4th July 2014 - Angel of The North..Lookout Lake

I'd decided to head back to The Angel for today. I wanted to get amongst some of their carp and also try a method I'd never fished before; the pellet waggler.

The forecast was for the day to be warm and overcast but with heavy rain moving in later. However the wind was strong and gusty which wouldn't be ideal. With this in mind I picked peg 1 on the island.

This peg is on the north-east end of the oblong-shaped island,   so would put the wind on my back and give some shelter hopefully as my last trip here had ended badly for my umbrella !

After setting up at my peg I had plenty of open water in front, although with the right side being out of the island's shelter it was pretty choppy and wind-battered. There was a very nice looking margin swim on the left under some bushes with 12-16" of water on top of the shelf.

After writing in this blog about needing to simplify my fishing I of course did the exact opposite and decided on a variety of approaches !

The pellet waggler was something I was determined to try so I set up a 4g middy float on 4.6lb mainline to a 0.14 hooklength and 16 B911  hook. I could comfortably feed 6mm fishery pellets at around 25-30m out and fish a banded 6 or 8mm hard pellet on the hook, fishing shallow in 5 feet of water.

I also decided to rig a bomb rod up with slightly heavier end tackle . I was going to catapult pellets regularly for a few hours before trying the waggler (unless I saw fish activity and I could try earlier) and felt the bomb could be useful on this line if they wanted it on the bottom, however this didn't give me any fish on the day for the little i tried it so I wont mention it anymore.

Bait wise I had 4mm pellets to supplement the 6mms and some micros that I would soak to make paste, something which worked well last summer. I also had dead and live maggots, some hemp and a variety of pastes and hooker pellets as alternatives.
For some reason I seem unable to use 1 groundbait and always combine a few; so I'd mixed a batch the night before from green swim stim, dynamite 50-50 and F1 black. This could be cupped in loose in the shallow margins, made into soft balls or even compressed into paste.

My main plan of attack would still be the pole. I set up 2 initial lines 1 at 6m at the base of the near shelf where I could feed by hand regularly after potting in a small amount of hemp and dead maggots.

I also wanted a long line but the wind was gusting strongly and swirling so I didnt want to take any chances with any breakages by fishing longer than necessary. As the depth was  pretty consistant from the base of the shelf I settled on 10m slightly to my left.

With this being open water I fed a bit heavier putting in a full pot of groundbait and a half a pot of hemp, 4mm pellets and dead maggots again.

I set up a few different rigs all on Nick Gilbert's excellent floats (my review to follow)  and Middy Lo-Viz /Matrix Power Micron lines. A 0.3g Gimp for 6m on .125 main to .105 hooklength with an 18 B911 F1 hook, a 0.4g decker  on .14 to .125 and the same hook in a 16 for 10m. On the same setup as the decker I had a .2g mini gimp in case the fish came shallow and finally a 0.2g mini-diamond on .165 Aspire to 0.14 hooklength and the very strong and sharp Maver CS23 for fishing bigger baits in the margins.

My plan had been to rotate the 6 and 10m swims before feeding the margin line later in the day. However after feeding there were already carp at my feed tails up. I quickly set up another rig and tried to mug an early carp but without any success.

So back to plan A. I started on the short line, and started catching small roach and ide and maggots. After 30 mins I rested this line and went onto the 10m swim, fishing a 4mm expander. With the wind playing havoc with presentation I fished a longer line to the float with a backshot but bar a nice 2lb mirror the fishing wasn't really any better than close in so I returned to 6m 

I'd fed the pellet waggler line over the last few hours so gave it a go. Soon I was into the pattern of feed, cast, feed again and getting some bites around 2 feet deep. These turned out to be, not from carp, but ide up to 1lb. It waa certainly a.nice experience getting back to a float rod (albeit quite a chunky one !) and obviously I'd just scratched the surface of this method. But it was enjoyable and a very active method of fishing, that I'll try again soon.

But now I was itching to get close in and catch some carp hopefully !

I'd dropped groundbait regularly in front of my platform and within a minute the fish were straight in. I wanted another option so as well as this swim I also fed 4 big pots of groundbait in the margin to my left. 

Leaving this line to settle I went back in front and I threw in some dead maggots and tried fishing a big bunch on the hook. I started catching a few  fish, carp between 3-6lbs. The fish always fight like mad here and today was no exception.  Some of the fish plodded around the swim whilst others took off and tried to get around the back of the island. Inevitably I lost a few and had a few foul hookers before catching  some perch. This prompted me to try paste,  which meant longer between fish and a host of liners but alternating between the 2 margin swims kept the fish coming.

Getting a bit carried away towards the end of the session I piled more bait in, trying to entice the bigger sized carp. Whilst this had the desired effect to a degree, it also pulled a load more fish into the swims and by the time I sussed it out I was getting more hook pulls, probably from foul hooked fish. I caught on all the paste I tried but the one made from the groundbait I was feeding seemed to bring the most positive response.

In the end I'd had a really enjoyable day. All my gear and myself were soaked but I'd had 25 carp between 2-7lbs and ide, roach, rudd, skimmers and perch. So a good 10lb of silvers and at least 70 lbs of carp. A great day's fishing and another real try out for the Maver Enigma which continues to impress me more and more.

Tight lines all

Robin

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