earning my stripes

Sunday afternoon was my only chance to wet a line this weekend, but even then that wasn't looking likely, with recent rain I wasn't sure if any grayling rivers would be fishable or not and with limited time it wasn't worth taking the risk to travel to them, tide times didn't suit for a flounder trip either so it would have to be some local coarse fishing or nothing at all. I thought about having a walk along the canal with the lrf gear to try for some perch but speaking to Col on the phone he told me the canal was quite coloured and not worth bothering with. I had resigned myself to the fact that I wasn't going to get out and then I had one more idea, there's a quarry five minutes up the road which always has good clarity, and I knew it had some Perch in it too as Col caught one from there last year when we were fishing for Tench, why not i thought ,it was worth a try anyway.
Soon I was tackling up at the quarry and I have to say my first thoughts were ones of anger and annoyance at the amount of litter and crap left by the boozed up neds who seem to frequent places like this, the usual empty beer tins, old fishing line and camp fires strewn all over the place, what is it with these idiots when they think this is acceptable behaviour... rant over. Anyway I set up with a small jig head and a Lake Fork baby shad and started to cover the swim in front of me,  after a few casts I connected with what turned out to be a lovely wee Perch

soon after i took another smaller one but any visions of a bumper catch were short lived as it then went dead, after a while i decided to move to another spot which wasn't as easy as it sounds what with the steep banking's and dense undergrowth.

the next spot produced another nice Perch, this time on a Lemon Meringue Crappie Minnr!

another couple of moves around the quarry resulted in a couple of micro jack Pike, all welcome though on a day which i didn't promise much hope

there's one or two other venues in the area that could be worth a try for perch, ill keep them up my sleeve for when i'm stuck on a day like today.

on coarse for the new year

Yesterday we went to Eliburn reservoir for a spot of coarse fishing to end the year, Col got of to a good start with a nice Ide

After a wee while with no further bites we decided to move to a deeper swim and  settled down for the afternoon. The fishing was very slow but we were entertained by a kingfisher on the opposite bank which was having more success than us by the look of it. if the fish weren't showing any interest in our maggots a cheeky wee Robin certainly was!

 he was well fed for the rest of the afternoon

Col changed his shotting so the hook bait was taking longer to reach the bottom, this seemed to work and we started to get a fish or two.

a wee Perch to save the blank for me

a good sized Roach for Col

a wee Bream

    







the beautiful Roach are my favourite silverfish

I hooked into something which felt quite big near the end of the afternoon, it was taking line from the reel and staying deep,  i never got a glimpse of it before the size 20 hook sprang back at me, never mind! 

All the best for the new year.



shiver me silvers

With cabin fever setting in and no fish in over a month i needed to get out fishing, the weather as usual was pretty miserable so a local reservoir for some coarse fishing seemed like the safest bet for the chance of a fish  . At my chosen swim i  set up with a loaded waggler with maggots for bait, introducing some free offerings every other cast to try and get the fish on the feed. An hour or so into the session my float still hadn't  registered a bite and to make matters worse it started raining heavily . I was shivering away feeling pretty uncomfortable when the float finely slide under and a wee perch was brought to hand



normally i would curse the pest wee perch but today i was so pleased to catch him, this spurred me on a bit and i forgot about how cold and miserable i was feeling, for a while anyway! i was beginning to get the odd bite and soon added a lovely roach to the catch











followed by a wee bream or bream hybrid of some sort?

 

i noticed an angler on the opposite bank from me catching the odd Ide and was hoping they would put in an appearance in my swim too,unfortunately it wasn't to be though, but Inbetween shivering away a few more of the above three were welcome captures before the end of play in the late afternoon.     



Perch Sessions

Brian phoned me asking me if i could make it down the pond , i had to baby sit, but shortly after i joined him, he was fishing away with his intermediate with a white fly with bead chain, whilst i set up with the floater. He was doing much better than i was getting far more bites , then he connected with this beauty! 

That was the best his  fish of the session as we finished up early as Brian was still to get his dinner.



Turns out i had a guilt free  opportunity to return to the pond tonight , armed with the intermediate and a few fresh tied clousers made of my dogs tail hair. The rain didnt seem far away with the sound of thunder in the distance, and sure enough it did arrive but nothing to serious.

A count down of 20 seconds seemed to get to the fishes level most were wee things.

 But i did manage a couple of better ones, still the big one eludes me.

Knocked off my Perch

I was watching Matt Hayes last night fishing Eyebrook reservoir catching some huge perch by spinning soft plastic lures , kind of got me in the mood for some stripy action. So i thought i'd try out my local wee pond this evening. I decided instead of the usual trout sized lures like wooly buggers etc, to give some saltwater sized flies a bash , i packed a few size 4 clousers and surf candies in white and a few in  black. I started off with the clousers but it was slow a change to a white surf candy seemed right up there street.

i then changed to a smaller surf candy and they came thick and fast but just wee fish , so i decided to go back to the size 4 , and then something much bigger took hold , this it felt totally differant then i saw it,  a huge perch, then it thrashed  and was gone arghhhhh!I reckon he might have gone 3lb.

About halve an hour later i did manage a nice'ish  fish a small consolation. i'll be back for him though!

Cats and Dogs

 I feel i should be making the most of evening fishing , but on all but a few occasions this season ive felt uninspired to do so, the reason being that it's just been too cold for evening  fly hatches. Well at long last the muggy conditions have arrived, so i left the house at 6pm to fish my local, which was still falling from a big spate , when i left there was light rain i didnt even bother about a jacket. 
as the water was big i put on a large klink and at the shallow head of the first pool i took four fish , the best the first at 1 1/4lb.

Ater that the rain came on and then a monsoon was upon me. I upped the fly size again put on a Longshank Stimulator , and still the fish came, i then tried a bugger but it didn't work and somewhere in the fly change i lost my stimulator so had to rake for another suitable fly, in the end i settled for a big thick winged dirty polly, and it took the bulk of my fish n the evening, eventually the rain subsided but i was soaked through and it was now cold . 

"pollied"

Before calling it a night i checked in on the pond to see if any fish activity , young Keiron had set up for the night after one of the elusive carp. Unfortunately i'd dropped my last wooly bugger so had to use a nymph , perch was the target , and they never let you down as small as they are. After a blether with Keiron, i made it home for 10:15pm.

Going off-coarse! 6th Jan

Into a Carp

I'm mainly a fly angler but now and again i do a little Coarse fishing and as the rivers were still high for doing our preffered grayling fishing  , Brian suggested it would be a good option . So it was off to Eliburn reservoir was fair looking forward too it, on the way we planned to get maggots, but the tackle shop at broxburn didnt open , so it was a drive into edinburgh to country life , after buying a few floats , hooks and the maggots , we eventually found ourselves setting up.Gradually the loose feeding began to kick in and we were into fish, first a perch each,

Perch

Ide

then an ide each ,then i lost a carp, infact i hooked two , lost both, in the session, mid way through the day the gudgeon joined the perch in the  feeding  spree,

Gudgeon

and even the roach put   in a appearance ,the ide put in a late appearace again.

A shocked looking roach

a fine way to spend a day.

On the Cut

As luck would have it i had the afternoon to myself. So i decided to go and See if the roach were up for it. It was a overcast day with occasional light showers and occasionally the sun would come out. The sun  is useful for spotting the shoals, the cloudier it gets the deeper the shoals seem to go.

Theres plenty perch amongst the shoals they behave exactly like the roach until the nymph is presented and on the retrieve they have a go.

Jack pike

I had plenty roach most took on the descent of the nymph missed a big one, in fact when a decent roach shoal came into view it was exciting these roach seem to take a nymph fairly confidently, i did manage to get a substantial roach plus a few good quality ones and a few wee ones. It's a very selective and effective way of fishing , cant wait to get up there again. Some pics:

wee fellae

fin perfect (looking at the anal fin looks like it has a bit of bream in it)

specimen roach

A wee handful