Opening days results.

[Jigotai]

I went with my mate Steve on Friday night. We arrived at the river just before dark and set up our rods in the carpark. After a kebab and a quick nap we set off to our swims just before 12 O’clock.

My usual approach for barbel on this river is to use pellets or boilies but after reading a previous thread on barbel baits I decided to give lobworms a go on one rod and pellets on the other.

We hadn’t been fishing long when I heard Steve’s baitrunner scream, only to be followed by cursing as he missed the run.

In the mean time I was having trouble with weed and other debris floating down the river building up around my line and dragging my weight out of position. This meant I had to recast every now and then to make sure my bait was sitting over the bed of hemp I had put down.

I had been getting the odd knock on both rod tips so was quite confident I was soon going to have a take on one of my rods. I didn’t have to wait much longer, when I had what looked like a bite on my upstream rod that had the lobworm on. I wasn’t sure whether it was weed pulling my weight out of position, but then it twitched again and I lifted the rod. Everything went solid as I connected with the fish, realizing it had been hooked it took off. It gave a very good account of itself and kept itself hard on the bottom. Every time I thought I had it coming to the surface it would make another run. I finally got it to the surface and was chuffed to bits to see my first barbel of the season. After netting it was quickly weighed then held in the water for a few minutes to get it strength back. It weighed in at 4 lbs, which surprised me because it fought a lot harder.

 

After a couple more missed runs Steve finally connected with a fish. His swim erupted as this fish tried it’s best to get away. Curiosity got the better of me and I wound my rods in and wandered over to see what the commotion was.

He was still playing the fish when I got to his swim and he still wasn’t sure what he had hooked. Finally it began to tire and came to the surface only to reveal it’s self as a carp. It turned out to be a nice fish of 9 lb.

 

Both our swims went dead after that and the only fish that we caught was a small chub that came to my rod that I had a lobworm on. I packed up and left at about 7:30 pleased with the session but very tired.

 

I was going to try and get out in the afternoon, but after taking my kids swimming and painting out the nursery I was shattered, and crashed out on the sofa.

[zardoz]

Hi

 

quite new to forum and to coarse fishing in general but here goes.

Went to my local lake (Thorndon park in Brentwood, Essex) arrived about 11 am (lazy I know)

 

Armed with sweetcorn mixed with a bit of Lyles Golden syrup and 4 bread rolls, checked in a ball of bread or corn and set up. Fished sweetcorn on the waggler about 15m from the bank at arnage of depths between 2 and 5 feet depending on whether I was getting any bites or not.

 

Had two skimmers quite quickly, then nothing for ages, then a slightly larger adult bream, then a really small bream, then nothing for ages again, then a tiny roach, then quite a decent bream, then another smaller bream. Was trying to loose feed quite sparingly with sweetcorn alone - maybe I should have been more "generous". Had quite a lot of knocks which didnt develop. Using double sweetcorn seemed to get more knocks but fewer bites if you see what I mean.

 

A bloke on the other bank caught a nice tench ledgering but two other blokes I spoke to only caught bream and small roach. A large group of teenagers, one of whom was periodically spinning with some sort of bizarre plastic lure were making a lot of noise and throwing stones etc which didnt help. The youth of today etc etc

 

Whenever I have fished here I have had no problem catching bream but have caught nothing else much

(except in winter when I have just caught nothing)

 

Was good to open my account in reasonable style (reasonable for me anyway). Hope to make more of a decent effort to try other venues this season as this lake seems to have loads of bream, a few uncatchable carp and tench (uncatchable by me anyway) and not much else.

 

Anyone got any suggestions for some good venues somewhere reasonably near me where a beginner might have an enjoyable day? Has anyone fished Cuton Lakes (the one you can see from the A12). If so, any good?

 

Cheers

 

Jonathan

[les middy]

Went both sat/sun fished same peg on local club drain best forgot about both sessions 4 silvers and two eels

[fish4life]

hi to all and just want to add my story to this topic,i couldnt get out over the weekend so had my first session of the season on my local river/brooke,in between holland on sea and clacton on sea,first impression was good a steady flow and a little colour,this river has a large stock of carp and some very good roach and rudd,the carp have been prominent for the last couple of seasons,so imagine my delight to bag over 30lbs of red fins,i love fishing for roach and had them going on the hemp seed after an hour,fish from 8oz up to 1lb and a couple of very nice rudd,fishing the pole to 9 metres and i very light rig was the key to todays session.it made me understand why i never fish in the close season today it was fantastic and after 3months wait what a start.

[James Pos]

Hi

 

On Saturday I went on my local canal had about 3lb in 3-4 hours. Went on Wednesday on a commercial and came 4th out of an adult match just behind my dad last week. .I am going fishing on the canal on Wednesday & thursday this week.Then i will go on a fishing pool on Saturday. I will put my results on here next week.

 

Regards James

[Mat Hillman]

Hi

 

 

Anyone got any suggestions for some good venues somewhere reasonably near me where a beginner might have an enjoyable day? Has anyone fished Cuton Lakes (the one you can see from the A12). If so, any good?

 

Cheers

 

Jonathan

 

Try the match lake at "The Warren" in Stanford Le Hope, http://www.shellangling.com/ or

bridge lake at Birds green fishery http://www.total-fishing-tackle.com/shopco...ype=bridge_lake

 

Joining a club can also work out a lot cheaper than paying day tickets if you fish regularly, I'm a member of http://www.bdac.co.uk/ and would recomend several of thir waters as suitable for beginners, I've been taking my 7 year old son to Southminster, and he always catches a few!

 

Mat

[Neil G]

Great to get back on the rivers again....nobody fishing the stretch I went to so plenty of peace and quiet.

 

Had a couple of small but tidy looking pike and quite a few runs.

[jamie dimery-seek]

Superb fish! What a start to the season! Well done to you, that's just brilliant.

 

 

Nice one Jamie! great start to your season.

 

Thanks Mark and Budgie

 

Well jamie how are you going to top that this season? Seriously what a great fish at 21 pounds and tigger what a great start with a big chub and your first barble. really great. my opening day was no where near as exciting, i went down the river stort around Harlow and caught a few small chub and perch on maggots but i was happy. i really wnat to explore a new streach of river and want to fish the Chelmsford angling streach of the Chelmer at little waltham in the next few weeks.

 

Dont think i will top that for a while Peter

[zardoz]

Try the match lake at "The Warren" in Stanford Le Hope, http://www.shellangling.com/ or

bridge lake at Birds green fishery http://www.total-fishing-tackle.com/shopco...ype=bridge_lake

 

Joining a club can also work out a lot cheaper than paying day tickets if you fish regularly, I'm a member of http://www.bdac.co.uk/ and would recomend several of thir waters as suitable for beginners, I've been taking my 7 year old son to Southminster, and he always catches a few!

 

Mat

 

Cheers I will try these out when I next get a fishing pass from "her indoors". I have looked at the bdac website before - I was impressed by their range of waters and will give it some thought.

 

Ta

 

Jonathan

[mark barrett]

Cheers I will try these out when I next get a fishing pass from "her indoors". I have looked at the bdac website before - I was impressed by their range of waters and will give it some thought.

 

Ta

 

Jonathan

 

 

i think this will go down as one of my best ever opening day sessions.

 

on a fen drain that i had been baiting for three weeks prior to the start me and my mate had a hectic rudd and carp session. I had 5 two pounders, a 2.15 and a 3.03 on the rudd side and commons of 18.04 and 21.04 as far as the carp went, but my mate had the best trip with a new pb rudd of 3.00 and 3.11 plus a gorgeous mirror of 24.08.

 

and best of all you can see it all in the anglers mail next week!!