Tuesday, 30th.April
Paddlesworth, Burrows, ‘The Bush’
10.30Back down Burrows yet again to try out some rigs and presentations I have in mind for Pollard - The Big Girls’ lake.
I stopped by every peg in a leisurely barrow-push to see if I could see anything and eventually ended up in The Bowl at this peg from which I can view things a fair way up ‘The Arm’ to my right.
From my position in 'The Bush' peg I can see if there's anything moving both in 'The Bowl' and a fair way up the rest of the lake.
If anything moves there I shall be packed up and on it before you can say “Bream!” (No! Don’t say that word! That’s tantamount to using foul language!)
In effect, I’m ready to up-sticks and move to anywhere I see fish but for now I have two baits fishing The Bush.
If anything moves in 'The Bowl' I'll be able to see it from here.
Rig Development
I’m using the session to trial a couple of rig ideas which I think might be useful, both of which employ the buoyant, plastic corn. The first is the result of the process I invariably adopt when devising rigs for specific situations and it’s a three-stage process:
Type of Bottom
Both Burrows and Pollard are clay pits and the bottom is very soft, so much so that the lead sinks into it and comes back ‘dirty’ when you reel it in. You have to un-plug the lead to pull it out of the bottom. For this reason I have chosen Helicopter Rig arrangements setting the top bead a good six inches up; the bottom bead is an inch up from the buffer bead. This enables the hook-length to travel up the leader to a degree - enough so that when the lead ‘plugs-in’, the anti-tangle rubber on the rig is not sticking up vertically from the bottom.
What I want my rig to do
I want to present the buoyant corn with the point of the hook down, the corn anchored by it like this -
This acts like a Wafter Rig and takes next to nothing to suck in - which is important since the free offerings around it are very light.
I want a bit of suppleness in my hook-length to compensate for the undulations in the bottom, but flexibility at the hook end to both enable the corn to behave ‘naturally’ as well as allow the hook to rotate about its junction with the hook-length. I did consider stripped-back coated braid but the braid in these coated products is not nearly supple enough for me so I prefer to use ‘Korda Supernatural’ and Albright Knot it to the hook-length which in this case is 15lb. mono.
Two grains in harness with a size 4 Krank, the supple hair and a piece of silicon tube - do what I want it to.
The second rig I am trialling is in response to the Bream problem (No! Don’t say the ‘B’ word!) since ‘The Filth’ are bottom feeders there’s an inevitability about them picking up the Wafting Corn Rig; with this in mind I have a Chod Rig on the other rod and it is configured to sit about three-and-a-half inches off the bottom. Now I’m reckoning there’s a chance it may at least reduce the Bream problem (No! He said that word again!) But the issue is, will the carp still take it? They take pop-up boilies on Chod Rigs so why not corn? What may be a factor is that if they are picking up corn on the bottom, will they accept the corn off the bottom? Only one way to find out…
11.20
I see Method Feeder Man is out fishing today again. No sign of him emulating his exploits of last time yet. He seems to be having fun though, constantly heaving his giant balls out (What? Excuse me?) which land with a mighty “spa……doosh!” Oh hello, he’s having another go; that last cast didn’t apparently go quite right. He’s casting right across The Bowl and landing his balls (Method) right next to the underwater metalwork of which I have spoken previously.
No sign of carp anywhere yet. If they follow the same pattern as previous visits it’ll be late afternoon and evening and first thing in the mornings. I can wait…
12.00
Altered things a little on the Chod Rig. I have now added a four-inch boom so it is effectively a stiff hinge rig. My reason for this is I have never liked the Chod being so near the lead and I think in the past I have ‘bumped’ a lot of fish which have failed to hook themselves effectively. Adding a short boom just enables them to take the bait a bit better.
12.20
There’s a good wind blowing right into my peg at the moment. If the fish are on the end of the wind they should be right in front of me!
14.00
Session restart…
I’ve moved into ‘The Shallows’; not because I’ve seen fish in here but because I haven’t seen fish anywhere. I’m so confident of a fish from here - evenings and mornings, I’ve chosen to move in, getting all the baiting and disturbance done with as early as possible during the ‘dead’ period. It’s just a matter of waiting for them to arrive.
Baits are fished at four-and-three-quarter wraps dead in line with the swim opposite.
Rigs are the same - Wafting Corn and Stiff Hinge Rig.
I did an important measure on catapulting distances. I fired some corn out with the ‘catty’ and put out the marker float onto what I thought was the middle of the patch; fired out more corn to check the distance - then clipped up. By clipping my rods to four and three-quarter wraps I’m certain to be fishing slap-bang in the middle of my baiting. This is in five feet of water. On Pollard I expect it to be much deeper - at this range in the order of ten feet or so. So I’d clip up at five wraps to allow for ‘swing back’. It’s the little things that make all the difference.
14.10
Look out, there’s a big yellow thing up in the sky, a sky which has suddenly turned blue (instead of the dreary grey it’s been lately) and the temperature has shot right up.
Don’t quote me on this but I think it’s called THE SUN.
I think I’ve said in the past that there are some beverages that are totally carpy - and others that are totally not. Now Yorkshire Tea is most definitely highly rated as a carpy drink, but for me ‘Bovril’ takes the prize.
I had a friend back in the day that used to take orange juice…what’s carpy about that? I can not think of a single virtue that makes orange juice carpy at all. It’s what you’d throw on a fire to put it out…
14.40
Cleaned out by the Coots! I reckon they’ve just had every single grain of corn I’ve put out there! Bloody things! I’ll have to wait ’til they go away and feed again.
15.10
A fish has just jumped out; right over the bait I put out this morning in ‘The Bush’ swim! Would you ‘Adam and Eve it”?
I’d put some more corn out but the ducks are looking ravenous and one of the Coots has returned and has started going down on it again.
17.00
I made a change to the Stiff Hinge rod. Replaced the Chod with a mono hook-length straight off the ring-swivel. I can’t really say why I didn’t like the long Chod - just didn’t like it. A four-inch length of 15lb. Daiwa ‘Sensor’ is now connected to the ring swivel, the buoyant grains of corn fished ‘D’ rig style.
While I was doing this, a fish jumped out again in ‘The Bush’, once again right over my bait. Darn it!…
18.20
I can’t put my finger on it but I’m just not happy at the moment. I don’t know what it is but I don’t feel confident. Perhaps it’s because I have seen very little from the carp today? I’ve not heard anything up to my right either. Is it the weather? It has been very cold lately; today is the first sign of warmth for a long time. Maybe they’re just not in the mood? Either way, it doesn’t feel as if it’s going to happen for me this session. We shall see however.
19.30
My sense of foreboding fails to lift. I sense a blank. Would that I am wrong and success comes unexpectedly.
Wednesday, 1st.May
06.30Early morning wake-up call - I’m away on the Wafting Corn!
This turns out to be a small fish of 13:12 but given the lack of anything else I’ll take it. It’s a carp, and another to add to the totals.
Prior to this I’d had one or two line-bites, as indeed I’d had one or two during the night. Once again the Burrows carp seemed active during the hours of darkness - but only line bites gave away their presence. This is curious. They’re out there and on the move, yet reluctant to pick up baits.
Very, very cold night. My summer sleeping-bag was not up to the job and I made a bad mistake in not bringing my 5 Season ‘winter’ one. however, one-nil to the Wafter. Another fish and it’s the clincher. Will they take pop-up corn (or should I say mini-zigged corn)? Will I have to ‘wade’ through the Bream on Pollard to get through to the carp? (Don’t say the ‘B’ word!)
Once again ‘The Shallows’ comes up trumps although I am confident I would have taken fish from The Bush swim. I discovered something else about that peg; there is a strong inflow of water coming from somewhere and I’m sure carp would find this an attractive feature, especially during the hot weather. It doesn’t seem to be on all the time though so it must be pump-operated or something.
07.00
Not quite enough fish to determine an accurate average size yet but at the moment it stands at 15:11 for the four I have caught so far.
According to Spreadbury’s Law, the biggest fish in the lake is twice the average size (don’t ask; it’s all to do with something called Standard Deviations, a statistical calculation which no-one would be interested in me explaining). If this is accurate, this puts the biggest fish in Burrows at something in the order of 31lbs. From the information I have, this is about right.
09.00
Although a one-nil score in favour of the Wafter can hardly be said to be conclusive, I have little confidence the popped-up (mini-zigged) corn is likely to succeed on Pollard. It may do; but at the moment I’m thinking rig refinements to the Wafter are more likely to produce a better outcome than a bait sitting four inches above where the fish are feeding. I could be completely wrong, but at the end of the day it’s all about Confidence and at the moment I have zero confidence in the min-zig.
However, there still remains the problem of how to beat ‘The Filth’ (i’m not saying the ‘B’ word). I read on some Carp Forum somewhere a suggestion as to what might help - long ‘hairs’.
The idea is that you can not stop the ‘B’s from having a go at the bait but you can reduce the chances of hooking them by increasing the distance between bait and hook (hair-wise). On the face of it this sounds a simple solution - just increase the length of the hair and add a split-shot and fish it KD style. I have always had problems with this style of rig however in the form of tangles. With a ‘B’ pecking away at it there is vast potential for the whole lot to get wrapped up in a mess and I don’t think I could fish with any confidence like that. So I think I should think about how a long hair might be fished that is tangle-free (it’d be no good just wrapping dissolving foam around the hook to get it out there if the fish mess it up once there).
One answer might be a ‘D’ rig with a big ‘D’. Hmmmmmm…
Bream can still peck away at the bait but distancing it from the hook might help prevent hook-ups. The mono of the 'D' might have some value in obstructing the path into the Bream's mouth.
I think that looks pretty cool; definitely carpy. This particular one took a shot to sink it as without it, it stood up on end on the ‘tail’ of the ‘Carp R Us’ Mouth Snagger. Looks a catcher to me. I’ve put it out for an hour anyway. It’s approaching that time in proceedings to think about packing up.
09.45
That damn fish has just jumped again in ‘The Bush’ swim! Talk about rubbing salt in the wounds! I am deffo coming back to catch the blooming thing!
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