Catch – 28 Bream.
Weather – Drizzle to start. Became brighter with sunny periods. Moderate breeze
Water temp – 18.5c > 19.0c
Working in financial services has meant the current credit crunch has had its effect on me. I had planned to fish Tony Rixons Float Only League, however pressure at work and worry about money, meant fishing took a bit of a back seat.
Fortunately I survived the company restructure and redundancies. In fact, the future is looking quite optimistic, but time will tell.
As for the fishing, not fishing a league competition meant I had some spare time to fish other venues. To be honest I really wanted to fish the Lands End open today, however I am still waiting for a replacement section for my pole and since Lands End is pole venue with islands at 16m, I decided to give it a miss. So why Silverlands? I was really impressed with the place following my trip with Mark a few weeks ago and I might not get another chance for while due to match commitments from July onwards.
My intention was to fish the waggler and use the feeder/lead as back up. My objective was to catch some of the big bream. It was another early start and at 5am 14 balls of groundbait, micro pellet and sweetcorn went in at 25m. Whilst I let that settle I set up the rest of my kit and got myself comfortable.
I started on the waggler, but I was soon fishing more and more overdepth to counteract the effects of the tow. I managed 1 Bream of the float, but I wasn’t happy with the presentation.
Reluctantly I picked up my tip rod and cast a leger rig out with double hair rigged corn. Blow me if the rod wasn’t nearly pulled into the lake after 5mins, but after 90mins I’ve only got 2 fish. I had been catapulting 4mm expanders over the top of the feed area, but I needed a rethink. I had 2 choices, either throw in more balls of groundbait or switch to the feeder. I settled on the feeder.
I started to catch, but only sporadically and after an hour, the swim seemed to die completely and I thought the session was going to peter out, with only 25/30lb in the net
I switched back to feeder after a brief spell on the waggler and decided to catapult 2 pouches of 4mm every other cast and this seemed to kick start the session with a fish nearly ever cast. I kept chopping and changing hooklengths and bait. I settled on a short hooklength with double hair rigged corn and a longer hooklength with double or triple red maggot and single grain of corn. All of sudden I was thinking about breaking my silver fish record of 67lb. When I passed that target, a silverfish ton was a possibility and the fish were still coming.
When I am catching big fish, I weigh the fish as I go along, simply because its easier than trying to weigh a big net of fish unaided and it was better for the fish.
I was nearly at the point of packing up, but I needed 1 more fish to be certain of the ton. That last fish took 20 mins to catch and I was 2mins (honestly) away from packing up. The last fish weighed 3-11. My total weight was 103-10.
What an excellent days fishing. I worked hard to get the right presentation and continually changed the hooklength and/or bait to keep the fish coming. The irony of the session was I nearly didn’t bring any sweetcorn. Having been previously told that maggot was the bait, which highlights the need to be open minded. Of the 28 bream caught, 18 were on sweetcorn, the biggest being 5lb 1oz and 13 were over 4lb.
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