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

River Bollin Roving and Hard Day on the River Dee

A warm welcome to this weeks blog update i hope i find you all well and your nets full.  This week started off with some really great news in the form that myself and my partner found out the sex of our unborn child due in December.  The scan revealed that we are expecting a baby boy later this year which we are both really excited about and i can not wait for the fishing trips to come with both my little girl and boy i will have to start looking for pink and blue seat boxes! Honestly i can not wait to meet the new guy and continue our family adventure and at the moment my head it just full of all the future fishing trips to come, exciting times.

It is a weird feeling writing this weeks blog update as it is the first for a number of weeks that has been back to the old rambling update as the past two updates have been based around two exciting product reviews that i have thoroughly enjoyed completing.  To be frank the world in the back ground of the blog has been quite frantic of late with both the Water to Go and Pondip reviews sandwiching a on line Social media competition i have been running for ALDI and the launch of their new Fishing range.  I am not one to really blow my own trumpet but i was really proud of myself when dealing with ALDI as they asked if i would be interested in running a competition, i agreed of course but when sent the list i was met with all manner of prizes from small bivvys to spinning rods and rather than picking the most expensive prize i proposed a prize that would allow an angler or someone new to the sport to get out on the bank with all the kit they needed, baring bait of course, so the prize was a carp rod and reel loaded with line, bite alarm set, unhooking matt equipment and landing net.  The winner of the competition was Ian Johnston and it gave me great satisfaction that i had put a prize together that could put a new angler on the banks of one of our fantastic lakes, what a feeling that from just a mere angler writing about his fishing that some good can come from it.

Moving back over to the Pondip Tackle Box supporting the blog and i am pleased to announce that I will be submitting a separate update to them each month for review and possible publishing on their website.  The content will be more around how i do my fishing using the contents of the box and not around the adventure involved in the whole picture of the day.  I will post any blogs that are published on their page in that weeks update so please take the time to check it out when they go live!

The pike season looms large and it has seen me slowly putting some gear together for the upcoming season.  The first thing i purchased was my Warrington Anglers Card as with a baby due in winter my venues for the short piking trips will certainly have to become more localised, although i am sure the odd trip to the River Weaver will sneak in there.  Along with the licence i have also been picking up the odd bit of tackle in the form of some Grey Wire, Treble sleeves, sinkers and needle for injecting oils this along with a bargain of Ebay of a Carp Holdall for £10.00 means a steady start to building up my pike set up has begun.  

The pike season does sit on the horizon at the moment but before then i am hoping to get out on the banks of Warringtons waters chasing some of their carp to add a nice end to the carp quest which i will be writing up this Winter with the mount a water i am keep on getting on before winter.

Speaking of piking its got me thinking about all those wonderful winter sessions to come where the grass is glistening with an overnight frost and those long mornings where the sun barely makes it above the yard arm, the rivers are like a plane of glass and your stick floats dotted down to a mere pimple, dreams of plump fist fulls of dace and pike bungs lazily sliding away allowing you to hold the sinister green mottled frame of a pike in your arms you know what i can not wait!

On to this weeks Fishing

Roving Session on the River Bollin....

The timely lull in workloads in work saw me rushing home an hour early to load the car and pick up my uncle and an hour may seem like a waste of time but in the world of motorway Rush hour traffic jams a hour can mean the difference between a half hour journey and an hour and half journey say in a jam.  The gods thankfully shone on us as we were blessed with an empty M56 motorway as in no time at all the car was unloaded and ready for the short walk to the swims.

The plan for the day was for me and my uncle to swap swims we had fished the previous Saturday, it is something we do allot on our trips and even more so if there is a swim that is really productive to give both a chance to fish it.  I set up just upstream from a willow and my uncle on a bank with a shallow run down into some deep dark water.

The river was very different to the river we had left on Saturday as all the colour had dropped out of it and it was gin clear with all the gravel runs and streamer weed clear to see.  To the casual glancing eye these open clear stretches looked devoid of any fish life but giving it a few seconds for your eyes to adjust you could see some serious sized chub and dace crammed under every shadow offered by a tree or streamer and the sheer number of fish that had crammed into one space astounded me.

My tactic was to go all out, seatbox and all, to stick in one swim knowing the better fish were under the willow and would hopefully come out to my steady stream of trotted maggots and corn.  The truth be told two hours in i had about 60 or 70 minnows in my keep net, it was time to make a decision.  My choice was to stick in the swim and put all my eggs in one basket and hope that the fish came on as the light dimmed but with not a single dace for a hours fishing i was dubious or to nip back the car grab the essentials and rove up and down the river. The fact i had no hooked a single dace made the decision for me so i quickly nipped back the car and off i went with a landing net, net bag, rod and few bits of terminal tackle.

Stopping in on my uncle he had been having the same issues as me with minnows and small dace but he was getting the odd better one thrown in to keep him ticking over and i left just as he was landing a nice dace.   With around 2 hours of the session left i walked the banks and fed three swims with a plan to fish these in rotation and return to the most productive on at last light.

The first swim i tried was a really shallow run that dropped off into a big black deep hole where you could not see the bottom it just had to hold a fish or two and i hoped a nice chub.  Feeding the swim upstream so the bait was going directly into the hole i dropped down stream and noticed no maggots where coming out of the flow behind the deep depression, something was eating the maggots!

The swim was a hard trot as you had to hold back tight to get the bait to skim across the rocks without pulling under and then release the float so the bait feel nicely into the depression the first few casts i struggled but then holding back at the right time if dropped in and BANG under the float went and i was connected to a nice sized fish that kept deep i was convinced a chub as it went for the inside cover and then it started jumping clear of the water as time and time again it tried to throw the hooks.  When i eventually got it in i was met with a fantastic trout that has some amazing colours and for its aerial aerobatics i named him Marlin!

With all the disturbance in the swim it came as no surprise that the next 20 minutes was spent bite less i really do love the look of trout and grayling to say that but the crashing they do in the swim when you are dace and chub fishing can be a real pain.  After the minnow fest in the last swim i was just glad to have a decent fish on the bank and i called it a day in that swim and moved onto the next.

Dark water towards a far bank lined with brambles leading down to a nice pool and some over hanging dark trees was the next swim to grab my attention, it screamed to me both chub and dace and just teasing the float back induced a few bites, as you can see on the video below that a little hold back on the float is the killer.

the result a nice nice silver dart

This swim produced a few more nice dace and as i knew i was not spending long in the swim i kept them in the landing net in the margin and sure enough after 10 Min's the commotion of the few fish saw the swim die off so it was time for a quick picture before moving on to he next.

The next swim produced some small dace and i also lost what felt like a chub to a hook pull.  I persevered with the swim and took a few more nice dace but it was getting to that time of day where the light was just starting to do and i knew i still had unfinished business in the first swim that i had fed with corn before leaving.  Arriving at the swim it looked mint and i made one big change to the last time i dropped in the swim in the fact i left the maggot tub in my holdall and it was out with the corn, big fish or bust time.

The tactic worked straight away with this fantastic example of a dace, plump and long with pearl like scales, a fish i am hoping to meet again next February with her winter spawn added.

The swim gave me a few more dace before i called it a day and released them all to fight another day and made my back up to my uncle.

Arriving at my uncles peg he was catching steady on the stick, had caught a nice chub and some nice dace.  I dropped in down stream for a few casts on corn and was rewarded with a chub first cast, a nice way to end a  rare roving session for me.

My uncles final net showing the benefits of sticking to the one swim and both results combined shows what this small little river has to offer the angler willing to explore its shallow depths, not bad from a river you can jump across.

River Dee - Tough Return To An Old Stomping Ground

Driving along the M56 motorway with the head lamps pointed towards the Welsh border was a surreal feeling to say the least as it has been a whole 9 months since we last set foot on the River Dee's banks.  With good fishing on the Warrington Anglers card not worth the risk to your car we headed to a upstream beat we head fished once or twice before and found some nice dace.  In the early morning light the river was like glass and with the banks being really open myself and my uncle were soon picking up the odd dace or two.

The session was going well till the the sun came up over the tree line and was shining down right where i had put my hemp seed and was getting steady bites.  This bright light on the water made seeing the float impossible and any bites well you could just not see them.  This made for a frustrating hour or so's fishing for both myself and my uncle who was experiencing the same issue.  Eventually the sun rose to an angle where it was no longer an issue but by then the early morning flat calm had disappeared and was slowly being replaced by a swirling downstream strong wind.

This down stream swirling wind made presentation impossible to entice the better dace, they were there all right but in the wind it was only the silly this years fry falling for our bad presentation and catching these was a lottery given their ultra fast bites that more times than not resulted in you retrieving a snotted maggot like the one below.

As is always the way the conditions improved right on packing in time and i would say for the last half an hour we put together some better fish but the nets bared no resemblance to the 20lb nets we had caught her previous.

My net and my uncles net marked a OK return to the river but all in all a hard days work on the river.

my net

uncle net

Well that's the fishing for this week i wish you all

tight lines

Danny