Frustrating day

[davej1981]

Hi guys

Had a very frustrating day yesterday. Was at local commercial and eventually found signs of fish. I was fishing banded 6mm dead depth, would put some 4mm in drop the rig over and there were fish fizzing in over my feed. My float would dance around before sailing under with a very positive bite. Id either strike at nothing or foul hook one which would come off very quickly (im sure they were foul hooked as the one or two I actually landed were both fin hooked) . I spent an hr like this and just couldnt hook any properly. Was fishing pole at approx 8/9m in 6ft of water. Any ideas on what was happening??

 

[Total]

Can be a royal pain to sort out issues like this when it's happening; A few pointers...Try to find a decent hard bottom to fish if possible, maybe even closer to you if they will have it, bottom of near or slightly up this shelf....Fish slightly over depth....Modify your feeding, alter your depth, come shallow, keep adjusting depth until liners stop and gradually go deeper to find them again.....Basically your suffering liners and fishing at a depth the fish don't want to be in/feed in and probably exasperating the situation by continuing to do the same thing.

Sometimes even abandoning the pole and short casting a hybrid/pellet feeder can sort it out....So many variables etc etc

 

[rudd]

Fish mid water?
Fizzing - air from pellets taken on drop.
The sudden change from tropical to artic literally overnight has killed algae.
Dead algae sinks and being eaten by microbes that use up oxygen on the bottom.
Cold water from rain and wind adding oxygen in upper layer forcing warmer water down.
Fish in the warm zone in between.

 

[davej1981]

Thinking the fizzing fooled me, id pot in some pellets and within 30s i could literally watch the fizz move towards my float before id get liners

 

[bettsfan]

Is there Bream in the Water?

 

[G0zzer2]

Rudd is correct. That fizzing is always excited fish midwater, but I've never been able to catch them when they are doing that. All you can do is to put in a fair amount of bait and leave it and hope the fish drop down.

 

[davej1981]

Is there Bream in the Water?

Apparently theres quite a few and of a decent size (5lb+) plus but they are rarely caught

 

[bettsfan]

I have had exactly what you have described on mainly Carp/Tench waters and can't hit the bites for love nor money and that includes sailaways! I resorted to sitting on my hands and let them pull the rod in and lo and behold I had 2 Bream, one about 3.5lb and one probably nearer 6lb. After those 2 the bites stopped. Just a thought??

 

[rudd]

Rudd is correct. That fizzing is always excited fish midwater, but I've never been able to catch them when they are doing that. All you can do is to put in a fair amount of bait and leave it and hope the fish drop down.

Yes - a big pot of corn can do the job.

 

[Maesknoll]

Fish double worm over the pellets when it’s fizzing and you can’t catch, will often catch you a few when a pellet won’t.

 

[Chris Calder]

lots of fish feeding on the 4 mm pellet and ignoring a 6mm , it is amazing sometimes they won't take a bigger pellet, if it's a place you can go back to try just feeding 6mm and having the same on the hook.

 

[Northantslad]

Saw something about this recently and putting things back in your favour in terms of not contributing to the fish being midwater potentially by using the right pellets. Would need to watch it again to be sure and i definitely will, but was Jamie Hughes talking about the differing rate of fall between coppen and skretting based pellets. Could be relevant here may be, along with the need in the warmer months to either find the right depth of water for bottom fishing or exploit the depth they are happy at, by going shallow for them.