Errrm

Thanks for the offer, I might take you up on it when the season opens. I think most of the information I need is things like location and depths and amount of weed but obviously I wouldn't expect someone to give away good pike areas.

Thanks, I've looked at it and might get a ticket especially with your recommendation :-)

Thanks for the tips :-). I haven't even fished it once so if you could make any suggestions about the types of lures to use and how weedy it gets it would be a great help. The Cam looks a lot easier, I've been out running along it a few times recently and spotting prey fish has been really easy.... although there might be too many prey fish and so many places the pike could be feeding but it doesn't look anywhere near as difficult as the Fens.

I think I will hopefully lure fishing either on the river cam or somewhere in the fens. I've never fished either so I expect to blank, it will probably take me a few trips to get my head around the new venues :-)

My 2-10 Perch. I don't think I've ever worked so hard for one 2-10 fish! I was really happy to catch it though :-)

It was just normal from what I remember. I can't figure out how to post a picture from my iPad but I have one I'll get up as soon as I get to my laptop.

Firstly a big thank you to everyone at Wingham for the great weekend. Also thanks to Dales for lending me some banksticks for the weekend. Right, a little bit about the fishing. It was hard, despie this I felt I let down Steve a bit after he gave me the best Tench swim in the lake and the I didn't even manage one bit from a tench all weekend! I tried all the humps and bars in the swim and also the slt in front of me but I just couldn't find them or get them feeding. Halfway through the weekend I switched Tom targetting perch and eels and managed a new PB perch of 2-10 and a pike so despite how bad it went I ended up quite happy especially as it seems no other perch were caught which was quite surprising. Anyway, congratulations to everyone that caught and hopefully those that didn't will try again next year. When the fishing is good it's an amazing place to be so hopefully see you all next year if I'm lucky. Looking forward now to reading everyone else's reports from the weekend :-)

Saved myself from a blank..... And got me a new PB! 2lb 10oz Perch on lobs fished over one of the most disgusting spod mixes I've ever put out!!! Errrggghhhhh

I know!! It seems not much has been caught from what I gather. Dales, have you caught any ugly slimy things yet? :-)

Very quiet here in Meatballs..... :-(

Took the day off work to sort everything bait and stuff out, been to a couple of fish shops and got more than enough for the weekend...... Suppose I might as well go lure fishing for a few hours as it's such a nice day. Hope everything preparations are going well :-).

I think the debate regarding frozen being better for the fish than shelf life depends on what is in the shelf life to preserve them isn't it? Any idea what they are using to preserve them?

Thanks :-)

Actually you are right, I have some groundbait feeders just over 2oz but looking at that I wouldn't want to fish with anything less than 2oz I don't think.

I only saw the first bite because I quickly had a look at lunch time but it seemed that the feeder moved as the bream moved away with the bait, if this is correct then surely a heavy feeder would give better bite indication and possibly less resistence to the fish. Why are groundbait feeders so light?

I have 2 pairs of long banksticks that Dales is lending to me but ideally I would have a third pair so I can fish all three rods on long drops. I'm not sure if Steve has them sorted (I mentioned it on the questionaire).

When spodding the mono will sink making it so much harder to reel the spod back in, if you use a floating braid then it comes in many times easier and will make spodding much less tiring. Also as John says, I always find mono in higher breaking strains horrible to use.... this might just be personal preference or crap line though but I would always use braid for spodding.

lol yes it might have been defective :-). All the other ones have completely stormed off even more than carp do normally.

My Tench PB from Wingham didn't steam off at all, the bobbin jitting around a bit, then eventually reached the top and just stop and occasionally took a bit of line and sometimes dropping the bobbin down again. It then came it like a bream! For a moment I thought I had hooked a bream during the day! Really confused me :-).

My only experience catching eels was when half targeting them on a carp syndicate. I found on this lake fishing a standard semi bolt rig with a 3-4in hook length with a large halibut pellet did catch them. I never went all out to catch the eels though depsite wanting to I just never got around to it. Dales mentioning leaving worms out into the night and catching nice eels and tench does sound fun.... maybe I'll see if I can catch some eels on the coarse lake. Damn you Dales..... my car is going to stink if I catch any ;-).

I think the problem for me is that I'm more in the situation that I'm not confident in anything...... really trying to get out both days this weekend to sort something out :-)

I'm aiming for a similar time as well, I'll probably see you somewhere near the clubhouse I'm guessing

That's great, do you know what time you are planning on arriving?

I think it's caused by a conversation with Glynn last year, he said the tench seem to prefer smaller baits and watching the Korda underwater films seem to show the tench much prefering smaller/semi-bouyant baits. So far I'm having problems getting a artificial corn rig I'm confident with.

Really looking forward to this, thanks for letting me fish it again Steve. So far on each of my previous trips I've managed to catch fish so I'm preparing for an amazing blank this time, my heads confused with rigs that I used to use and now don't like and rigs that I want to use but are tested and haven't really caught any fish yet...... looks like I'm all ready to blank in style ;-)