Halfbean Paste First Outing and Mixed Day on The Dee

A warm welcome to this weeks blog update which comes after a week of torrential rain that saw most of the rivers in the North West of England either in full flood or in some cases bursting their banks.  The dangers of being by the river were highlighted all too well by the Environment Agency on Friday night as they released video after video of the River Irwell being turned into a raging brown torrent, a far cry from the placid scenes we are used to seeing. Twitter is a great place to keep up with the work the Environment Agency do and with the current Flood warnings in place as they regularly tweet about both a great tool for keeping abreast of things as they arise.

The fishing this weekend might not have been the best ever but I bumped into a few anglers on the bank this weekend that recognised me from writing the blog, it was great to meet both anglers I had never spoke to before to anglers who I have met previously on the bank and spoke to on Facebook.  It was great too speak to you all and have a nice chat on the bank, I look forward to bumping into you all later on in the season to discuss how we all have got on, anglers truly are a special breed of people and I am still to meet a unhelpful angler on my travels and long may that continue, thanks again to you all.

As well as bumping into to some anglers on the bank on Saturday we also crossed paths with some old feathered friends of the blog in the form of the pair of swans we were following last year.  They did not have any young with them on Saturday but I know exactly where they nest so hopefully when the rivers drop a little whey will get down to building their nest and we will have another generation to follow this year, I just hope the mortality rates of the cygnets is lower this year as a lot of last years brood where lost along the way, the reasons for this are a mystery a lot would say the local mink but I am sure one of the parents would see of a mink with how protective they are of their young, time will tell how they get on this year but I will enjoy keeping up with them again.

On to this weeks fishing:

“Halfbean Carp Hemp Paste Review and Outing”

I start this weeks blog update with a trip that didn’t make last weeks blog due to me concentrating on the opening on the River season and I believed this trip, although short, deserved a bit more than just being a few lines and pictures at the end of last weeks blog update.

I received my first delivery from Halfbean Baits around d 2-3 weeks ago in the package was a tub of Halfbean Carp Hemp paste and a bottle of the Hemp Carp Goop.  I covered what I have been using the Carp Goop for in last weeks update but I have been longing to get out on the banks of my local commercial to give the paste a go.  Unfortunately the bait has sat in my freezer since it arrived as the weather has simply not been warm enough for me to warrant a trip out for the carp.

As you can see from the picture Halfbean baits is a fledgling company so don’t be expecting your bait to arrive covered in logos or spiel around the edges of how this bait will lure fish in from miles around and get them into a “feeding frenzy” that you see on so many baits from the shops.  The bait when it arrives has a very homemade look to it and I must admit to being a bit set back at this at first, but that all changed when I opened up the products.  Obviously as time goes on and the company develops I would expect the quality of the packaging to do so as well but for now I was more bothered in the fish catching potential of this bait.

I will just be covering the Carp hemp paste in this update and upon opening the paste I was amazed just how oily the bait was it was literally oozing with help oil.  Pushing my thumb into the product left an imprint in the paste that soon filled up with the oil, there were certainly no qualms about the quality of the product from my point of view and I couldn’t wait to get out on the bank and try it out.

As I touched on before the weather really hasn’t been up giving this bait a proper review and I am also really struggling at the moment to fit my angling in with all that is going on over the past few weeks.  Knowing how fresh the bait was and the fact I could not see me getting out on the bank any time soon to try it out I quickly dropped the guy an email and he advised that the bait can be frozen and keeps very well indeed, so in the bait freezer it went.

Last Tuesday I received the text I was waiting for that my uncles mate was going to fish the commercial the following evening and with the weather report forecasting bright warm weather the time had come to give the bait a try and this would be my first ever trip fishing paste, it is a bait I have read a lot on but never ever tried so I spent Tuesday afternoon in work mulling over my attack for the next day.

Wednesday in work flew by and I was soon sat on the bank of Flushing Meadows armed with two baits, one a tub of Halfbean Carp paste and the other a pint of hempseed I had prepared the following evening.  My plan was to feed the margin at my feet on my top two sections and introduce the paste via a kinder pot so it didn’t fall off the hook which I read can be a problem with paste.

As you can see I was literally fishing in the edge but in my experience it is a place where if they are having it you can really bag up.  Scanning the water it seemed like all the carp where up on the top basking in the sun which after further inspection into their behaviour soon turned into them chasing around in groups, it was obvious from this the fish were due to spawn any time soon, it was going to be a tough session and my chances of a fish would come as the evening cooled.

It was time to put myself and the product to its first test and it was my tactics that failed for the first hour as I missed bit after bite after bite, the float buried time after time but striking meant a bare hook coming to the top, fish where obviously on the bait but I was doing something wrong indeed a look at my rig and the answer was staring me in the face, size 18 hooks are not the best for paste fishing, so a quick upgrade to a size 14 and an increase in the size of the lumps of paste I was using was made and it was back to it.

The bait when you increased the size of the paste you was using produced a massive slick of oil to come to the top above the swim which I must admit gave me confidence that the bait would be attractive to the carp if they were on the hemp seed I was using to feed.

Not long after making the changes to the hook and the bait the float buried and I was connected with my fist carp of the session so that was the first and most important question I had about the bait answered, does it catch fish?? Yes it does.

The session in reality was more of a learning curve for me in paste fishing as it was a real test for the bait, I missed so many bites and was in hindsight probably striking at liners or smaller fish pecking at the bait.  I ended the session with 5 carp in total on the bank in total which I was really proud of.

REVIEW

In review of the product so far, I was impressed with the quality of the product and the amount of oil it contained.  The fish certainly liked the bait and I can see the bait working on the bigger fish when they get their heads down.  The packaging could be improved and could be seen as a downside by some anglers but it didn’t really bother me once I saw the quality of the bait.  My plans for the future with this bait include using it for future trips to my local commercial and using it as a bait paste wrap for my barbell fishing sessions on the River, so look out for it featuring in my future river articles.

I hope you enjoyed my honest and open review of the bait in the conditions I used it in and I think I covered the good in the product and where it could improve a link to the halfbean baits website can be found in the right hand side of my blog so please feel free to check out these products and the other products in his range.

“Ruffe Conditions on the Dee”

With reports coming in all Friday night of rivers around the northwest bursting their banks I spent most of the night, after I had cooked my hemp, with my eyes fixed on the EA site waiting for an update on what the River Dee was up too.  The final report came in around 10pm showing the Dee was high but no where near the level as the previous week and with no flood warnings in operation it seemed the EA where confident she wasn’t going to rise too much over the next few hours.  Confident we would find somewhere to fish we set off determined to fish our beloved river dee if it killed us.

As normal with our river fishing it was a very early start and we arrived at our destination to find only one car parked up.  When the river is in this state where it is carrying a fair bit of water safety has to come into it so we chose a venue with good pegs and safe banks to reduce the risk of us encountering any problems, gear was kept to a minimum on the actual peg just in case the unthinkable happened and we needed to vacate the peg quickly.

In all honesty we fished for around 4 or 5 hours with next to nothing to show, the river was really deep and although we could fish on the bottom with our long rods there just wasn’t a steady trot to go down, the flow kept changing and it made fishing really difficult.  I changed over to the feeder for the last hour and picked up a nice roach and what has been later confirmed as a specimen size Ruffe.

Nine o’clock arrived and after a long, informative chat with the guy pike fishing the next peg we decided a move was in order to at least try and find a steady bit of water.  We arrived at another local venue on the Dee and decided to fish one of the tributaries that run into the Dee to see if there was any fish about. 

The trot was long enough for us both to get a line in and leave a decent trot for the upstream rod.  The bank side foliage was “pruned” to make enough room to sneak my basket in and I was away.  The first 30 minutes passed by with not much action but eventually we started to get a few fish with dace coming to the net first but there was a long wait between bites, It really didn’t bother me though as I was just glad to be picking up a few fish and have a trot where I knew the bait was going down in a straight line and not being taken in all directions like on the last peg.

I took a few more small dace and a nice roach/skimmer bream hybrid and I decided to increase the amount of bait I was introducing which saw a few chublets turn up in our catches, only a few ounces but I was more than pleased to see them on such a drab day.

As you expect with the river sport got better as more bait went in my Uncle had a few grayling and chublets to supplement his dace captures along with the obligatory pike turning up as well taking one of his fish as he was bringing it in, only a small jack but these fish find us wherever we go on the dee it seems, summer or winter.

The day wore on and after a chat with the two anglers I mentioned earlier on in the piece I connected with my best fish of the day in a small brown trout which no doubt had latched on to the increased bait being introduced into the swim.

All in all it was great to be back on the banks of the river Dee catching some fish and what this net lacked in quantity and quality it certainly made up for in diversity it was a real mixed bag of species including dace, roach, roach skimmer hybrid, chublets, grayling and trout.

This week will hopefully see me fishing the canal for carp in the spot I have been drip feeding now for 3 weeks so I have my fingers crossed for a result there, check my mini blog for information on that and all being well we should be back on the river as well this weekend, weather permitting.

Till next time I wish you all,

Tight lines

Danny

Dad "glows" with PB River Mersey Bream

The headlines in the newspapers and on the internet news sites all had the same headline last Thursday night and that was for the whole country to brace itself for the imminent arrival of the worst storm in over 50 years, this storm would bring half a months worth of rainfall in only two days and would be arriving over southern and northern Wales.   This amount of rainfall, if true to their word, would mark disaster for the opening of the river season, if it arrived with such ferocity of rainfall in those areas it would see the River Wye, River Severn and River Dee being a complete wash out and unfortunately it proved to be accurate and the opening to the river season proved to be a disaster, for most.

As you can see by the chart above the River Dee was carrying a lot of water but we travelled through at midnight on Friday hoping to find a tributary where we could wet a line but alas even these usually gentle streams where a transformed into a raging dirty brown torrent. 

Midnight in the pitch dark is no place to be taking decent pictures of the state of the river so me and my Fiance took a trip out the River Dee the following day to take some pictures in the light of day and these pictures below show just how much extra water the river was carrying, I think it peaked at 7.8m.  The top image is a peg I fished last year when the river was at normal level and the below one is a picture of the same peg on Sunday, as you can see totally un-fishable.

We took in a few locations along the river around Chester and I have put them in a mini video below which will give you more of an idea as to the state of the river levels over the weekend.  To our amazement though when we travelled to Eccleston Ferry there was a group of kids and there teacher suited and booted ready to go rowing, rather you than me I thought.  The look on the kid’s faces as the tutor told them the river was high and dangerous so they needed to stick close and the look of fear as he read out to them the safety procedure in the case of an accident summed up to me how bad the river was.

Back to Saturday morning and it was gone 2am by the time we had travelled around some regular spots on the Dee hoping to find some slack water to fish, this ultimately proved a thankless task and it was back to the drawing board. Situations like this are when you see the benefit of technology these days as from a car park in the middle of no where I was able to check, on my phone, the last recorded water levels of the River Dane, Severn, Ribble and Wyre on the EA water level website, a totally priceless source of information for us river anglers.   I had of course used this, the previous evening, to check the Dee and we all knew what we were heading to when we set off for the Dee but being opening weekend we thought we had to try.

So with all the rivers from the River Severn in Wales up to the River Wyre near Blackpool showing either a rising or already bloated river levels we were at a loss as to what to do next, none of us really wanted to fish a still water, we needed that fix that only running water could give us and after a few ideas bounding round one of us come up with the idea of fishing our local River Mersey, a river we have all lived next to our whole lives but never ever fished, our time had come.

The River Mersey, to all that line her banks, has long been seen as a dirty, polluted river with rumours of 3 eyed fish along with the odd glowing green specimen reported over the years.  This view began the change a few years back when salmon where reported to be back in the river after a 2oo year absence the full report was published on the BBC news website on the following link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/manchester/hi/people_and_places/nature/newsid_8268000/8268790.stm. 

Things since then have gone from strength to strength with regards fishing on the Mersey, Warrington Anglers now hold weekly matches on there with regular reports of good catches of bream and roach with other stretches of the Mersey now being home to specimen carp and pike.  The tributaries further upstream are now also reporting quality fishing with the likes of the River Goyt now containing decent barbell and chub so in the past few years fishing on the Mersey has been on the increase.

We arrived on the Victoria Park stretch of the Mersey and with parking all along Weir Lane its really easy parking right behind you pegs so its river fishing that is accessible to all ages and abilities.  I took a couple of pictures of the location that will be going live this week on the River Venues page on the blog so keep an eye out for that coming soon.  The fishing from my point of view was none existent I tried to trot a float down the river with not so much as a chewed maggot for my efforts; my uncle applied the same tactics and managed to catch a few roach, dace and chub.

The star of the day was my dad who put faith in his trusty feeder tactics and caught a new fantastic personal best bream of exactly 7lb, speaking to my dad afterwards he said the bite nearly tore the rod in and he actually thought he had hooked a carp by the way it was fighting.  I arrived to net the fish for him and was amazed by the colossal size and weight of the fish; I can only imagine what a 22lb bream would look like on the bank because this fish was huge.

We quickly took some pictures of the fish and as you can see my dad was more than made up with his capture and we quickly weighed the fish and took a few moments to admire the beauty of this warrior of a fish that has obviously been in the river for a good number of years. 

This fish came early on in the session for my dad so all our confidence was raised by the capture of this fish but alas it was not forthcoming.  We did put in a few hours on there but after being on the bank since midnight and not having any sleep it eventually caught up with us and we called it a day around 1pm, not a great day for us but a day that will never be forgotten for the memories that bream provided will last long in the memory and great again to see my dad back amongst the fish.

That concluded our fishing over the weekend as Sunday was left for the rivers to run off a bit and for me to get some pictures of the flooded river Dee for this week’s blog entry. 

The Small but Mighty River Dane – Monday 18^th June 2012

All through Sunday I had my eyes glued to the EA river level website, watching closely the levels of the River Dane in particular and surprisingly she was dropping down nicely and by Sunday Afternoon it was quite clear the river would be in fine fettle the next day so plans where made to attack the river the following afternoon when I had a half day booked off from work.

I have long been a fan of using big baits for chub and with the river probably carrying a tinge of colour still so smelly bait is generally a good bet, I have long been a fan of luncheon meat on the rivers and I have over the last few seasons tinkered with a mix that has done me proud.  I always start of with the ingredients shown in the picture below but this time I added some of the HalfBean Baits Hemp Carp Goop into the mixture as well as a few other ingredients that unfortunately will have to remain a secret but you will not go far wrong with this as a base mix in creating your own unique flavours.  I have never added the Halfbean Baits hemp carp Goop before so I was interested to see if it had any impact on results.

The meat cut into cubes it was left to marinate in the mix over night to let as much of the flavour penetrate the meat and make it irresistible to the chub.  Looking at the bag later that evening it stunk to high heaven, which I saw as a good thing and I had high hopes for the session the following day.  Again these plans were announced on the Facebook page and on Twitter, both are great places to see how my fishing is going on during the week and links can be found in the right hand tool bar.

Monday morning arrived and with only a half day in work I counted every one of the 3 hours and 42 minutes I was at my desk.  I looked longingly out of the window at the clear conditions just dying to get out of work and on my way to my natural home, the river bank.

Midday came and dead on the stroke of midday I was out of work like a rocket had been lit under my backside, it was a quick trip home to load the car and pick up my dad and we were on our way to the river, isn’t it amazing how long the journey is to the river yet the journey home never seems so long eh??.

We arrived in the car park to the site of one car parked up so my confidence levels where raised as the stretch we were on does not have too many swims and can suffer with too much angling pressure.  Walking the banks it wasn’t too long before we bumped into the owner of the guy fishing a swim created over the close season by a big tree falling into the margins I must admit I will be having a few casts in that swim next time its free.  Speaking to the guy he was, like all anglers you meet on the river, a pleasure to speak to and I happily chatted to him about how his river campaign had started which turned out to be great news for him as he had caught two chub but bad news for me as they had both come from the swim I was walking too and to make matters worse he confirmed there had been four cars in the car park when he arrived.

This may not seem like a bad thing but on such a small intimate river two chub coming out of a swim you intend to fish is a lot of commotion and can easily spook the fish, not to mention you have no idea on what bait the anglers have been fishing, how many anglers have been in the swim throughout the morning and no idea at the amount of bait that has been introduced.  I personally don’t use much bait on the river Dane but I know others lean towards laying a blanket of feed down to get the fish confident both methods are fine of course and both catch fish but it just makes it that little bit harder not knowing, still I stuck to my guns and fished the peg I had been day dreaming about all morning.

Arriving at my peg all I could hear was the soothing sound of the river flowing by past my feet and the birds singing in the fields around me with the occasional call of the local buzzards riding the upper warm thermals, it was a joy to be back on the river banks, not a soul in sight and a beautiful swim to go at that could be approached with both trotting and feeder tactics.  The sky above was bright blue with the odd whispy cloud and it was really warm.  With bright clear conditions I knew any chub would be deep under the cover of the far bank snags and would need tempting out from there gloomy lair with a steady stream of bait so I began on the trotting rod fishing maggot leaving the quiver tipped meat for when the day cooled and the evening cloud cover moved in.

Not long after starting trotting my first fish on the season was on the bank and it is by no means the biggest fish I have ever caught but it has to be one of the most beautifully marked.  The river is jammed packed full of minnows and fishing maggot can be impossible some times as there are literally hordes of these minnows in the river but just look at the magical colours on this minnow I can only imagine how popular these fish would be to catch if they went to around 5lb in weight, beautiful fish!!.

I persevered on the maggot trotting down the swim and caught countless numbers of minnows some even taking 4 maggots on a size 18 hook, it was getting out of control so I began to increase the amount of maggots I was introducing each trot down and this immediately saw much better fish move in as the bites from the minnows disappeared and after a few more trots down I connected with a better fish, not a chub, that was clear form the outset of the fight, but another beautiful river fish, the grayling.

Now you will notice the picture above, below the picture of the grayling, this is the fish being rested in the margins in the net.  The grayling is very much like the barbell and pike it gives it all in the fight and afterwards is completely drained, think of it as a 100m sprinter being thrown into an a swimming race straight after running the 100m they wouldn’t have the energy to even get going, this is kind of what it is like putting a grayling or barbell straight back into the flow after catching it.

The afternoon wore on and I managed to land two more grayling from the swim as well as a mountain of minnows but with the evening approaching I began to drip feed some samples of meat into the flow at increasing regular intervals to try and get the chub searching for this tasty bait in preparation for trying to catch one of two later on in the evening.

The shadows from the trees on the far bank began to get longer and they now blocked all sunlight from the water, the clouds had began to come in and now and the whole feel of the are changed.  Spending a lot of time on the river you get a feel for when the time is right for a bite and everything at that moment just felt right for the chub to be about so it was away with my trotting rod and out came the barbell 1.75tc rod, ready to do battle with a late evening chub.

I have been using pre tied hair rigs for my fishing in the last two years but in the closed season I have began to tie my own rigs n preparation for my chub and barbel fishing and this was to be its first outing on the river. I like to keep my fishing as simple as possible, for many years I have used just a straight lead stopped with a weight for my lead fishing but I rarely now fish without using the ESP lead clips with the tubing up the line, I still use this tubing on the river, not for its camouflage properties but for it to protect the line when the fish is amongst the snags I feel it offers some added protection to the main line and I have not noticed any reduction in bites although the river was coloured on Monday.

When fishing on the rivers, especially for chub I like to get in a comfortable position, usually seeing me sat on my trusty unhooking mat with the rod low to the water and the line resting across my finger, feeling for the bite.  It is a technique I saw first on one of Matt Hayes shows and I must admit it takes some getting used to but after a while you get to a stage where you don’t even have to watch the tip all the time you can take in the wildlife around you safe in the knowledge that any bite will be picked up.  Chub have got a name for being greedy eating machines that give violent wraps on the quiver tip but in my experience they can also give the most gentle of bites as the mouth the bait before snatching at it, this is when you can get ahead of the game with them and hook a fish that might of got away with the bait had the bite been registered through the tip and not the line across the finger.

The bait hadn’t been in the swim more than 30 seconds when I felt a subtle pull on the line and knowing this was a chub mouthing the bait I quickly struck into a fish and there was no mistaking what was on the other end this time the solid resistance and the line heading towards the roots of the safety of the trees, this was a chub.

There are rare reports of the odd barbel residing in these sections of the dane and if I am ever lucky enough to connect with one I want to land the fish so i always go armed with 10lb line, it may seem like overkill for the chub but it is not the case on this small intimate river where the fish go hard for the safety of the snags and sometimes when the fishing gets tough you need to get closer to the snags.  This setup balanced with a soft action rod saw me tame my first proper fish of the season and I was more than happy.

The afternoon moved into late evening and I missed a cracker of a bite to the curse of all anglers the mobile phone going off but I knew I hadn’t made any contact with the fish so I was still in with a chance so I quickly made my excuses and re baited up and was back in there waiting like an expectant heron and within 10 minutes it was a case of de-ja-vu as I felt another wrap round of a bite but there was no mistakes this time and I connected with a hard fighting chub that knew every nook and cranny of the river and I was amazed when a chub around 3lb graced the net and not a specimen around 5lb, still I was a happy angler.

All in all I was more than happy with two chub from the swim considering the pressure it had been out under throughout the day and I was happy that the bait had worked again on this river.  It was amazing to be back on the river and I only hope the river gods are kind to us again this weekend with the weather but looking at the forecast I think we are in for some bad weather.

Till next time I wish you all

Tight lines

danny 

Chasing bars of buttery gold

Welcome to this week’s blog update and I begin by proudly announcing a new supporter for the blog in half bean Baits, you will find their logo on the right hand side of the blog and a link to their website below. What does this mean for me and the blog? Well it means in the future I will be using some of this companies bait in my fishing exploits on the bank and have already ear marked a few of their products to use in both my still water fishing and in my future river campaign, no part of the agreement we have in place confines me to just using this bait in all of my fishing on the blog so I will still be looking to use a variety of baits in my fishing throughout my angling year but also incorporating some of the half bean baits as and where I think they will work well. I am really excited about using some of these baits in the near future and I cannot wait to get out on the bank and try them out for myself.

This week I have begun getting together pictures for a few location videos that should be going live shortly in the Stillwater and commercial venue sections of the blog. The Stillwater section should see the addition Woodshaw Reservoir and I am looking at producing a separate video in the commercial venues section for every pool on the flushing meadows complex, showing the diversity of the pools and the fish you can expect to catch in them.

This week my attention really began turning towards the opening of the rivers even more so than the previous week, the oily swirls of the water as it glides its way down its course towards the sea just captures my imagination time and time again and the soothing noise of the water as it rushes by your peg and the challenge of keeping those fish biting as the course of the river changes throughout the day, nothing beats it for me, the banks of the river are truly a magical place to be and in this sport where we put anglers into special pre-defined boxes I think I am well and truly in the river anglers section of our sport and I cannot wait to get back home.

The week gone by marked the first bit of steady, warm weather we have experienced this year, yes it may have been grey and gloomy but the air now lacked that chill it had in the previous weeks. The sun is beginning to set well after 9pm at night now and with this and warm ambient temperature in mind me and my uncle’s friend, Curly, decided it was time to make our first evening midweek trip to Flushing Meadows fishery of the year.

The day in question was Thursday and looking out of my window in work I did feel it looked a bit grim outside to be considering going fishing but upon leaving work I noticed the air temperature was quite high, certainly over the required level for carp to be out and about feeding. This temperature would surely see those carp searching the margins for those piles of bait dumped in as the anglers that had been there since early morning left the fishery.

Arriving on the fishery around 4.15pm I bumped into the bailiff who informed me there had been a few on the canal pool that day but they had just left and had indeed struggled for bites, after enquiring where they had fished on the pool I quickly paid my fee and made my way down the rocky farmers path to the pool and set up in a swim that judging by the corn on the banks had seen a fair amount of bait that day.

My tactic for the day was to fish the near side margin hoping to pick up some of the fish that patrol the margins in the evenings looking for the free surplus of bait left by the anglers. Curly was not due to arrive for around another 45 minutes so I wasted no time in setting up and with rigs already made from my last session It wasn’t long before I had a bait in the water and my first carp of the evening on the bank.

Not long after returning this fish did I hook into another carp which also took a liking for my margin fed bait and it was while unhooking the fish curly pulled up in his carp the fish returned I spent the next 20 minutes catching up with him having not really seen him since our fishing trips last year. The greetings over we both settled into our pegs for some late evening carp fishing and we both had an enjoyable evening catching carp all the way through till we could no longer see the float in the evening gloom, one more cast syndrome had well and truly taken over and it took me losing a fish by the hook pulling and me consequently snagging in the tree to my right for me to call it a night.

The biggest carp of the night for me weighed just less than 6lb at 5lb 5 oz although I think the biggest fish of the night went to curly with a fish that was certainly bigger than mine but we neglected to weigh it at the time. My total for the night was 12 carp which isn’t bad considering we were only on the bank a few hours and I think curly had at least the same amount of carp so it was an enjoyable first evening session all round and I cannot wait for the next especially with the temperatures form now on set to rise considerably.

After this session on Thursday evening it left only one more day I work and that flew by in a blink of an eye and before I knew it I was on my way up the M6 with my uncle on his first trip to the Wigan pools on the Warrington Anglers Card. Our plan for the day was to fish the carp pool in the morning and spend the afternoon on Woodshaw Reservoir, this way we could take in two waters in one trip and give my uncle a better knowledge of the waters that club have in this area.

Leaving the M6 we were soon driving through Wigan town centre and up the road towards the pools and it amazes me time and time again just how close to Wigan town centre you can cross paths with deer, literally 5 minutes after leaving the town centre we saw two Doe deer in the fields around us. They were far too quick from me to stop and grab my camera but hopefully next time I will be a little more prepared for their presence

The carp pool holds great memories for me from last year, when I put together a 15lb bag of crucian carp and tench from this venue. Setting up on the pool I knew with the warm temperature we were in for more of the same and I was not to be disappointed. My uncle was first to connect with a fish in the shape of a small tench which was his target from the outset and it was not long before I followed in his footpaths with some stunning crucians.

This pool is a real gem of a water for anyone wanting to get their children into fishing, it is absolutely jam packed with crucuan carp and I imagine the odd larger specimens of both the carp and tench variety. We continued to catch small crucians all morning loosing count at the amount of fish we had actually caught.

Towards the end of the morning we were visited by one of the bailiff’s that run the Wigan side of Warrington anglers and it was a real pleasure to see a bailiff on the bank who cared so much about the pools he looks after and his knowledge of the pools was second to none and even took some of our queries on board to take to the next bailiff meeting which was great to see.

The carp in this pool provided us with some great sport and kept the float going under all morning but it was soon time to move onto the next venue in woodshaw reservoir to see what awaited us there.

Woodshaw reservoir is like no other water I have visited on the Warrington anglers card it is immaculate, the banks are always freshly mowed and the pegs first class with some of the steeper pegs even having wooden rails to help anglers up and down the banks and the reeds around the water are well maintained with not a single inaccessible peg on the water, this is in such stark contrast to some of the other waters on the card that seem to have either half completed pegs or left to rack and ruin, like the river weaver complex at Frodsham. I personally think the whole of the club committee should visit this venue and take a leaf out of the Wigan bailiff teams book and see what proper club waters should look like, a real water to be proud of and the Wigan team should hold their heads high, hats off.

We set up on pegs on the far side of the pool where there was less angling pressure on the day and was soon into bites form roach on maggot on the edge of the reeds and I can quite see why the club has a thinning policy on these silvers each year as the place is alive with roach of all age brackets.

Sat in the sun catching fish whilst being treated to a spectacular aerial display by the visiting swallows who where greedily hovering up a massive hatch of flies whilst taking the odd sip as they went about their daily activities. These birds are now appearing in great numbers as they complete their annual migration from Africa and are a real sign that summer is on its way and more importantly for me are a sign that the rivers gates are not too far off opening.

The fishery I believe used to be an ex bloodworm farm which would explain why the bottom erupts with a mass of tiny bubbles when the crucian carp move in rummaging through the silt for the particles of bait we introduce. There are few sights in fishing that are more exiting that a float sat off the reeds surrounded by a mass of tell tale bubbles, real exiting stuff!

The bubbles where happily fizzing away and at any moment I was expecting the float to slide away but strangely it remain upright in the swim with only the off line bite giving away that fish where certainly around the bait, it was time for a change. I changed over to a more substantial and visible bait and this was instantly rewarded with the float sliding away and I was into my first proper crucian of what was to be an exceptional day for these bars of buttery gold.

The first decent fish on the bank and it was soon in the trusty co-op bag to be weighed and I was delighted to see the scales rest on 1lb 13oz, a great start and I was more than made up with this fish.

The afternoon continued in the same vein with many smaller crucian carp coming to the net and I will be including some of these pictures in the video I produce for this venue so be sure to check that out for more pictures of the crucian carp and of course anyone that follows the blog on Twitter or Facebook will have already seen one of the pictures I posted on Sunday.

The afternoon seemed to go on forever and what a joy of an afternoon it was and right on last knockings it was topped of with a glorious crucian carp of 2lb 2oz a fish that will live long in my memory and I cant wait to get back on this lovely venue to chase these most delicate of fishes.

I topped the week off on Sunday by making a visit to flushing meadows to meet up with a lad who emailed me regarding this fishery, I managed to put 6 carp, two tench and a few bream on the bank but the highlight of the day for me was putting a face to the email I had received and meeting up with a genuine top guy on the bank who was not only well into his fishing but obviously had a great knowledge and love for the sport and a fellow river angler to boot as well, I look forward to hearing how he gets on once the rivers open, tight lines mate.

That is all for this week and I leave you with a picture of one of the carp from Sundays fishing trip.

Till next week I wish you all

Tight lines

Danny