After a multitude of reasons conspiring to keep me off the bank I was at last able to make my first outing of the year.
The ice that had affected a lot of northern lakes had melted and the mercury above freezing and a day at The Oaks in North Yorkshire was my choice.
Id planned to fish for a bit of everything and anything on one of the 3 snake lakes on site, probably F1s (if they would play ball) but also skimmers and possibly Ide. However on arrival at the tackle shop I was informed these lakes had been rock hard, with good weights possible if you hit lucky and were on fish. If not there was real chances of a blank. The recommended method was to dob bread around the swim without feeding - a method that wouldnt rank highly on my list of preferred methods. I consider myself to be an active angler and really like to make something happen. The other alternative was fishing for roach on Willows (the specimen lake). I'd always prefer to fish with bites so decided to go for the roach and leave carp and F1s for another time.
Willows lake is a few acres and has a few small islands centrally. There were about 3 carp boys bivvied up on the left side of the lake and one on my immediate left fishing 2 rods. He wasnt in a bivvy but was actually parked behind his rods sitting in his car (!).
My peg was at the rhs of an island about 30m away but the pole was my only choice out of the holdall. As I tend to fish "standard" commercials most of my pole rigs are for 4-6' deep, so I was surprised to see 7-8' at from the bottom of the near shelf in front of me; perhaps not a bad thing at this time of year. The bottom was relatively flat and the lake still had a good bit of colour so along with a bit of advice from the shop I picked 3 options.
At 6 sections to my left I would feed pinkies in case the fish would settle close in. This was just about as far as I could get to throwing by hand but was fortunate that the wind was pretty much none existent. My expected main line was straight out at 11m. Here I fed 2 tangerine-sized balls of Sensas Lake Black with a few micros and maggots. At 45° to the right on the same length of pole I cupped in some finely chopped worm and caster with the intention of leaving this for a few hours before looking for some bonus roach or perch, then threw in about 10 pinkies to the short pole line every 5 mins. I also toyed with the thought of a feeder next to the island. However if this was to be a roach day I'd much prefer to catch on a float rather than the tip so didnt even rig this up.
Rig wise I was a bit undergunned for the depth. However the lack of wind and tow meant the .30/.40G Floats I used were fine for and stability wasn't a problem. I'm a great believer in fining down so had my 2 main rigs on .105 mainline to .08/.09 hooklengths with ES43 hooks. I had an DT Winter Wire for the pinkie swim for extra sensitivity and a DT Pencil dotted down on the 11m swim. For the worm swim I opted for a DT Tear so I had the option of laying some line on the deck if I wanted and could read the bristle a bit more.
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| DT Winter Wire |
I started with double pinkies short and had a few roach of about 1oz but quite slow. After 30 mins I went over the long line and had a few more slightly bigger fish on maggot before that line went quiet 2. By swapping lines I could catch a few but the bites were very slight dips on the float. It was a nice change catching these lovely fish on light elastics and every now and then I'd pick up a slightly better dumpy roach but despite playing with the shotting pattern and trying shallower rigs, every bite came with the rig set at full depth and after at least 20 seconds after settling. Every now and then I'd have a quiet spell of 10-20 mins, on the first occasion I gambled by refeeding a golf ball size of groundbait but this didnt seem to bring the fish back until they were ready, as the pinkie swim had gone quiet as well.
I did try the chopped worm line varying between small pieces of worm and caster but it was very sporadic - although id did lead to my 2 biggest roach about 6oz each.
Trying a larger piece of worm didnt get a touch and apart from 2 micro perch it just didn't work today for the bigger stripeys.
By now the carp boys had gone and after a longer quiet spell the fish seemed to switch on. It was never hectic but I made the most of the time coming back with a fish most drops. It seemed best to feed every 5 mins with about a dozen maggots by catapult, then using a kinder pot dropping half this amount again directly onto the float.
One thing about The Oaks is the resident bird life have the anglers' sussed out and after feeding my namesake (a Robin) for some time, a Wren joined me for about 1.5 hours and must have scoffed its own body weight in maggots and pinkies ! If I stopped feeding it for long it would jump around between my net bag and holdall until it caught my attention. ...very cheeky.
I finished the session with about 7-8lbs of roach, with the 2 6oz fish the biggest. All pristine fish that were fun to catch using the appropriate tackle and light elastics. All in all a thoroughly enjoyable day fishing for and catching something totally different from what I'd intended when I left home.
The new DT Floats were superb, particularly the Winter Wires which were the right tool for the day.
It was good to finally give these floats a practical test and they were as good as I'd hoped for. I will review them further in detail after a few more sessions.
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| DT Tears & Pencils |
I also found my Maver Enigma "Carp" pole also excellent for lifting into roach bites so IMO the carp moniker does it a disservice, possibly why its been left off the 2015 Enigmas.
To anyone who's taken time to read my ramblings, thank you. Hopefully we can meet on the bank someday.
Tight Lines
Robin
