Nearly A New Fishing Venue, but no.

Mid-March, warmer than of late, dry with the sun shining.

Having joined the Glamorgan Anglers Club, (GAC). I loaded the car on a Tuesday and set off for a local pond called Seven Oaks, not far from home. Confronted with a sign on the gate “Closed until further notice,” I sat and wondered what to do and where to go. To be fair to my new club, I have only just started to receive emails from them about ponds, so it is highly possible that this pond was closed prior to me joining and others already knew.

I ended up at Dragonfly Pond at Tri-Nant, an old faithful venue and somewhere just a few miles from where I was originally sat in the car at the gate. Talking to John, the fishery owner, on arrival, he said he was shocked that the sun was out and he had only three anglers on the whole area of ponds. I drove passed two anglers on Dragonfly and headed for my favoured end peg and started setting up but was slightly upset that I had no keepnet with me because they are not allowed at GAC venues, so I didn’t bring one.

I fished three swims, all directly out in front, the full ten metres, top kit and two sections, and top kit and one section, feeding each with a mixture of groundbait (dark and also red, mixed), some very lively maggots (white and red from Garry Evans in Cardiff), and sweetcorn soaked as usual in salted caramel, all in the larger of my pole cups.

The maggots were so lively that I wanted to use them on the hook and soon found that they were a huge attractant to small roach. Although I was fishing (at ten metres out) at a depth of around two metres, with a bulk and two droppers, I was still getting small roach and heard the other two anglers (the one nearest me on a pole, the other one rod and waggler), discussing the fact that the small roach were taking their maggot baits on the way down through the water column.

I’ve been in this situation many times and switched to corn on the hook in all three swims, and the top kit plus one section immediately produced a one-pound bream followed by his big brother at around two pound. Hoping I was into a shoal of bream that would take anything, I swapped the top kit plus one line back to maggot but this produced a small roach and a small skimmer.

Back to corn on the hook it was, and a two-pound bream immediately came out, I abandoned all other lines and kept to the top kit and one, flicking my bait and float out, whip style, to just beyond my loose feed (maggot and corn by hand) letting it slowly drift down into the loose feed or slightly beyond it. This produced what felt like something with a bit of fight against my six to eight elastic but turned out to be another bream of just over two pounds. None of these bream were weighed, but a two pounder is pretty standard for this pond and with a PB of four pound twelve ounces, from the nearby Mallard Pond, a two pounder, or thereabouts, is not worth getting the weighing sling covered in slime for.

It was at this point that my next-door neighbour came from his peg for a chat and announced that if we had been in a match, I would have been smashing it with all the weight builders I had coming in. He saw my maggots in my fine sieve (to remove the maize flour and drop the flour into my groundbait bowl) and asked me if I was using maggots on the hook, because he was and so was the other angler, and although they’d caught one or two bream between them, most of their two keepnets were stocked with small roach. I explained about the sweetcorn, offered him a tin because I had plenty, but he had some in his van and started using it.

“Two in two chucks,” he shouted to me as I was launching into my swim something to hopefully keep the bream in front of me. Apparently, mention of a match had done something to my blood and I wanted fish to stay with me. My fine sieve full of maggots sits on top of my bowl of groundbait, in case any escape, which they do. Luckily my riddled groundbait was damp enough to clump up in a ball and when I scooped it up, a number of escaped maggots came up with it. Two balls went into my swim with a loud splash, and this produced two bream of around two pounds each, followed by a roach of around twelve ounces that thought he was much bigger and fought to stay out of the landing net.

My neighbour shouted over to me again, “This isn’t a bream,” and as I looked in his direction, I could see his pole elastic stretching way out into the pond. I shipped in immediately, went to him, offered my large landing net, but he said his normal landing net would do. “The trouble is,” he told me “I only have two-pound line to my hook-length so I can’t bully him.” After many sights of the landing net, the common carp decided he didn’t like the looks of it and set off again across the pond. Eventually though he was netted and we agreed he looked around fourteen to fifteen pounds but the angler didn’t want him weighed, and put him straight back in the water. As a side note here, keepnets are allowed on this pond, but if you expect to catch carp then two nets are needed, one for silvers, one for carp. Anyway, a fifteen pounder deserves not to be kept in a net.

Anything over fourteen pounds would have been a PB for me and I was maybe either jealous, or possibly regretting talking about corn as an effective bait. This was a pleasure fishing experience though and we should, I guess, all help each other out.

Whether it was because of the commotion of the carp or not, things went a bit dead after that. Another bomb of groundbait and maggots into my swim did produce, eventually, another three bream of around two pounds and then my fellow anglers started packing up into their vans and eventually left.

I sat alone with the pond to myself and felt that I’d had a good day’s fishing and sort of wanted to leave as the sun went behind low horizon cloud and it started to get chilly, but the stupid need of a carp to fight kept me there for another half-hour in which a bream, of yes, around two pound, came out.

As I drove home, thinking and reflecting, I decided that I’d caught something like twenty pounds of fish, double that of my previous visit to Dragonfly Pond, and had enjoyed myself. The only thing I would do different next time I go fishing anywhere, is to take a keepnet so that if my venue suddenly changes to Dragonfly, I can reassure myself that I’m not catching the same bream over and over again.

At home, planning was carried out. The next GAC pond on my list was Treoes which is further away than Tri-Nant, but not as far as Hazel Court. I have no idea how it will fish, or even whether it is fishable using a pole, but there is always something exciting about visiting a new venue and getting to know the vagaries of the pond. Studying the club website and the pond details that give average depths in feet, it would seem that the car-park-bank has depths going from either three to five or four to five, indicating a sloped bottom from the bank outwards. The far side of the pond however, is meant to be a steady four feet, so there is a chance of fishing three swims in front, with the pole, as today, possibly with the same rig. We shall see, so stay tuned.