Weight – 38lb 5oz
Catch – 13 Fantails, 11 Crucians, 9 Carp, 4 Bream, 3 Roach.
Weather – Sunny start, became increasingly blustery with odd showers
Water temp – 18.5c > 20.0c
I decided to visit Bullocks Farm, with the intention of practising for a forth coming club match next weekend.
Bullocks Farm is a small venue with 5 lakes. Although most would consider it to be a pole venue, many pegs don’t offer much room behind, which means breaking down the pole 2 or 3 times. Today I was on the match lake and I settled on peg 25, which is situated on the island. The swim offered some protection from the forecast wind & rain, but it was also a peg I had never fished before.
Bullocks is 1 of those venues I personally find difficult to fish without a practice session prior to a match. The lake is not a big weight venue, but should offer plenty of bites from fantails and crucians. There are also carp to over 10lb, although in recent years there are many more carp in the 1lb to 3lb bracket.
The normal approach is to set up an open water swim for the crucians and fantails and then fish for the carp in the margins. Typically you need to fish reasonably light for the crucians & fantails and as such I set up a drennan roach 4x12 float, with .11 bottom and an 18 B911. The margin rig was a big H 4x10, .17 line straight though to a 12 carp feeder hook, fishing paste.
The session started in frustrating manner. I concentrated on the reed bed to my left, but the fish when hooked were driving straight into them. Stepping up to .19 line didn’t improve matters either. At 1 point I even got into a boat, to recover a snagged rig and to do a bit of swim clearing!
Even my open water swim was proving frustrating, with lost carp and struggling for bites. The last time I fished here feeding micro pellet & caster proved successful, because I was able to catch roach in amongst the fantails & crucians to keep the weight building, but that was last October. I couldn’t get to the tackle shop in time to buy some caster, so I was relying on still feeding micro pellet, but this time with 4mm expanders. After my early fish loses, it became obvious the carp were prepared to feed in the open water swim, so I changed my hooklength up to .13 bottom & a 16 B911.
After 2 hours I had caught very little, mainly because I was determined to make the reed swim work. Time to concentrate on the open water swim. Earlier on I had initially fed a pot of pellet and then a tosspot over the top, but this lead to the fish rushing around and producing loads of liners. So 10 minutes before switching to the open water swim I potted a full pot of micro pellet & 4mm expanders. On the hook I used 6mm expanders, flavoured with strawberry or peeler crab (and it stinks).
I started to catch well, but I had to dot the float down to get confident bites from the fantails & crucians, although 1 small carp pulled the pole down, whilst I briefly looked away. As the session progressed I got into the rhythm of feeding a pot of pellet, fishing the feed out, then feeding another pot. But instead of fishing straight over, I would spend 5/10mins fishing for the carp. I did manage 2 carp from the reeds, but ended up ignoring it because I was wasting too much time. I had been feeding the right hand margin and a caught a few carp, but still managed to find a few snags from sunken tree roots.
At the final weigh in I managed 38lb 5oz, including 19lb of silver which was my 2nd best weight from this lake. After the poor start I was pleased with the end result and the practice session proved to be very useful.
Lessons learnt – its always difficult to assess a session when pleasure fishing and the weather meant not many anglers turned up, but I was happy that I sussed the open water swim, however based on past experience I think I will still set up a light rig for the open water, just in case the fishing becomes hard. If I drew this peg again I would probably dismiss the reed beds and concentrate mote on the right hand margin for carp.
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