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Week 7
Cast of the WeekWeek beginning 5th May 2008. What a week! What a scorcher! What a brilliant choice of dates for a Casting for Gold get together. In all, we fished three of our favourite estate lakes and caught some wondrous fish – wild carp in particular. Bream and tench also figured and some long, lean, evidently spawned-out pike. The waters were generally very clear and, in the bright sunlight, not too easy to fish. Our findings might be of interest. All the fish were highly mobile. This is almost certainly because in the hot weather spawning was imminent. The carp, especially, were showing pre-spawning activity, moving quickly in groups obviously agitated, obviously with thoughts other than feeding on their mind. We hasten to add that because of this we tended to target other species and when carp did come along, to release them virtually at once in the water. Baits and presentations were very important. Small baits were a must. Though larger baits – meat, bread and lobworms were tried – the only fish to fall came on corn, seeds and, especially, maggots. Red maggots proved particularly useful. In the clear water, it was quickly apparent that fish were seeing the line slice down to the terminal tackle. Whether from a float or when using a feeder, the fish invariably kept away from the line that they could see. For this reason, some split shot up the line to keep it on the bottom proved very important. Back-leading of a sort, if you like. Small hooks and comparatively light lines brought far more bites than big, heavy hooks and thick hook lengths. That, of course, you’d expect. The key is, unsurprisingly, to find a compromise, to strike the right balance. There is absolutely no point in putting a tiny hook on gossamer line into a big fish that’s immediately going to break you. We tended to find that hook lengths of around four to five pounds and hook sizes of fourteen and sixteen were about right. One of the great benefits of modern rod technology is that you can play big fish on relatively light gear with little chance of a breakage. Providing, of course, that there is not too much in the way of snags. This next point we found vital! The use of buoyant, artificial imitations – both plastic red maggots and pieces of polystyrene corn. Quite obviously, we used these to counterbalance the weight of the hook. Tench, especially, browse just above a bed of bait. They don’t so much go down and pick food up with their lips as simply suck it into their mouths from an inch or two above the bottom. If a bait has a heavy hook in it, it simply does not rise into the fish’s mouth. By adding pieces of buoyant imitations to the rig, the weight of the hook is pretty well negated. A bait can then rise unimpeded into the fish’s mouth. It’s rather like hair-rigging without the fiddle. What did become apparent was that ‘real’ bait was not needed at all. The most successful sessions, for example, were when two imitation pieces of corn were used on a size fourteen hook. No real corn was needed at all. It was evident that the two pieces popped the hook off the bed completely. A small shot two inches above the hook anchored it in position, floating tantalisingly when the fish wafted past. It takes a certain amount of bravery to fish artificial plastics alone but, believe us, the fish are not fussy. Again and again, the artificial totally out-fished the real thing. So what days they were. Great fun. Gorgeous locations. Fantastic weather. Brilliant fish. Lessons learnt. Friendships reinforced. Casting for Gold in a short paragraph, if you like! |