When I arose from bed and looked out of the window I saw that yet again there was rain in the air. It was the fine stuff but rain all the same.
Undeterred I set off for the fishery around 6:30am. The car park was empty was I arrived so my plan to fish the first swim on the back stretch (peg 3 I think) was a go. I unloaded my gear, and started to make my way to the peg. As I got to the club noticeboard I happened to notice that swims 1 to 12 were booked for a juniors match! Drat foiled again. If juniors were at the bottom pegs I'd go for the top ones then.
It was still raining when I arrived at the swim so setting up was interesting to say the least. Normal tactics today for this swim, waggler rod about 1.5 lengths out and a small leger set up, fished by the island slightly to the left of centre.
Using single red maggot on the waggler rod and 15mm pineapple boillies on the leger rod I made my first casts at 7:55.
I had a cracking start on the waggler rod - the first hour seemed to be non stop fish, 8 roach, 1 perch, 1 crucian carp, 1 tench and a gudgeon all made it safely out of the water and back in again. The leger set up produced a tench as well.
Feeling optimistic I switched hook bait to sweetcorn for the next hour. I cast out and watched the float and continued to watch it not, except for the occasional re-cast move an inch! Total failure.
So I returned to the maggot. It seems to me that the lake always stalls mid to late morning and this was borne out by the fact that I only caught a couple of bream.
Back on the corn for the last hour of the morning resulted in a further 3 bream and a roach. The feeder rod also sprang into life, yielding one of the lakes barbel.
After I had my lunch I gave some meat a try. Sadly this only attracted a lonesome barbel. There was some decent action on the feeder rod though, a tench and a very nice 7lb common carp.
By 2pm I had chalked up another hour on the corn with the result that another bream and tench had made the virtual net. The feeder rod had also produced another carp, this time one of 2lb. By now the junior match had finished and there was only a handful left on the lake. The rain hadn't gone though.
Not much change in the next hour, corn for meat, that was just about it. The fish kept coming albeit at a trickle. One bream and another barbel. The feeder rod obliged with a tench and another carp of around 5lb.
The period between 3pm and 4pm we could call carp hour as both lines produced a carp. The waggler, a 2.5lb specimen on corn and the feeder another common, this one about 4lb.
Between 4pm and 5:30 when I packed up I thought I would try something different, bread. I really had no idea what would occur. As it happens I got a bream, a barbel and my one and only crucian carp of the day. The feeder rod went bananas too, four tench and a barbel.
So another rain filled day of the early summer comes to an end. In truth not a bad day, 41 fish of varying quality despite the weather.
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