I dragged Wil out of bed at seven in the morning with him complaining that he’d been up half the night creating models. He takes basic, fully-articulated models and by adding clay and cloth, turns them into characters to be used in his stop-motion videos. I think, once the character’s lives are over, they will probably all end up on Etsy or maybe they’ll be adapted into new characters. The videos, by the way, can all be seen on his YouTube channel where the most viewed is TMNTepisode3 and well worth a view.
Grabbing a drive-through breakfast we rolled up at Hazel Court at eight-thirty to find no cars parked anywhere. Debbie came out of the venue’s shop and told us that every peg was free, that she wasn’t expecting many to turn up, and the weather forecast wasn’t good. Our app had shown showers but nothing too bad. We parked up and with all pegs at our mercy, Wil chose a peg on the Pleasure Pond that we’d fished before, but the peg had now been upgraded. At the end of last October, we’d fished this peg, Wil catching carp between the margin and a bed of lily-pads, one on his first cast, me catching carp down my left-hand margin, and later that day, when skimmers had moved into the peg, we both caught at distance. As we set up today, we reminisced about that day. The peg was sloping mud down to the water’s edge back then, we were in wellies looking like Bambi on ice, and we’d both caught at the same time large bream out in the deep water just before leaving for home, netting them both in the same landing net. Now though the peg had been built up with timber piles driven into the bankside to stop erosion and soil filled in behind the piles to make the peg flat. All looked well for a good day’s fishing.
Having set up in the positions that we had done last October, a couple of minor problems appeared. The wind, slight as it was, was coming down from the direction of the venue shop, so if rain-showers came later then it too would be from that direction so we set the umbrella up with Wil snuggly inside it, and his three-station, alarmed, rod-pod in front of him. My station, to the left of all this, meant that I was looking at the back of the umbrella, I was isolated when any rain came, and could not easily get to one of the rods. Having to ship in and out a ten-metre pole is obviously impossible if you are under an umbrella that has sides to it and is pegged to the ground.
What this all meant was that, on a venue with a two-rod rule, in theory, Wil had two rods and I had my pole and one rod, but in practice, I had my pole and Wil would have to look after three rods, so it was down to him to load up and bait those rods while I put my pole and roller together. Wil, as usual, used a mould to add sticky pellets, introduced his banded pink wafter, added more sticky pellets, and forced his method feeder down onto the whole thing before releasing it and covering everything that came out of the mould in pink haze. After casting, he repeated this another twice until he had three rods in a fan shape and he could set his alarms, retreat to the brolly, and work on his stop-motions.
While all this was going on, I plumbed up one top kit to fish ten metres in front of me, using a marker on the far bank, which was the left side of a prominent bush, and plumbed up the other top kit to fish down the left-hand margin using a clump of bullrushes as a marker. Both lines were fishing two to three inches over depth and I was happy to move on.
First call was from Wil who had a small carp on but I hadn’t yet set up the large, triangular landing net. I shipped in, grabbed the smaller landing net, but by the time I got to him, the fish had shaken off the hook and Wil did not look happy with me.
We were then joined, on the opposite side of the lake, by a father and son team who pitched up a fishing tent and this started conversations from Wil and I again about a tent, camp beds, and fishing a twelve until twelve in the summer. That’s twelve noon until twelve noon the following day.
The rain started and I was sat in my Drifish dungarees, wellies and my Nash, camo, waterproof jacket with the hood up, so I was dry. The rain moved from slight to heavy and back to slight again and always feels worse when you can see the drops landing on the water in front of you. During this time, the father and son opposite us, despite making a semi-permanent camping site, wandered from the Pleasure Pond to the Specimen Pond and then to the Reed Pond and back again, both using wagglers.
To sum up my fishing for the day, I missed three bites and didn’t land a fish and wondered if a size twelve hook was too big. (last week I had decided bit baits and big hooks for big fish but less bites.) My baits were all banded and consisted of eight-millimetre or six-millimetre dry pellets, an eight-millimetre pink wafter, a fifteen-millimetre pink wafter, and all these used on both top kits in both swims. Cupping alternated between micro-pellets soaked in fish oil, a groundbait mixture of brown and green coloured powders, and some combinations of the two. Not one fish was landed on any combination.
Wil however had an alarm sound on his middle rod and struck into a lively fish that was obviously not a bream. By now, I had the larger landing net prepared with its longer handle but struggled to get anywhere near the fish that kept on coming near the net and then stripping off Wil’s line against the drag. Eventually netted he turned out to be a golden coloured common carp. Not a goldfish cross, as such but looking like a common carp with a yellowish-gold appearance all over. At around four pound he wasn’t weighed so he was let go from the landing net after a quick photo.
The weather changed around mid-day, as the wind dropped and the pond looked like a mirror. Indications of fish became clearer with bubbles forming on the surface from presumably where carp were grubbing about on the deck but all bubbles seen were out of the range of my pole, or even someone else’s longer pole. Occasionally a light shower would show drops peppering the surface of the water but nothing drastic was going on. Then at three o’clock, the pond lit up brightly as if it was an ice rink. The shock of seeing this was soon shaken off when thunder sounded, only seconds later. The heavens opened and we were getting soaked. We had to pack up and do it quickly.
The rain was so heavy that Wil and I had to shout to each other to be heard. I shouted, “After the next lightning flash, I’ll get the rods in, because I’ve already had my life and yours is yet to come. The worst place you could be in a thunder storm is on an open lake with a rod in your hands.” Wil seemed to accept this without question as I shipped in his three rods and lay them on the ground, and he slipped them into their cases without lifting them up.
My carbon fibre pole was another matter and with it all being soaking wet I had to remove lines from the top kits, get the top kits into their tubes, and straight after a flash of lightning, take down the other four sections of pole without waving the whole thing in the air. Drying this lot off would have to wait until the next day.
The multiple travels back to the car with all the gear seemed to take longer than when we’d taken everything to the bankside but eventually everything was thrown into the back of the car with the rear seats folded down, but in no particular order, we were sat in the car with rubber tyres between us and the ground, and with the engine started we put the heater up to full and the seat warmers on maximum in order to try and dry out a bit.
The drive home was horrendous. With us being wet and all the gear being wet, the windscreen wanted to constantly mist up and the blowers on the heater, with air-con chosen, was only just coping. Added to this was the fact that the country lanes that we had to navigate were full of deep puddles in the edges making driving conditions difficult. For some reason, I’ve observed over many years, when driving conditions are horrible, other people drive quickly to get home quicker.
On arriving home, stripping off, and putting dry clothes on, we found that no bad weather had been experienced locally. Ten minutes later it happened and everyone at home could sympathise with what we’d gone through.
We always finish our day with learnings for the following week. The fishing had been pretty bad for us and non-existent for the father and son, and we wondered if the fish had known (through maybe a distinct change in pressure) that the thunder storm was approaching? Or, after what felt like two weeks of gradually rising temperatures, taking us to around twenty Celsius, had the sudden halving of that heat down to ten turned the fish off feeding?
Two of the rods, the twelve foot feeder rods with ounce-and-a-half-tips, had snapped at the last eye of the tip. I would have to get these rods in from the garage and cut off the tip down to the next eye and bend that eye out to be a top eye. At least that was the theory.
Wil and I had a discussion about him going back to two rods and me having the third one, after repair, as a waggler rod, set up ready for if bubbles showed on the pond but further away than my pole could reach. I couldn’t fish both at the same time but could have on my makeshift rack, my spare top-kit and the waggler rod, both baited and ready to go if needed.
One more idea, not necessary but a thought for later in the year, was for another top kit for the pole, keeping one for short fishing in front of me, one for the margins, and the third new top kit for dobbing with bread in the hot summer days to come. Maybe getting a cold soaking makes you dream of mid-summer.