When I caught my PB carp last week, another angler told me that the 2 smaller pools there had a good stock of roach going well over 1 lb. I fancied using my new "old" wagglers recently purchased from eBay. Originally I was going to stick with corn, pellets and bread flake, but as I was walking past my local tackle shop I popped in for some essentials (we all do that don't we? Not sure you could describe all such purchases as "essentials"). At the last moment I got 1/2 pint of red maggots, just in case the other baits failed to interest the roach.
As the day was blindingly fine, it was a mistake to arrive just before midday. The car park was packed and when I had a walk around the 2 smaller pools there was only 1 swim free, tucked up in a shallow corner. If I hadn't bought the maggots I might have gone back home but I couldn't see nearly £2's worth of fresh bait turn to flies - no chance of using the fridge in the kitchen! I'm not Scottish, honest.
I had a sleeper carp rod out under the far bank cover and set up my 15' float rod with a centre pin loaded with 3lbs line. The small Wotton goose quill was set just to touch bottom on the shelf out from some reeds. I baited up with hemp and corn, leaving the grains to work while I had a drink.
Starting with corn I immediately caught some nice-looking roach around 6". I switched between the corn, flake and pellet but couldn't up the size of fish. The guy to my right had a lovely view of a far bank bay where he said he could see dark shapes cruising. Luckily for me he packed up early so I quickly moved into the spot.
My carp rod was cast to the far bank from which you couldn't fish due to the "jungle". I thought that it was a given that sooner rather than later I'd be into a carp. Bugger all! Except that I did have 2 very short bleeps on the buzzer and when I finally wound in the lead clip rubber had moved up the line by about a foot. So I guess I'd been done over by some clever carp.
You may be wondering where the maggots in the title come into it. I had been reluctant to switch from corn etc to the maggots reasoning that they wouldn't improve the stamp of fish I was getting. But I was wrong. In the 3 - 4 hours I had nearly 100 lovely roach and rudd on double maggot ending up with stinky trousers and an even worse towel.
Although there were no one pounders, almost all of the fish were between 1/2 and 3/4 lb. By the time I'd run out of maggots - and getting anxious to get back to see the England v Ukraine 7:45 kick off - I was catching them about 1 ft deep with the shoal boiling on the surface. A place to go back to in the winter months with JH's bread discs I think.
Dave, I've watched our Mr Hatt fish his bread discs, and you would think that a pinch of bread old school style would give a much better hook up (point projecting) than Hatts hang it on 'style' (if thats the correct word for it). But his discs realy do work a treat. His larger disc's 25-30mm are a bit big for my liking,for every thing except Carp and Chub but his smaller ones are great for the other smaller mouthed fish. Pity you were done by that carp. Were you using the Withy rig again ?
ReplyDeleteHi Martin. I tried the discs using a 1/2" punch and they look quite dinky (I tried them in a pint glass of water).
ReplyDeleteYes I was using the Withy rig, good guess!