Morning Fun on the river with Acolyte Plus....

A warm welcome to this weeks blog update i hope i find you all well and your nets wet.  Its been a mad week this week in work so i find myself on a Sunday morning putting this weeks blog update together, a cold wet day on the river yesterday where i forgot my umbrella means i am just about drying off now! Id like to say it was worth it but as you will read in next weeks update it was a fruitless trip.

On with this update and we start with a addition i have made to the kitchen, yes the kitchen! A place i thought was only for boiling hemp seed and preparing luncheon meat turns out there is more too it than meets the eye.  I do jest of course but this addition could turn out to be a bit of a game changer.  The next part of the update is a little trip on bank holiday Monday with my little daughter who madly turned 4 last week!!  The main bit of fishing is a short trip on the river where i literally had a hour or so to target its occupants, sit back grab a brew and lets get into the update.

A Great Addition...

As regular blog readers will know i am quite fond of my winter pike fishing and at the start of each season a few of us put together a bulk order of dead baits from a website. I myself am now moving into my 3rd season on the run piking and as such i feel i have learnt a good number of lessons about the venues i fish and more so around what baits i will probably be using this season.  My first bait order back in 2014 i was like a kid in a sweet shop and ordered a multitude of different baits but only a few samples of each and i spent around 20 odd quid.

This year is a lot different and i will go into more detail on the contents of my bait order and why i have chosen these baits in next weeks update when the order is here but it is safe to say a bait order of near £50.00 has presented its own problem.  Till now i have been splitting my bait order between two fridges at my house and my dads and i have to say its caused a bit of friction, not least last year when my partner defrosted half a kilo of roach instead of chicken for tea!

Problem was resolved on Friday when i collected my very own bait freezer! The bait order due on Tuesday it will soon be full but it also offers me some great time saving opportunities as i am planning on boiling up pint sized bag so f hemp so i can literally gab a frozen bag on  Friday evening rather than having to boil it up after work.

Bank Holiday Fun With My Little Fisher.

Bank holiday Monday and with the other half in work i asked my little girl if she fancied going fishing with daddy, of course she jumped at the opportunity to catch some little fish.  The weather was not ideal as it was quite windy and to be honest heading for the canal at 10am is never a great time as there is a good reason you see my canal blogs are from first light till 10am and this down to one thing..boats! Boats don't really do much damage to your fishing but on this canal it is not just the one its four or five at a time when they get going.

My daughter is only 4 this week so i am knew to the whole taking her fishing but i have picked up one big lesson over my years fishing and that is KEEP THE SESSIONS SHORT.  Over the years i have lost count how many times i have been fishing and seen dads taking their kids fishing and a hour or two in the dad is pulling his hair out, kid is crying to go home bored and the whole thing is not fun at all.

A short session on the local canal using up some maggots on the short whip.  The development is there in here fishing as last year she knew she was catching fish but was not really understanding the whole float going under where as in the sessions this year she has put two and two together and on this short session of only a half an hour she struck all these bites herself!

She was more than made up with her little net of fish and she left the water full of excitement from the little amount of fishing she had just done.  Right now half an hour to an hour is about right for her to go and not lose interest.  It might be the last session of the year for me and my little girl fishing as i dont think she is ready to be sitting waiting for a bite.

Packing up we where rewarded with a visit from the local swam family,

One of the things i love about fishing is the development of the wildlife through the year, my how they have come on.  Well done mum and dad!

Morning Fun On the Acolyte...

Having purchased my 14ft Acolyte a few weeks ago i have found opportunities to get some use out of the rod few and far between and with my car also playing silly beggars with spare wheels being employed till pay day and such like it has meant long distance trips have been out of the question.  The recent roach nets as the bolo method suggested have been on a deeper rivers so the 17ft rod has been my tool of choice giving my that extra control.

A few days off work last week for a short family trip to Blackpool i arrived back with a day to spare before the return to work on the Thursday.  I was determined to get out on the river so a slow drive to the river was in order.  I arrived to find her as low as i have ever seen her and to be honest i knew the length of the session would not be down to myself as much as how long the fish would not spook from the dark deep recesses they where residing in.

Reading the river in these scenario really is child's play and about as easy as watercraft comes.  Anywhere you can not see the bottom there will be fish and all the spots that look lovely and serene with wavy green weed dancing the the rivers methodic beat forget about as the fish in such low clear conditions just wont be on these shallows.

I settled in a nice swim on the inside of a bend.  The water rushing round the out side of the bend had created a 10 to 15ft deep run with the back eddy and slacker water on the inside under my feed carving out a deeper whole in the river bed.  I knew the fish would be under there and it was a case of how many not if i would get a bite.

The first few casts brought two really fat plump dace that in february could go on to be very special fish indeed.

The dace kept popping up one by one at a time and bites where hard to come by and i was working hard each time to get a bite, holding the float back as much as a dared to prolong the time my bait was in the killing zone of darker water.  The swim did go through a lull and i knew straight away the big chub had come into the line of feed and muscled out the dace.  A theory that was confirmed seconds later when the float buried, as only chub do, resulting in a more than healthy bend in toe acolyte rod.

I can not express enough just how much of a joy these rods are to use they are as light as air and the action in them when you get a better fish is fantastic.  The have you on the edge of your box as you play a fish and you do need to play the fish.  If you are an angler that is hit and hold and give no ground in  the fight type of angler then you are certainly going to end up with a three piece rod becoming a five piece rod really quickly, you have to actually play the fish with these rods.

The chub was soon followed by the next family member in the shoal and then as predicted the chub show was over and the dace packed up not long after them.  It left a swim full of gudgeon and oh my god what a joy it was to bag up on these mini barbel for a good half an hour of so and there was some lumps among them!

Eventually the sun came over the trees behind me illuminating the whole swim in its warming glow.  We live in a world full of electrical alarms and clocks when the truth is that if you spend time on the bank you kind of fall into a time when there was no break down of the beautiful day into hours and minutes and learn to follow natures own time zone.

In short it was an enjoyable little few hours on the river before the bustling world around me awoke for their daily musings, i was gone long before the roads became busy and back home in time for a warm break fast.

Sat drinking my coffee and tucking into a bacon buttie i reflected on a morning of bliss spent beside a beautiful river as i watched the last of my worries from my working life float off down stream and left feeling refreshed and ready to attack the two days in work before my next angling adventure into the unknown.

till next time i wish you all tight lines

Danny

Acolyte River Fun, Margin Carp Stalking and Canal Roach.....

A warm welcome to this weeks blog update i hope i find you all well and your nets wet.  It has been a mad week or so in work so finding time to blog has proven difficult to come by.  Again plenty of content to catch up means i have no end of trips to choose from and rather than write an introduction around topics in the angling world that have taken my fancy i have gone with a different update this week, all out fishing trips.

So in this updates its fishing trips from start to end and i still do not think i am going to be anywhere near up to date.  I guess with the car in for a job for the next two days and the idea i might not make it out this weekend if the job is not done then this is not such a bad situation to be in at all.  All i will say before we get into this update is my fishing at the moment is some of the most exciting fishing i have done.  Searching out new rivers, carp on the top, carp on the bottom, canal session and of course a cheeky few trips out for barbel.  Its been a great adventure.

So on with the update, we start on the banks of a river in search of anything that swims, any fish would be a bonus on the new drennan acolyte rod.  We follow this up with a one cast one fish carp session where stealth was the order of the day and we finish up with a trip to the canal on the pole.

A New Stretch A New Challenge....

We hit the banks as always at the crack of dawn hoping to find out normal haunt on the river at a nice level to fish.  We was met with a river in spate and totally un fishable on the stick float.  We had a back up option and this was to try a new stretch much further up the system where we hoped to find some clear water.

We arrived at the stretch and made the long walk to the bank expecting to find head high balsam and nettles.  What we found was quite well walked in paths and some nicely positioned swims, a luxury for us considering the past few months making our own swims with shovels before fishing.  Back to the car to collect the gear, again i traveled light with my octoplus box and minimal gear in my holdall, contained within the holdall was my new 14ft Drennan Acolyte Ultra rod and i could not wait to get out and give it a go.

The swim a gentle run with a sunken tree on the far bank it screamed fish and although it can be the wrong thing to do before you plumb up and run through i couldn't resist feeding the swim as i set up.  Holding the new rod in my hand it lived up to its name it was so light! Adding the shimano reel just balanced it perfectly!  The line threaded through the eyes it was clear that care was going to be needed with the ultra light tip section of this rod.  Red maggot and hemp where the baits of choice and i was soon ready to make my first cast in earnest.

A small river but plumbed up i found around 6ft depth in front of me and on a hot day was glad of it.  The first trot through brought a small chublet.

Trotting right down the middle of the river i soon found out that there was some streamer weed or a snag right on where i thought my hemp was settling.  Always the way eh.  A quick change of line and i found around the same depth at rod tip so i began feeding this line.  It was a harder trot involving me to hold back to get over what i think was a rock in the swim but doing so saw me picking up small roach and chublets at a steady pace.

The swim then died completely and i knew it was either big fish or a predator had moved in.  Till i see signs of predator activity i am always reluctant to try for the pike so i worked on the assumption it was a bigger fish in the area.  I then bumped a better fish right on my hemp before then striking and making contact with a better fish the very next trot down.

The acolyte i have to be honest felt light weight in power during this battle but being so light it might have been down to the fact i didn't know at this stage just how much strain i could impart on the fish.  A long tussle later a nice perch was in the net and surely this was the reason the "snack sized " roach had decided to vacate the area.

After the perch was caught i settled into a steady routine of trotting and feeding the swim and i caught steady but in spells if you get me? Long periods with no bite was followed by a good spell of steady bites fishing down the inside line.

The final net will not set any records but as first sessions go it provided something to build on and with my uncle hitting a nice bream on the feeder it provided plenty of food for thought.

Margin Carp Stalker...

A deluge of rain over a three day period saw me travelling to the lake not knowing that the level had rose a good few feet and the pegs where now under water.  Luckily for me i had donned my usual wellingtons so i was well equipped for the situation.  Access to many pegs was almost impossible so i set up on the banks of the first peg and contemplated whether or not to even set up.

Scanning the water for signs of fish i noticed movement right on the edge of the peg, carp being inquisitive they had obviously moved into the margins and onto the grassy areas looking for worms and insects caught out by the rise.

Feeding some corn and micro pellets close in i soon saw the water close in look agitated and what i call nervous water.  It was clear a carp had moved ting under my rod tips onto the bait.  A tail then come clean out of the water as a decent carp tipped up on the bait.

A method feeder loaded with micro pellets and corn on the hook all sprayed in Bubblecream Stinky stuff was carefully lowered onto the spot.  Short steps into the flooded peg the operation of placing the bait on the spot with little disturbance was achieved and the rod placed on the rod rest it was a waiting game.

It took a while but eventually the rod hooped over as the carp bolted out of the swim heading straight for a margin Lilly bed!  Straight onto the peg and into the water i went to apply side strain on this fish.  All my battles with the better carp in here had been played out mostly in the middle of the lake with a bit of a scrap under the rod tip, this was far different,  huge hard lunges for snags tested my gear to the max and it was pure power each time the fish went.  I can remember early on in this fight my arm aching and we thinking i was in trouble on more than one occasion.

The fish eventually began to tire and taking a huge breath of air i knew the time was close for netting,  Into the carp net she went and thank god for the flooded margin to me left as i left her in the net in the shallows while i got my breath back.

A nice carp of 13lb 8oz was on the mat and what a lovely prize she was...

She turned out to be my only fish of my 1 hour short session but i left grinning like the cheshire cat as i headed off to work for overtime.

MAP 101 2G Pole First trip on Bridgewater Canal...

The day previous i had been on the river using my new drennan acolyte but with a good pint of maggots left i just had to give the local canal a go early doors on the Sunday.  A early rise i was soon on the short drive to my peg and for some time now i had my sights set on fishing this bit of canal but with only half a pole i felt it not worth while as i always like to fish a line well over out of the boat lane.  With this new pole i could not do that and what a fantastic canal swim i had chose to christen the pole in.

A lot of reasons you hear fro people not fishing the canal is accessibility and where as this can be true on some canals on the bridgewater canal if you do your homework you can get close to the water and in this session i was closer than you would get on most commercials.

I only had a few hours and with only one match kit set up i decided to go all out right across the canal up near the boat.  I fed some ground bait and a good bed of red maggot via my new cupping kit, what a revelation this is, but i admit i had made a cardinal sin.  I fed right away without first fishing the swim for a bit and i could not for the life of me get the float to settle.  I knew it was shotted to go down to the tip but it would settle on one put in and not the next and others i would go solid then pull off.  After a hour or so of messing around i had put a few small roach in the keep net.

Not long after a guy come along, thank god he did, as he mentioned that it was good that they had been along and cut the weed back.  Apparently the weed on the far bank had covered a third of the canal recently and it seemed a lot of it had been left under the water.  All the float not settling made sense now but luckily it was not to late to re plumb up down the middle and feed the deeper line with ground bait and maggot.  On the session i found feeding two large jaffa sized balls from the off then little nuggets here and there was the way to go, a clear canal i think the colour in the water really helped and as the swim grew so the better roach showed.

Feeding lightly with hemp seed seemed to get them going again when the bites died but i was really impressed with the average stamp of roach on the day and fantastic to see such silvers are there to be caught if only people would go out and fish for them.  I continued to pick up roach steadily over the ground bait and it was great fun on the new pole.

The pole itself is certainly lighter than the old model and seems a lot stiffer, one thing that i thought would do my head in was the side puller elastic being visible on the side of the top kit in my eye line but i have to say i did not notice it and actually when the elastic was loose after a better fish it was simple to tighten it back up on the side pullet than looking for the internal puller kit on my old one.  The pole i am sure will do me fine for my fishing and i cant wait to get some elastic in the power kits for some fun with the carp.

The final net was a 10.7lb net of silvers and a fantastic few hours on the local canal.

Packing up it was a joy to be joined by a lovely family of swans and their cygnets, fish and wildlife on the local cut...bliss.

till next time i wish you all

tight lines

Danny