse-fishing-2/canal-bait-2/

Down at the Bottom of the Garden....

Now we all remember the famous program as kids called the poddington pea's,  respect to those currently signing the theme tune!! But this week i was literally down at the bottom of my garden amongst the birds and the bees, i didn't see a lot of Little people but i did find a gem right at the back of my garden that i never knew was there.  This gem is a elderberry plant and although not yet in full bloom it soon will be and for me as an angler it means i can now have a go fishing with elderberries over hemp seed.  A great little find!

I will be leaving this a few days to come into full bloom and hopefully i will beat the birds to this bounty, do they even eat them? sure they do.  The first session they are ripe i will be taking a few to the bank and trying them out.  The end of the garden is a right little Aladdin's cave of surprises though with a Apple tree currently laden with apples, any ideas on variety appreciated in the comments section.  There is also some form of berry tree as well and i am informed its not the best thing to make cherry pie from so i will be giving these a miss but the apples might get a look in if they are edible.

All in all with the bird feeders up the garden has been a real surprise this year.  What started out as a overgrown wild garden is slowly getting to a managed state and the wealth of wildlife is astonishing from robins, finches and sparrows to hedgehogs, frogs and squirrels.  These have mainly come from the bird table but most have had little don't to attract them in so i can only imagine the oasis we could have if we really directed some energy towards their habitat.

Natural History Museum.....Great Day Out!!

Bank holiday weekend and we decided to make a trip into Liverpool town centre to visit the Natural History Museum.  All i can say is WOW! what a fantastic day out and set up they have there it really was a great day out and i have to say it was done in the right way.  The exhibitions are set over 5 floors with aquariums, space rockets, dinosaur bones, preserved animals and a bug zone to name a few areas they had.  As an angler i was of course pulled by the aquarium bit and it was fantastic to see so many children fascinated by the fish on show.

We had recently visited the Blue Planet aquarium and it was a nightmare with every room containing children's rides or sweet vending machines, all these do is distract the attention of the children and you are left with kids crying to go on rides rather than looking at the fish, in short had we wanted to go the fair ground we would have gone Alton Towers.  This place had none of that and it showed in the fact all the kids where looking at the fish and reading the information on show.  This spoke volumes for me and it is a place where entry is free!.

Parking right outside the place and i think it was £3.00 for a few hours parking.  All in all a great day out and a place i fully recommend for taking the kids too.  I know its not angling related but thought it worthy of a share.

Pondip Blog Goes Live.....

My most recent blog for Pondip Tackle Boxes went live this week.  It is the second instalment of my canal baits series i am writing for them.  This blog looks at castors and hemp seed for fishing the canal and the results it can bring.  We all live close to a canal and even the most neglected of waters can hold a decent head of fish, in fact waters that are gin clear and you can see the bottom all the way across are not always the best quality for fish to survive.  Why not have a read of the blogs and try your local canal and even better drop me a email or message on facebook and i will feature it in one of the blogs.

link to Pondip  Blog: http://blog.pondiptacklebox.com/coarse-fishing-2/canal-bait-2/

On to this weeks fishing

What is going on!

So Saturday morning and we pulled up on the banks of the river dane and in the gloom of the early morning light the river was looking in tip top shape.  We walked the banks looking at all the swims before deciding on where to fish.  We are always out on the bank at first light and are very rarely beaten to a peg if we really have one in mind but on this river that is not even an issue as the gear stays in the car and we walk the banks looking at the swims before even getting the gear so confident are we no one will be on the peg when we arrive back.

By the time we walked back to the car the river was fully visible and she looked in mint condition in fact as rivers go she was bang on!  The river was carrying a little bit of water, had a nice pace but more importantly she had a lovely colour.  You could not see the bottom in the middle and the edges where just visible.  Having fished the rivers for a few years you begin to understand how they fish and in both mine and my uncles opinion it looked class and we expected a decent days sport.

I set up in a swim where i placed my basket actually in the water and fished a few yards into the river.  The main glide on this swim was on my side of the river so it was nothing more than a two rod length cast to be on the line i wanted to fish.  I fed the swim with maggots and fed it slightly down stream so i was confident the fish would not be right up on the feed and my float was settled by the time i got to the swim.  A few pouches of hemp seed and i was all ready to set up my 13ft float rod loaded with 5lb line and a 1.7lb hook length.

The fishing from the off was frantic as the fish moved right onto the feed and a shoal of chublet where obviously in residence as the early exchanges where dominated by these fish with their mouths laden with maggots.

At this point it was looking like we were set in for a good days sport as i could also hear my uncle some 50 yards down stream confidently striking into bites.  Chublet and the odd roach coming each cast you begin to think it could be a good days fishing with a decent net.  The float rarely made it to my bed of hemp seed at this point and i must admit alarm bells where ringing as the bites where beginning to feel frantic and not the settled swim you really want when trotting a float.  I persevered with it but slowly i could feel the bites ebbing as i went further down the swim and onto my hemp seed where i found the odd skimmer had taken up residence.

This was around a hour into the day and i will never forget this skimmer as it was literally the last fish i caught on the session as the swim died.  From a bite a chuck to nothing and the float going through the swim with not so much as a knock, "it can not be right this" i thought in my head "all these fish can not just go!".  This time i was determined to do all i could so out came the maggot feeder rod and ground bait and i began fishing on the tip where i had fed my hemp.

The tip remained as motionless as the float and i even decided to risk a cast right on top of a over hanging tree where there just had to be a fish lurking but still the tip remained motionless.  My head ticking over i could only imagine a predator had moved in so i set up a small live bait rig.  If any predator was in the swim it must have been blind as this live bait was doing all you would want it to do making a commotion and frantically moving all over the swim.

I have said in previous blogs this place is getting me down and i have to admit on Saturday i finally gave up.  I literally said stuff this and packed my gear away and went to see how my uncle was doing.  He was a good 50-100 yards down stream and his swim had literally mirrored mine and he was going through with not a knock.  I took a picture of my net and thought about what to do next.

Not one to waste time

We had plenty of the day left so we decided to pack in and do some investigation into some other areas of the river i had researched in the last few weeks.  The first was a stretch miles upstream and upon getting out the car we where met with head high balsam and nettles.  We grabbed the bank sticks and began hacking a route through to a point where we could at lease see the river.

like with most rivers you get through some of the under growth and you find big open expanses of bank behind it and so was the case with this.  The river was really neglected so a lot of fallen trees had gone into the river and had not been removed but the whole area screamed fish and had some really nice glides.  Getting the gear to the swims was going to be a nightmare so we made our way back the car and vowed to return another time to hack a route through and fish the swims we found and we headed off to another area we had explored the previous week with a view to seeing if it held any fish at all such was its remote location.

Armed with a shovel we began digging in some foot holes and a place to sit on the steep banks.

We fished the swim for a hour or so in the blistering heat, not the best time to be wetting a line on a shallow river but we knew these fish would not have seen a bait so we where confident of getting an idea of species present.  My uncle set up just upstream and we took it in turns to trot the swim.  Early trots down saw us catching bottom as the swim gradually got shallow but eventually we found a line and to our surprise some stinking dace came to the net!!

By the end of the hour or so on the bank we had caught a few nice dace that showed us this area does have some potential and is worth us dedicating time to this area.

We left again a little frustrated with the days action and we are yet to find an area that can sustain a day session and produce a decent net of fish.  Moving and picking around is not how we fish and its really becoming a problem.  Hopefully this coming weekend my rod will be here and we can make some moves to other rivers.

Till next week i wish you all tight lines

Danny

Wobblin for Jacks And A Few Doubles......

A warm welcome to this weeks blog update i hope i find you all well and your nets wet.  In this weeks blog i hope to cover a little on how resilient a species pike seem to be with some examples from my travels,  my latest blog going live on Pondip and also an update on where we are up to in our fun pike challenge for 4 anglers to catch 400 pike, 30 doubles and a 20lb pike by the end of the pike season.  The fishing this week comes from a social session where its all beginning and the end of the session where the action happens and also a session wobbling dead baits hoping to get to grips with this new method, so on with the update..

Tough Little Critters....

Since specifically going out to target pike as a species with dead baits there have been a number of things that have astounded me about this species,  not least the fact they will actually pick up a tail of dead fish off the bottom, but it has been the sheer amount of resilience and ability to survive against all odds that has shocked me the most.  I think i remember reading somewhere that the pike is one of the very few species who's fossils are found from many years ago that have not evolved or changed from then till now as they are so efficient at what they do....surviving.

I have lost count over the years catching pike both dead baiting and on the river just how many pike i have caught that are blind in one eye but still are there feeding well and looking, apart form the eye, healthy.  Take this pike below i caught on the river dee, pug mouth and blind in one eye yet fat as a barrel and feeding well.

You of course see pike both young and old that bear the scars of a sinister liaison with a bigger pike at one time or another and i used to think to myself just how much these scars inhibit the pikes ability to feed as some can be quite bad.  Well this week during a social piking session you will read about below Ste caught a pike that bared some horrific scarring which could have only been caused by a outboard motor and the pike not moving out of its way.

The scars looked like they where healed up but it just goes to show what a battering these pike can take during their lives and still be efficient at surviving and finding food.  amazing creatures when you think about it.

Pondip Blogs Go live.......

Over the past few months i have settled into a rhythm of writing my blog and also writing a piece for the Pondip blog on their coarse boxes and a few on tips and hints for fishing.  I am really enjoying this little project away form my main blog and the freedom it gives for me to go into detail on how i do my fishing, methods and little hints and tips i have picked up along the way.  Some of the tips are probably not as refined or the tips you will see in the weekly mags but they are tips i wish i had known when first starting out, for example i wish i had known about asking the shop to elastic ate my first pole.

links to the two blogs are below:

Octobers Pondip box Review: http://blog.pondiptacklebox.com/2014/boxes/pole-fishing-box/
Tips on Pole fishing: http://blog.pondiptacklebox.com/2014/tips-and-tricks/pole-fishing-tips/

If you are interested in Pondip Tackle Boxes  and what they offer as a company check out their page and don't forget to make the most of the discount code off the first box great little idea and a item i always look forward to dropping on my welcome mat.

Update on Piking Challenge.....

So we are just over a month into the pike challenge for 4 anglers to catch 400 pike, 30 doubles and a 20lb pike, and we are really pressing along nicely indeed.  We are all getting out on the bank regular and catching pike on most trips, although i had a blip with 3 blanks on the bounce.  The scores on the doors before the sessions below where 54 pike caught in total, with 5 doubles and one 20lb pike.  We are a 1/6th of the way into the challenge and are just below where we need to be but if the journey to this point is anything to go on its going to be great fun trying to get as close as we can to the total.

In terms of the whole challenge it is going to be a case of seeing what the weather does, if it stays warm like it is now then i can see us putting together a good run of pike as they keep chasing lures and moving baits but if we get a sudden drop in temp and the snow and ice arrives things might get a little tougher and keeping the sheer number of pike we need coming in might see us falling behind. But as i have said its all about the fun of chasing such a high goal with your mates.

On to this weeks Fishing....

Saturday 1st November: Throwing a Wobbler....What have i been missing!.......

A email landing in my inbox the week before this session asking if i was interested in reviewing a pike rod on my blog so for Saturdays session i thought i would pack my little spinning rod into my holdall and have a bit of fun and in the process try and learn a new method.  Having watched Garry, an excellent lure fisherman, for the past few months casting his favourite lures and catching some nice pike i had again been spoilt by having such a experienced teacher and although we had never really sat down and talked about lure fishing he had shown me a few times about the art of wobbling with dead baits.

I don't know if lure fishing will ever be for me, i am far too clumsy and unorganised to keep a load of lures from becoming a web of tangled hooks, but sink and drawing or wobbling is something that has always interested me but i guess confidence in not getting snagged and again a pike taking a dead fish clouded my mind.

In the week leading up to this session one of the pikers in our group, Ste, had been asked to do a article for the anglers mail and it involved twitching "kinky" dead baits.  Like with Garry i had been on a few sessions with Ste and again like i had seen from Garry casting his lures, you could tell from the way Ste cast them with accuracy and how he worked them through the water he was good at it.  Its a bit like watching a good river man running a stick through, they make it look so easy and effortless and that only comes with practise.

I am always gratefully to have two fantastic pike anglers to call mates, my pike fishing has come on so much this past year, and hopefully as the work dies down in all our jobs i can begin to repay them back with a few trips to the river and maybe even Garry's first pike from the Dee, till then i will just have to agree to stop dancing and singing on sessions and keep the pot noodles rolling in.

Back to the session and i arrived on the bank armed with one dead bait rod and my small lure rod that i have had since a kid and cost me a whole £6.00.  This rod is as strong as an ox and was the only rod i took piking for many years on the Dee fishing lives for the pike and can boast pike to 13lb, not bad for a small rod, bends at the butt but gets em in.  I cast the dead bait rod out on a roach dead bait and then began to wobble a roach dead bait back though the swim.

In my eyes the bait looked a mess as it swayed from side to side coming through the water and it took me a few casts to get the confidence to let the bait twist and turn then let it go slack so the bait falls as if it where a dying fish.  I had cast in countless times and i could see the bait coming in and i thought if i can see it the pike can and then from now where BOOOM! a pike shot out from no where and absolutely nailed the fish.  Calm came across me as i resisted the urge to strike and let the fish take the bait as it it was a dead bait run and then gave it a countdown and struck.  Thankfully the fish stayed on unlike my bait that flew off in the fight and i was over the moon to have landed my first wobbled dead bait pike.

The pike released i set about recasting my dead bait rod which had remained strangely silent and to be honest would so all the session.  My next take came from utilising a cunning little trick for picking up a bite.  Basically it works on the principle that after casting around in an area you might not have had many takes but you may well have had a pike follow the bait right in and you not have seen it so after a few casts i let the bait sink the the bottom right under my feet and what you then do it let the bail arm off and watch the line to detect the bite.  It may seem like a hard method but in practise there is no missing the bite as the braid starts to tremble and move away and this method caught me the best fish of the day in this 7lb 14oz pike.

After fishing away for a few hours taking a break here and there from the wobbling with no results i decided in a change of bait for the wobbling and i think it was either the third or fourth cast on the retrieve i felt a solid bang.  You have to remember at this point in my wobbling i had seen a pike take close in and had one under my feet so i had no idea what a pike take felt like out in the water, in reality there was no missing it.  I gave the fish line and struck praying i was not setting my hooks deeper into a snag.  Thankfully my strike was met with the feeling of a fish rather than a sunken branch, only a jack but i did not care it was great learning a new method and even better catching on it.

Tuesday 4th November: Social Piking Session

With work levels low and the half term school holidays over and done with i jumped at the chance for a days leave from work and with a solid session behind me wobbling with dead baits on the Saturday the past three blanks where nothing but a distant memory, i felt i was cooking on gas again and it felt good. I was casting out with expectation of catching rather than expecting a blank which is always great.

My plan for the day was exactly the same as Saturday fishing a dead bait rod and use my lure rod to wobble a smelt.  The four of us where all in attendance all evenly spread along the bank and unlike the mere we where a lot closer and could all gather and have a chat.  My dead bait rod had not been in more than around half an hour when my oil loaded mackerel jack attracted some interest from a pike.  The float bobbed a few times before it sailed off at some speed and the float submerged and i struck into a fish that i new was a better fish as it made hard runs taking line from the reel as it did so.  Tilting the rod down and loosening off the drag to reduce the chance of a hook pull saw the tables swing in my favour and Ryan slid the net under a nice pike that surely had to go into double figures.

The pike swung the scales round to 11lb 4oz and we had another double to add to the list and my third of the season. Ryan was next to see his float sail away but his strike was met with an unsteady fight that saw the pike come off.  It did not take long though for his mackerel "tail" to attract the pikes attention back to this scrumptious sushi banquet and this time he made no mistake and landed his first pike of the day in this sublimely marked pike.

During the next hours till noon we all tried in vain to lure the interest of a pike on our dead baits and wobbling and it was not until a move to a completely new area by Ste saw more pike coming as he landed 3 pike in as many casts including the pike with the horrific boat scars.  It showed me big time how close you can be to pike and be so far away as with all that smell in the water you would have thought these pike would have smelt out our multitude of baits loaded with oil and moved onto them.

Ste had to get off to do a job at 1pm so it was decision time for the three remaining piking pirates did we stay put and move to the area ste had caught three fish or move to another location where we thought our chances where greater.  We arrived to find the venue gin clear and not very appetising and i knew there and then from my river fishing that it was going to be a few hours till we had any action as darkness closed in.

Around 3pm i moved my bait from beside a overhanging willow into the middle and within seconds the float was moving off along the top.  I gave the bite as long as i dared as i knew this could be my one and only chance.  I struck and knew instantly i had a bad hook hold by the amount of head shaking it was doing and i could feel them all suggesting the hooks where loosely hooked in the pike jaw.  A swift turn by the pike and it all went slack for a second as the fish parted with the hooks......but then all of a sudden the fish was on but it felt a lot bigger indeed and it wasn't until the fish came to the top we realised the fish was foul hooked in the tail.  The fish must have spat the hooks and then the hooks must have hooked the fish again as it has flapped its tail to move away, lucky indeed.

This luck instantly ran out as when being netted the hooks caught on the outside of the net, disaster and i guess it was a fitting end to the fight for the pike to then have the last laugh and come off the hooks to freedom.  That is the way it goes with pike fishing the margins between success and fail are so small.

The last hour loomed large and it was going into dark while preparing to recast my dead bait rod i heard a shout from Garry up the bank lure fishing to get the net.  Before i could get the net the fish had come off but speaking to garry he said he had just witnessed the biggest pike he had ever seen take his lure, i asked if he thought it was new Pb potential and he said yeah for sure, his Pb is over 14lb so we was talking a decent fish.

Garry continued to cast his lure around the area while i had a cheeky cast over the far side both to no avail.   The dark was setting in fast so we decided to call it a day and began walking back along the bank to Ryan to pack in.  I then did something i have done hundreds of times before and dropped my smelt in the edge and began walking back to the car.  One step, two, three BANG i was pulled backwards and halted in my steps as something grabbed onto the bait, no swearing on the blog but my words rhymed with hook me, I've got a take i said.  By the time i walked back along the bank the float was gone out of sight.

I stuck and instantly the rod hooped over and this fish was not messing about as it pulled line from the reel, i could not stop it.  Garry said give it some line and take your time its a nice fish i have just seen it and then it came up to the top, jesus it was nice fish all right!  Garry took his chance a slid the landing net under the pike and we raced no danced along the bank to get the fish unhooked and on the unhooking mat.  Garry instantly said he thought it was a 20 and i could not argue with him it was a deep fish.  We nervously placed her in the weigh sling and ryan read out the scores, not a 20 but at 17.8lb i was not complaining, a very very very lucky capture.

The fish capped off a memorable first month of the season for me and i month i could only have dreamt about, well lets be honest here it was a month i have never dreamt about because i never thought it possible.  I have had my fair share of luck along the way, not least with this 17lb8oz fish but as months go i had caught 22 pike with a 11.4lb, 15lb, 17.8lb and a 21lb 4oz fish accounting for my doubles within that.  A month i doubt i will ever repeat in my life and one i am fully aware does not come along too often.

After these sessions it left us on 68 pike with Ste and Garry both finding time to also get out in the bank between my wobbling session and the social one.

Till next time

tight lines

Danny