A warm welcome to this week’s blog update and so much has
happened since my last proper update.
Sadly it isn’t all good news with yet another major pollution incident
hitting the headlines with the local River Weaver suffering a total fish kill
which at the time was reported to be due to a pollution entering the system but
was later confirmed as being down to a drop in oxygen levels. This wasn’t the only location to suffer a
fish loss due to this reason with the sankey canal “square” in Widnes suffering
the same fate over an especially warm weekend which saw oxygen levels also
crash in this location.
The sad thing is the fish kill in this second location
could have been averted as the fish should not have been in this location in
the first place and have been transferred when caught from the adjacent Sankey
Canal, maybe the individuals that did this thought the carp would be easier to
catch in a smaller more confined space, which is probably true as there would
be little food in the square to sustain a number of carp, ultimately though
with so little water these fish where always at risk of a algae bloom wiping
them out, hopefully lessons will have been learnt.
The imminent arrival of our little girl meant our trips
leading up to her birth had to be easily accessible and local to home so I
could get back and be contacted easily.
This meant our forays into the more obscure out of the way stretches of
the dee where out of the question so we kept our trips to the dee centralised
around the Chester area, more on these trips in future updates.
"New pond with Unknown Potential"
Whilst speaking to my uncle he mentioned a pond he had
been told about that contained some really old looing wild carp and we made
plans to visit it the following weekend.
We arrived at the pool around 10am, a lot later than I
like to arrive on the bank as I feel I have missed the best part of the
day. The information on other species in
the pool was sketchy at best but knowing how these farmers ponds are normally
stocked my guessing was it would contain a decent amount of silvers as well as
the carp.
We all settled on our chosen pegs and I chose to fish the
pole on a blue hydro elastic and fished really light with a 3lb main line going
down to a 1lb1oz hook length with a size 20 animal hook. The bait I chose to go with was maggot and
castor on the hook at I fed hemp seed as a bait to attract and hold the fish in
the swim. I knew the decision to fish
light would put me in a difficult situation should I connect with one of the
carp but I knew it would see me landing a lot more silvers during the day and
not bump the smaller fish.
The pool was alive with fish feeding on insects landing
on the water’s surface so I made a quick rig change and replaced the normal
pole float with a home-made poly ball float that only needs one number eight
shot under the float to cock it and one half way down the line to help the bait
get down to the bottom this way I had a fair chance of catching fish on the
drop and also on the bottom and one other advantage of the poly ball is it makes
hardly and disturbance on the surface to spook the fish up in the water.
The day was one of those sessions where I started off
catching small fish and the swim just went from strength to strength throughout
the session with the better fish moving in when the bites died off from the
silvers. My uncle was first to land one
of the carp which came early on in the session for him but me I was personally
impressed with the standard of some of the roach this pool held.
I went on to catch three of these beautiful carp during
the session and what made it even more sweeter was that in these boilie, pellet
and glug filled times these old looking carp fell to the simplest, most humble
bait of them all, the maggot.
During the day both myself, my dad and my uncle took many
roach, rudd and perch from the pond and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. These type of ponds always take me back to my
childhood when me and my dad used to walk to a local pond to catch the same
type of fish as is in this blog update.
As I have said before in my blog fishing is so much more than catching
fish it’s an activity that brings people closer together and creates memories
that live with people for their whole lives, just ask any angler who started
very young I bet the majority have many stories of trips to the water’s edge
with their fathers, magical stuff and even now all these years on I never take
a single session to the water’s edge for granted with my dad.
Our final nets on the day where quite impressive for such
a small water.
My net
Uncle net
This pond is so magical I decided to convince my younger
brother to join me on a fishing trip recently and eventually managed to get him
to have a go, this was a feat in itself as anyone who knows him knows how
little interest he has in angling so it was a great surprise to me to see how
much he enjoyed it and I look forward to our next trip out mate!!.
I decided to have a little mess with the carp picture
while I had a few free minutes recently and don’t think the colour change come
out too bad and really brings out the deep purples and vibrant yellows in these
very old strain of carp.
I leave you all with this picture of our little baby girl
Abigail proving my blog really does send people to sleep J
Till next time I wish you all
Tight lines
Danny
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