13.8.21 - Willows
Entry posted by Bayleaf the Gardener in Willows
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Regular readers will know that a week ago at Willows I achieved:
(a) 6:45am til 11:30 - nothing
(b) 11:30 - 2:30 - 5 carp.
(c) 2:30 - 4:45. - Not even a nudge
Following this, a revered and sagely angling guru wisely ordained that 'the knack is to 'ONLY be on the bank for (b) ! 4 hours at the 'right' time is better than 10 hours at the wrong...'
Seven days later, with different bait and tactics, though I spent the first two hours before crossing the causeway to Willows, the scores on the doors were:
(d) 6:45am til noon - a 2oz bream
(e) noon - 2pm - commons of 6lb 8, 4lb 5, 6lb 9 and 8lb 15
(f) 2pm - 5pm - another 2oz bream.
Sound familiar?
To break the afternoon famine, I opened the big tin of hemp that had come with the generous bait basket that the Angling Trust people had sent me when I joined last year. I started pinging it in 2 rod-lengths out and within 10 minutes the water was absolutely fizzing with feeding bubbles. In panicky expectation, I started making up a float rod to substitute the method feeder. In my hurry I was all fingers and thumbs, spilling the split shot, dropping hooks, fumbling knots and getting the catapult caught around the reel while trying to multitask tackling up with the fast rate of hemp pinging. My first cast was aborted when I got caught up in overhead trees, then the line inexplicably birdnested meaning I had to break down and retackle. When I finally got out, with the surface was still frothing like a washing machine, the bites I got were hard and fast and I missed them all (apart from another 2-ounce bream), with pretty much every one ending up with me dragging in a severered branch of willow (how appropriate) or getting stuck on a snag. It was so frustrating that I declared my baited-up swim unfishable and returned to the less-stressy method feeder, hoping that by now the carp had swum around the central island and were back in my zone. Nope. Nothing. For the final half hour, I decided to ping the remainder of the hemp straight out and hand throw the feeder over the top. I didn't get the fizzing, but within 10 minutes the rod almost pulled in, and something angry was ripping yard after yard of line out towards open water. It was the best fight of the day, I didn't see the fish for ages, but eventually it came in - (just) a 5lb 5 common, surely the fly weight champion of carp. There was just enough time left to miss an 'unmissable' bite from the hemped-up patch.
Driving away trying to absorb the lessons of the day, my car happened to pass that of said sagely angling guru who advised me that 'fish can get so excited by hemp that they wont eat anything else'. Hmm, that made sense, so perhaps the way forward is to lace the method feed mix with hemp, or certainly using it more sparingly than the pouchfuls I was flinging at them. Its all a learning curve. I'll tell you about it next week.
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