Search the Community
Showing results for tags 'lift method'.
Found 13 results
-
Willows Lake - Thatcham 1730 - 2230 Warm and overcast - clearing. No breeze so copious amounts of DEET required to keep the mossies at bay! AT 23º-17ºC 2 Tench; 4lb 7oz & 4lb 3oz. 2 Carp; 8lb 6oz & 6lb 11oz First evening this summer on here when the carp have been a nuisance. Along with the 2 I landed I lost another 3 to hook pulls - two after lengthy fights and getting close to netting - ho hum they weren't what I was after any hows! Thankfully there was a lull in carp interest for around an hour either side of 9pm when the tinca's got a look-in and I had 2 fish in 2 consecutive casts just as it got dark.
-
Willows Lake - Thatcham 1800 - 2300 Overcast and breezy - clearing to cloudless skies as it got dark (the exact opposite to the forecast I watched in the morning!!) AT 19º-13ºC 6 (!) Tench: 5lb 15oz, 5lb 12oz, 5lb 8oz, 5lb 3oz, 4lb 11oz, 4lb 7oz. 1 Carp 7lb 13oz. 1 perch (small) Another splendid evening's tench fishing. (And another 3lb of blackberries collected which are being converted into jam as I type!) All the action after 8pm (again!) save for the micro perch. The period from 9-10pm was particularly frenetic. Yet again gratifyingly few carp putting in an appearance and with the added bonus of the clear skies which afforded sight of a couple of early Perseids - including a particularly spectacular one which left a 2-3 second afterglow. (They peak this weekend so fingers crossed for some clear skies - conditions for viewing should be very good with a waning moon affording dark skies.) Pics of a couple of the 5lbs - a male of 5-08 (bottom photo) and a bigger female with a very impressive caudal fin...
-
Willows Lake - Thatcham 1800 - 2300 Overcast and very breezy all evening after rain all afternoon - clearing to reveal a very bright full moon for last hour. AT 17ºC - 14ºC. 5 Tench: 6lb 0oz, 5lb 9oz, 5lb 5oz, 4lb 14oz, 4lb 6oz. 1 Carp 9lb 4oz. 1 Perch; small. Very lively evening - with bites from the off - started with maggot while my prawns defrosted but that only took a few minutes and there after it was chopped prawn - float fished lift method, all evening. Gotta love the quality of the tench coming out of this lake this summer - of the 11 tinca's I've landed only 2 have been under 4lb. Bites stopped at 10pm when the moon rose (I know co-incidence is not causation ) 3lb of blackberries also harvested! Biggest of the night:
-
Willows Lake - Thatcham 1800 - 2300 Cool, overcast and drizzly with a more substantial shower as it got dark. AT 14ºC - 12ºC. 2 Tench: 5lb 11oz & 4lb 4oz. 3 perch - all small. As expected, bites at a bit of a premium with conditions more akin to mid autumn than mid July. Pretty pleased then, to come away with 2 nice tincas and have an evening when I was NOT getting bothered by cyprinus carpio. And, as last week on Alders, 8pm appeared to be the 'witching hour' with the biggest tench arriving shortly after 2000 and the 4lber (a hard fighting male) 20 minutes later.
-
Willows Lake - Thatcham 1800 - 0000 Warm (ish), overcast with drizzly rain to start - clearing and becoming quite cool. AT 21ºC -> 12ºC. 1 Carp 8lb 1oz, 1 Tench 3lb 8oz. A frustrating evening on the float. Lots of dithering, dips and rises and lots of striking at thin air for the first 3 hours! When I did eventually connect with something it was the right weight - but the wrong species! 8lb+ tench have been coming out of here this summer and I'd really like to get one as my PB is under that! Darkness eventually resulted in a tinca but it would prove to be my last bite of an otherwise disappointing evening!
-
Willows Lake - Thatcham 1500 - 2230 Warm with sunny spells - clearing at dusk with a nice southerly breeze to keep the mossies off. AT 21ºC or there-abouts for most of the afternoon. 3 Tench; 6lb 8oz, 5lb 3oz, 1½lb. 3 Carp; 10lb 11oz, 7lb 8oz, 6lb 11oz News that the carp in here weren't showing very well (post spawning malaise?) had me chancing my arm for the tincas. Went all out with my default tench tactics - prawn sections float fished lift method style and it wasn't long before I was having my hook straightened by a muscular carp! The next time my float went under it resulted in the 10lber - and whilst I was rather pleased to land it on my float rod I thought I was going to be in for an evening of carp frustration. I need not have worried, as the sun sank behind the trees - putting my swim in shade - the tench showed up - with all 3 in quite quick succession. The first up being the 5lb male. The 6 my biggest for 4 years and my best from an NAA club water since 2010.
-
Willows Lake - Thatcham 1830 - 2230 Hot and sultry. AT 30° -> 20°C. Shirtsleeves evening - with a glorious full moon (nearly - it's actually tonight!) rising in the SE. 1 Tench; 2lb 1oz. 2 Carp; 14lb 5oz, 6lb 7oz. 1 perch - small. A torpid evening watching a mainly stationary float - and not even avoiding a float caught carp - though, thankfully, the 6lb common decided to motor out toward the island rather than dive into the lilies a mere couple of feet from where it was hooked!! The only time I got a classic lift bite did at least result in a hoped for tench. Dusk brought out my bread crust in the margins strategy and the dapping of a piece with a hook in resulted in my biggest carp for 4 years. Another 3 jars of bramble jelly was also the result of this evening's excursion!
-
Willows Lake - Thatcham 1800 - 0000 Warm and overcast with a gentle southerly breeze. 19ºC -> 16ºC. Lovely evening to be out - no dew and no shelter required. 5 Carp; 10lb 13oz, 8lb 14oz, 8lb 10oz, 6lb 5oz (& one of around a pound - unweighed!). 1 Tench 1¼lb. 3 Bream (all skimmers). 1 Perch. 1 Rudd. (Both quite small) This was meant to be an evening fishing the margins for tench (or crucians, roach, bream, perch, rudd - anything but carp!) However the bully boy commons had other ideas - they were just insatiable. The 'bigger' eight was first cast and took an age to subdue on a float rod and a 4lb bottom - and no wonder as it was shaped like a torpedo! After hooking and losing a couple more to hook pulls - bumping another couple (possibly striking at liners) - and banking the 2 smaller ones I decided on a 'If you can't beat them, join them' strategy and started dapping bread under my (carp) rod tip. This at least resulted in a 100% hooking to landing ratio - though the double had to be extracted from the lillies where it so nearly won its freedom. After all this commotion the carp eventually vacated my swim - I had no more slurps and swirls at my bread offerings on the surface and float fishing maggot at last produced bites (and fish) that weren't carp though they weren't exactly prolific!
-
Alders Lake - Thatcham 1830 - 2230 Warm, becoming overcast and quite breezy. 1 Tench; 2lb 7oz. 2 Perch - both 6-8oz. Slow evening with all the action (if you can call it that!) unusually coming in the first 90 mins. My worst return from Alders in a while. Only excitement as it got dark was connecting with one of the lake's rogue carp, for which I was totally out-gunned. I'm not sure it even realised it was even hooked at first as it plodded up the channel - before realising something was up and took off into the central island of lillies for the inevitible smash up. Then had the frustrations of being locked in - the gate at the Discovery Centre being locked with only the combination lock - the NAA padlock hanging loose with the L-Bar - designed to allow both locks to be used independently - laying on the ground. Dave - the fisheries manager came to the rescue - but this shambles is becoming a regular occurrence.... ?
-
Alders Lake - Thatcham 1830 - 2300 Warm, sunny evening with a gentle breeze for much of it - which kept the mossies off for all but the last hour. 25ºC when I arrived - still 17ºC when I packed up. 3 Bream: 4lb 4oz, 3lb 14oz, 3lb 11oz. 1 Tench 3lb 13oz. 3 Carp; all ¾-1lb. 3 Perch - all 6-8oz. Productive evening which got off to a slow start. And whilst I had a perch first cast I'd have to wait 2 hours for my next bite. All the fish then came in a 90min spell around dusk. Again the little carp fought well above their weight - kidding me into thinking I was into tincas. (All were re-homed next door). After 2200 I was plagued with strange bites - which proved to be signal crayfish (I even landed one of the blighters) - damn nuisance as they were on the bait as soon as it touched bottom - so whilst I had intended to fish till midnight - they prompted an 'early' pack up!
-
Alders Lake - Thatcham 1800 - 2300 Warm and sunny evening - with cloud cover coming in at dusk which: a) kept temps up at around 14ºC and, b) kept the dew off which was nice! 3 Tench; 4lb 7oz, 2lb 3oz, 1lb 12oz. 1 Bream 3lb 8oz. 3 Carp (!) one 'handsized' the other 2 slightly bigger at around a lb a piece. 5 Perch. Very pleasant evening on the float - though the carp were an unwelcome sight - this was meant to be a carp free lake when it was restocked after the fish kill of 2007. However some unauthoriised fish were put in and now it looks like they've spawned successfully! Each time I hooked one I assumed I was into another tench so disappointed to see a small carp instead! Started with a flurry of perch on maggot though this time switched TO prawn to slow down their interests. Nice to get a bream as well - which fought very uncharacteristically having nearly pulled my rod in when I turned around to rummage for a drink in my bag!
-
Willows Lake, Thatcham 1400 - 2300 Overcast, and quite breezy at times. Not particularly warm - in fact quite chilly(9ºC) when I departed under clearing skies. 4 Carp; 3lb - 6lb 10oz. 6 Tench; mostly around the pound mark - with a couple a bit bigger at 1-14 & 2-15. 6 Crucians; again all quite small - though the stocking from a couple of years ago is getting noticeably bigger - put a couple of the better ones on the scales for curiosity and they both went 10oz. 4 Rudd. 30+ Perch (bit of a menace!) In need of a confidence booster after last week's rainy debacle at MF. Again Tench and Crucians were on the agenda and I didn't so mind if the odd bully-boy carp put in an appearance. Which is exactly how it turned out - though I hadn't reckoned on the voraciousness of the perch - had to stop using my bait of choice (chopped prawn) as they just nailed it immediately - even maggot lasted longer. Thankfully all the carp arrived in a flurry around tea time - not to return - so as the shadows lengthened I had a steady stream of my target species plus a few handsized rudd. Was even able to switch back to prawn with the immedaite result of the bigger tench. As temps plummeted so the bites stopped - and whilst I had intended to fish until midnight no bites after 10pm saw me head home 'early' for a warm bed.
-
Johnsons Lake, Milford 1500 - 2315 Warm (ish) and sunny day with temps plumeting after sundown - car thermo registered just 7ºC on the way home... 2 Tench; 2lb 3oz and another half that size. 1 Crucian; 1lb 10oz. 2 Rudd; 1lb 10oz and one of around ½lb. 3 Roach; all 'hand-sized'. Slowish evening - with everything bar the large rudd (just an ounce off my pb)coming after 2100. And whilst I caught by target species (Tench & Crucians) they weren't of the calibre this lake is famous for so the rudd was a bit of a bonus. Had planned to switch to the lake next door but chilled bones and a quick chat to someone who was doing a night on there (and not catching!!) decided otherwise!
