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- Mar 10, 2019
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After a few days of the joy of working from home I was back out for another session on my local commercial today with my grandad. Was a bit frosty first thing but soon turned into probably the nicest weather of the year so far being sunny , windless and well into double figures temperature wise. It just needed a decent days fishing to top it off and luckily that was how it panned out.
We started fishing probably just before 9 then finished just before 3.30 and my final tally was 12 fairly typical commercial sized carp, 8 skimmers of mixed sizes, probably 20 odd respectable roach, probably 60 odd small rudd and a single small perch. The carp averaged probably a little over 3lb so once the silvers were throw in I’d imagine I’d have been at about 50lb overall so a big improvement on last weekend.
Tackle wise after playing it safe with the 13ft CR10 # 1 last weekend I decided to risk the 13ft acolyte ultra this week thinking there wouldn’t be many carp again although obviously got that bit wrong! Still it held up alright (just some long fights!) and was paired with a 2500 Shimano Sahara RD loaded with 3lb maxima to the same 1.5g drennan loaded crystal insert waggler as last week but to a lighter size 18 to 2lb drennan silverfish hook to nylon. It was set up about dead depth in a little over 5ft of water. Hook bait was single red maggot with loose feed of mostly red maggots with a few 4mm and 2mm pellets over frenzied hemp ground bait. Tried pellet on the hook but had nothing other than a couple maybe bites.
My grandad had 2 carp, 5 skimmers, 5 perch, about 20 odd roach and about 50 odd rudd for probably pushing 20lb. Think all his fish were on single maggot as well although might have got a couple on pellet as he gave it more time than me.
All in all it was a really nice session getting plenty of fish in perfect weather for the time of year. Was definitely my best session since the autumn as the stamp (save the skimmers and carp) was whilst still too small probably slightly better than it was on last weekend’s sessions so it’s heading in the right direction. With it being the year’s first weekend of nice weather it’ll likely be busy over the weekend (miraculously only a handful of us there in the perfect weather today!) so probably going to see if we can crack the canal Sunday after a day off for the rugby tomorrow.
Few pics of the swim, a roughly stamp roach, one of the smaller and one of the bigger skimmers and the first carp of the day which turned out to be a bit under stamp.

We started fishing probably just before 9 then finished just before 3.30 and my final tally was 12 fairly typical commercial sized carp, 8 skimmers of mixed sizes, probably 20 odd respectable roach, probably 60 odd small rudd and a single small perch. The carp averaged probably a little over 3lb so once the silvers were throw in I’d imagine I’d have been at about 50lb overall so a big improvement on last weekend.
Tackle wise after playing it safe with the 13ft CR10 # 1 last weekend I decided to risk the 13ft acolyte ultra this week thinking there wouldn’t be many carp again although obviously got that bit wrong! Still it held up alright (just some long fights!) and was paired with a 2500 Shimano Sahara RD loaded with 3lb maxima to the same 1.5g drennan loaded crystal insert waggler as last week but to a lighter size 18 to 2lb drennan silverfish hook to nylon. It was set up about dead depth in a little over 5ft of water. Hook bait was single red maggot with loose feed of mostly red maggots with a few 4mm and 2mm pellets over frenzied hemp ground bait. Tried pellet on the hook but had nothing other than a couple maybe bites.
My grandad had 2 carp, 5 skimmers, 5 perch, about 20 odd roach and about 50 odd rudd for probably pushing 20lb. Think all his fish were on single maggot as well although might have got a couple on pellet as he gave it more time than me.
All in all it was a really nice session getting plenty of fish in perfect weather for the time of year. Was definitely my best session since the autumn as the stamp (save the skimmers and carp) was whilst still too small probably slightly better than it was on last weekend’s sessions so it’s heading in the right direction. With it being the year’s first weekend of nice weather it’ll likely be busy over the weekend (miraculously only a handful of us there in the perfect weather today!) so probably going to see if we can crack the canal Sunday after a day off for the rugby tomorrow.
Few pics of the swim, a roughly stamp roach, one of the smaller and one of the bigger skimmers and the first carp of the day which turned out to be a bit under stamp.





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