Waking up late, A half arsed days fishing with better than expected results.

[RedRidingHood]

I haven't done one of these in a whiles now, So bare with.

Last week I went onto a local selling page and found a lady selling a nice rod bag, Now I'm not a massive fan of Guru in general but I do rate some of their protective luggage as well as their hook range. Upon messaging her for the rod bag I'd looked on other listings she had for sale and saw she had a 'basically new' MAP TKS 201 3G Pole. She reckons it'd been used once and some of the sections were brand new. Now, I'm skeptical.. And I didn't need a new pole, but I love MAP Poles and it's always been a dream of mine to own one. I inquired about it, Moreso out of curiosity and told her I'm interested but also not interested. She told me she'd let me take a look when she brings the bag to my local pond, And I told her that I have a friend who'd also be down there who might take a gander at it as he's on the market for a new Pole. Well, Tomorrow came and after a 15 minute visual inspection followed by a test brushing sections down with baby wipes what she said checked out, And the dolly butt was indeed still in the original sealed packaging. I simply couldn't resist and I now own a new MAP TKS 201 3G 13.5M Pole with 4 Top two's which all came elasticated with Hydro which I intend on replacing (Done 2 so far). I'm also £350.00 poorer. If I didn't take it, My friend would've at the end of the day.

Now, The weathers been rubbish ever since so I haven't been wanting to immediately take it out in horrible rain and wind so I've sat about waiting for a good day. Yesterday night I took a look at the weather for the morning and saw it was cold but not wet and decided to have a go. Made up some groundbait, I set an alarm for 7:30 AM And had an early night.. 2 AM.

Alarm pops off at exactly 7:30, I wake up and decide Ill have another 5 minutes lay in before I get ready and be on my way. I wake back up at 9:30 AM. Because of this I decide that theres absolutely no reason for me to take all my gear as by the time I'm set up, I'll only have about an hour to fish due to my somewhat excessive lay in. I decided I'd only take me rod bag, box, bucket loop, bait and net to get out as quick as possible, followed by a quick set up on only one line instead of two or three and hopefully I'd be fishing by 10 AM.

So I've finally arrived. Got everything set up by 10:30 after a lot of chatting and setting up the fella beside me who's not so with it on pole fishing.

---------------------------------------------------------------
Target ; Silvers.

Rig ; F1 Maggot Float, 3lb to 2lb HLength followed by a size 20 hook and Mavers 6-9 Hollow Elastic.

I'm fishing one single line 12M in front of me. 7ft deep, About 6M left of some Lillypads however after a bit of a mess around with a plummet I managed to find a relatively nice area a about 7 metres to the left of my main line which I can fish with the same rig, unfortunately it's about 2 inches too deep but still decide I'll feed that as a throwaway line but feed very, very minimal amounts of bait. I would usually have one or two more rigs set up in different places but simply don't have the time nor do I want to put the effort in today.

I start off with 2 medium balls of groundbait on my mainline, And a single ball on my throwaway. Both balls are accompanied by 3 or so maggots in each ball. I always like to start off in this pond with maggot and always refrain from both feeding and using pellet if I don't need to. I find that as soon as I introduce pellet as feed or on the hook it'll completely turn them off maggots or other baits. Only under dire circumstances will I start to feed and fish pellet, The reason being the fish in here can be very finnicky and I simply do not want the hassle of having to ship my pole back and forth because my pellet is gone. The fence around the lake is only a few metres behind me so I have to break my pole up into 2 before I'm on my top kit. This can become incredibly annoying when small fish are causing you to lose pellets over and over again. You're probably now thinking 'Use banded pellets', But this year has been a serious struggle for any hard pellets and you catch very little to nothing on anything other than expander.

So, For the first 1 or 2 hours things are slow, but steady. I'm constantly switching between both lines. Funnily enough, I'm having way better luck on the 'throwaway line' to kick things off so I focus a bit more on that line changing absolutely nothing fishing like a fool, a solid 2 inches over depth during the winter while I prime my main line hopefully giving any fish the confidence to stick around and feed. I'm getting the odd roach here and there followed by a skimmer but things are tough, This pond is hard even during the summer months so the winters can be absolute hell. This however is very normal and to be expected from my particular experience with this pond so I'm not overly worried at this point. I find the fish usually have a good feed early in the morning, Say from 6-9 AM and then after that they start to turn off and by 12 you really struggle to get anything at all so I find the best approach is to feed very minimal amounts, Golfball sizes of firmly packed GB followed by a small amount of maggots every so often to keep whatever is interested interested while slowly priming your peg while waiting for the sudden boom of fish to arrive between 1 & 5 PM.


So, It's about 1 PM and I start to focus more on my mainline and immediately hit into a very subtle bite which turns out to be my second skimmer, This becomes a running thing where I just eventually start to strike at every bite / touch I get because the fish are so slow and docile that it's impossible to get a 'real take'. I jump back in and within 15 minutes I've got myself a bream which unfortunately surfaces than pings as I'm about to net it. I go in again and I get a short flurry of Roach all while very slowly feeding the odd pinch of maggots and those ping pong balls of groundbait. So by this point I'm pretty happy with how the days going considering nobody else on the pond has had anything at all, But it gets better, For the next 2 or so hours I sit in my main line catching bream after bream. By 4 PM I'd broken into an emergency bag of groundbait, foul hooked and lost a Carp (Thanks for the scale!), had a decent sized bag of silvers and at least 7 Bream / Skimmers. The weather was starting to draw, It was starting to darken and my line was all but exhausted at this point so I'd decided to pack up with the rest of the fellas and head home.

Overall, a much needed day on the bank that I really enjoyed. Just wish keepnets were allowed on pleasure sessions because I think it'd have been an impressive bag for that pond.

Only a few things I think I could've changed today which would have benefitted me;

- 4-6 Elastic instead of 6-9. I bumped quite a few fish today, And lost a few more while breaking up my pole. I usually fish 6-9 all year round for silvers / bream with a lot of success but it just didn't feel right today. The fish were just too docile and I think with a little more give I could've landed more fish.
- Should've took the time to set up that second line properly with a standalone kit. Once the fish came onto my main line I exhausted it pretty quickly with no back up, If this would've happened sooner I'd have been F'd.
- Should've used a yellow bristle instead of orange.
- Stop laying in.
- Stop the excessive chatting on the bank allowing the next peg over to literally walk into and steal your groundbait from your peg without asking

Heres a picture of one of todays catches, It's not the biggest one I caught.. promise!

Hope everybody had a great Christmas,

Connor

 

[robert d]

I haven't done one of these in a whiles now, So bare with.

Last week I went onto a local selling page and found a lady selling a nice rod bag, Now I'm not a massive fan of Guru in general but I do rate some of their protective luggage as well as their hook range. Upon messaging her for the rod bag I'd looked on other listings she had for sale and saw she had a 'basically new' MAP TKS 201 3G Pole. She reckons it'd been used once and some of the sections were brand new. Now, I'm skeptical.. And I didn't need a new pole, but I love MAP Poles and it's always been a dream of mine to own one. I inquired about it, Moreso out of curiosity and told her I'm interested but also not interested. She told me she'd let me take a look when she brings the bag to my local pond, And I told her that I have a friend who'd also be down there who might take a gander at it as he's on the market for a new Pole. Well, Tomorrow came and after a 15 minute visual inspection followed by a test brushing sections down with baby wipes what she said checked out, And the dolly butt was indeed still in the original sealed packaging. I simply couldn't resist and I now own a new MAP TKS 201 3G 13.5M Pole with 4 Top two's which all came elasticated with Hydro which I intend on replacing (Done 2 so far). I'm also £350.00 poorer. If I didn't take it, My friend would've at the end of the day.

Now, The weathers been rubbish ever since so I haven't been wanting to immediately take it out in horrible rain and wind so I've sat about waiting for a good day. Yesterday night I took a look at the weather for the morning and saw it was cold but not wet and decided to have a go. Made up some groundbait, I set an alarm for 7:30 AM And had an early night.. 2 AM.

Alarm pops off at exactly 7:30, I wake up and decide Ill have another 5 minutes lay in before I get ready and be on my way. I wake back up at 9:30 AM. Because of this I decide that theres absolutely no reason for me to take all my gear as by the time I'm set up, I'll only have about an hour to fish due to my somewhat excessive lay in. I decided I'd only take me rod bag, box, bucket loop, bait and net to get out as quick as possible, followed by a quick set up on only one line instead of two or three and hopefully I'd be fishing by 10 AM.

So I've finally arrived. Got everything set up by 10:30 after a lot of chatting and setting up the fella beside me who's not so with it on pole fishing.

---------------------------------------------------------------
Target ; Silvers.

Rig ; F1 Maggot Float, 3lb to 2lb HLength followed by a size 20 hook and Mavers 6-9 Hollow Elastic.

I'm fishing one single line 12M in front of me. 7ft deep, About 6M left of some Lillypads however after a bit of a mess around with a plummet I managed to find a relatively nice area a about 7 metres to the left of my main line which I can fish with the same rig, unfortunately it's about 2 inches too deep but still decide I'll feed that as a throwaway line but feed very, very minimal amounts of bait. I would usually have one or two more rigs set up in different places but simply don't have the time nor do I want to put the effort in today.

I start off with 2 medium balls of groundbait on my mainline, And a single ball on my throwaway. Both balls are accompanied by 3 or so maggots in each ball. I always like to start off in this pond with maggot and always refrain from both feeding and using pellet if I don't need to. I find that as soon as I introduce pellet as feed or on the hook it'll completely turn them off maggots or other baits. Only under dire circumstances will I start to feed and fish pellet, The reason being the fish in here can be very finnicky and I simply do not want the hassle of having to ship my pole back and forth because my pellet is gone. The fence around the lake is only a few metres behind me so I have to break my pole up into 2 before I'm on my top kit. This can become incredibly annoying when small fish are causing you to lose pellets over and over again. You're probably now thinking 'Use banded pellets', But this year has been a serious struggle for any hard pellets and you catch very little to nothing on anything other than expander.

So, For the first 1 or 2 hours things are slow, but steady. I'm constantly switching between both lines. Funnily enough, I'm having way better luck on the 'throwaway line' to kick things off so I focus a bit more on that line changing absolutely nothing fishing like a fool, a solid 2 inches over depth during the winter while I prime my main line hopefully giving any fish the confidence to stick around and feed. I'm getting the odd roach here and there followed by a skimmer but things are tough, This pond is hard even during the summer months so the winters can be absolute hell. This however is very normal and to be expected from my particular experience with this pond so I'm not overly worried at this point. I find the fish usually have a good feed early in the morning, Say from 6-9 AM and then after that they start to turn off and by 12 you really struggle to get anything at all so I find the best approach is to feed very minimal amounts, Golfball sizes of firmly packed GB followed by a small amount of maggots every so often to keep whatever is interested interested while slowly priming your peg while waiting for the sudden boom of fish to arrive between 1 & 5 PM.


So, It's about 1 PM and I start to focus more on my mainline and immediately hit into a very subtle bite which turns out to be my second skimmer, This becomes a running thing where I just eventually start to strike at every bite / touch I get because the fish are so slow and docile that it's impossible to get a 'real take'. I jump back in and within 15 minutes I've got myself a bream which unfortunately surfaces than pings as I'm about to net it. I go in again and I get a short flurry of Roach all while very slowly feeding the odd pinch of maggots and those ping pong balls of groundbait. So by this point I'm pretty happy with how the days going considering nobody else on the pond has had anything at all, But it gets better, For the next 2 or so hours I sit in my main line catching bream after bream. By 4 PM I'd broken into an emergency bag of groundbait, foul hooked and lost a Carp (Thanks for the scale!), had a decent sized bag of silvers and at least 7 Bream / Skimmers. The weather was starting to draw, It was starting to darken and my line was all but exhausted at this point so I'd decided to pack up with the rest of the fellas and head home.

Overall, a much needed day on the bank that I really enjoyed. Just wish keepnets were allowed on pleasure sessions because I think it'd have been an impressive bag for that pond.

Only a few things I think I could've changed today which would have benefitted me;

- 4-6 Elastic instead of 6-9. I bumped quite a few fish today, And lost a few more while breaking up my pole. I usually fish 6-9 all year round for silvers / bream with a lot of success but it just didn't feel right today. The fish were just too docile and I think with a little more give I could've landed more fish.
- Should've took the time to set up that second line properly with a standalone kit. Once the fish came onto my main line I exhausted it pretty quickly with no back up, If this would've happened sooner I'd have been F'd.
- Should've used a yellow bristle instead of orange.
- Stop laying in.
- Stop the excessive chatting on the bank allowing the next peg over to literally walk into and steal your groundbait from your peg without asking

Heres a picture of one of todays catches, It's not the biggest one I caught.. promise!

Hope everybody had a great Christmas,

Connor

Great write up and a great days fishing . There are many things you could have done differently with hind sight but we dont have that until its to late. You could try having a few topkits with the elastic you chose on the day and a few with lighter elastics and lighter hook lengths . Sometimes a larger hook like a light gauge 16 or 18 works better and you hook them better but what im getting at is its trial and error on the day . Another thing i see often is elastics not tensioned properly ,they should just return into the topkit unless fishing to nasty snags. Its no good fishing a light elastic if its tensioned way to tight because it is no longer a light elastic . You had a lovely day out ,just experiment s little and fine tune your elastics and rigs and try and better yourself next time out .

 

[RedRidingHood]

Great write up and a great days fishing . There are many things you could have done differently with hind sight but we dont have that until its to late. You could try having a few topkits with the elastic you chose on the day and a few with lighter elastics and lighter hook lengths . Sometimes a larger hook like a light gauge 16 or 18 works better and you hook them better but what im getting at is its trial and error on the day . Another thing i see often is elastics not tensioned properly ,they should just return into the topkit unless fishing to nasty snags. Its no good fishing a light elastic if its tensioned way to tight because it is no longer a light elastic . You had a lovely day out ,just experiment s little and fine tune your elastics and rigs and try and better yourself next time out .

Unfortunately I've only got 5 kits total for the pole I'm using right now. 3 of which are Fighting Kits and I'm not wanting to put light elastics in them. I ordered two more from BobCo and one arrived damaged. I primary 6-9 so I put 6-9 in that one and i intended on putting the 4-6 in the one that broke which sucks. On plus side, BobCo have been pretty cool thus far and I should have one delivered after the new year. I like to think my elastics are all perfectly balanced in the pole... I just dont know mate, something was amiss today I could feel it, I could be wrong about an even lighter elastic being more efficient. I might head out again Wednesday and I might give the 4-6 a shot in one of the kits..... but yes mate it's always trial and error on the day unfortunately and one day is never the same as the next either! I think half of my problem is just being lazy though cheers Robert

 

[robert d]

Unfortunately I've only got 5 kits total for the pole I'm using right now. 3 of which are Fighting Kits and I'm not wanting to put light elastics in them. I ordered two more from BobCo and one arrived damaged. I primary 6-9 so I put 6-9 in that one and i intended on putting the 4-6 in the one that broke which sucks. On plus side, BobCo have been pretty cool thus far and I should have one delivered after the new year. I like to think my elastics are all perfectly balanced in the pole... I just dont know mate, something was amiss today I could feel it, I could be wrong about an even lighter elastic being more efficient. I might head out again Wednesday and I might give the 4-6 a shot in one of the kits..... but yes mate it's always trial and error on the day unfortunately and one day is never the same as the next either! I think half of my problem is just being lazy though cheers Robert

Try your 6_9 in your hand and check its running very free. I pull the elastic out quite far and dip it in the water first ,some people like to use a lubricant which also can help ,one is made with hair conditioner and water ,about a quarter conditioner to water . Its not an overly powerful elastic ,the other thing is keep a tight line and be smooth when shipping your catch back. It could also be the bumped fish were not hooked properly . Good luck next time out

 

[RedRidingHood]

Try your 6_9 in your hand and check its running very free. I pull the elastic out quite far and dip it in the water first ,some people like to use a lubricant which also can help ,one is made with hair conditioner and water ,about a quarter conditioner to water . Its not an overly powerful elastic ,the other thing is keep a tight line and be smooth when shipping your catch back. It could also be the bumped fish were not hooked properly . Good luck next time out

I lubricated it today with some old Avanti lubricant a friend had.. Seemed fine. I also use the hair conditioner regularly to lube my top two's.
I'm always trying to keep a tight line when I'm shipping and upon breaking sections apart I'm lifting the pole slightly to deal with any excess slack on the break. For the most part, I'm not losing fish but it can be frustrating when the fishing is slow and you lose fish due to this. The fence behind us is so frustrating to deal with.. But we can only work around it as best as possible. As for bumped fish, It wasn't a massive amount.. I've just had a lot less in past sessions

 

[robert d]

I lubricated it today with some old Avanti lubricant a friend had.. Seemed fine. I also use the hair conditioner regularly to lube my top two's.
I'm always trying to keep a tight line when I'm shipping and upon breaking sections apart I'm lifting the pole slightly to deal with any excess slack on the break. For the most part, I'm not losing fish but it can be frustrating when the fishing is slow and you lose fish due to this. The fence behind us is so frustrating to deal with.. But we can only work around it as best as possible. As for bumped fish, It wasn't a massive amount.. I've just had a lot less in past sessions

You get days like that . One last idea check the sharpness of your hook . Guru kaizen hooks are very good and b911 hooks

 

[RedRidingHood]

You get days like that . One last idea check the sharpness of your hook . Guru kaizen hooks are very good and b911 hooks

Surprisingly, That's one thing I didn't check out today I usually change my hook 2-3 times a session but didn't do it once today! Also a massive fan of the Kaizans and who doesn't like B911's mate? Also been using a lot of the F1 Maggots also. Not highly rated so I've heard but I like them a lot!

Edit; Today I used Maver MT1's.

 

[R0B]

That is one massive spray bar you've got there.

 

[RedRidingHood]

That is one massive spray bar you've got there.

It's usually Guru Orange but the weather's taken its toll on it as of late

 

[The Landlord]

Nice write up, Connor. Seems a good deal on the pole as well.

 

[RedRidingHood]

Nice write up, Connor. Seems a good deal on the pole as well.

Thanks mate. Really happy with it!