A Silver Lining

Martin persuaded me, well I didn't need much, to have an evening at a small pool which purported to hold a good head of crucians plus some nice silver bream. It also had the benefit of being less than 5 minutes drive from my daughter's where a ready supply of wine is always available. (Only had 2 small glasses, honest officer.)

So we met up after he left work and had the pool to ourselves, despite it being a Friday and at the start of our summer - who am I kidding?! Martin opted for a short pole and small soft pellet approach and I took my 15' rod and centre pin, fishing a sensitive Drennen waggler. Hook was a barbless 12 with a hard 8mm pellet.

Martin did suggest that the crucians would struggle with such a mouthful but I stuck to my guns. I'm glad I did as the float slipped away and a feisty tench around the 3lb mark came grudgingly to the net after dashing headlong into the rushes at my feet. I had been loose feeding a mixture of tiny through to 6 mm pellets in a little dry halibut ground bait and occasionally a few grains of corn.

The crucians were doing exactly what Martin expected, he was pulling them out regularly to around 1lb as well as some silver bream which didn't quite make the pound. When my float next slipped under, I was chuffed to see a flash of silver going over the rim of my net. A very nice silver bream, despite the quickness with which it "gave up". At 1lb 2oz it was a new PB so I could get over the lack of gold for silver.

I followed that up with another at 1lb 5oz

and then again with one of 1lb 1oz. Chuffed didn't quite cover it!
 

Another tench around 2.5lbs followed and then a solitary roach. To put the icing on the cake I had 2 more silvers going 1lb 3oz and 14oz.

There are some common carp in there going to 20lbs and both of us felt one on for no more than a few seconds as they raced off into the distance. Neither Martin's elastic nor my line coped!

Prior to this my best Silver was just under 1lb so to take 4 over this weight in less than 4 hours felt great. Martin and I discussed the fishing later and decided that his approach caught him over 16 crucians and half a dozen or more silvers as well as a few tench, but my "big gob" approach seemed to sort out the larger fish. A great evening's fishing.

During the time spent there, we saw a wonderful site of 10s of thousands of tadpoles gathering all over the pool in great swathes looking like weed beds or lines of smoke. The bailiff said that although they had them every year, this year's "cloud" - a name attributed to author Alon Schulman, which is, I think, a better description than the scientific "shoal" or "school" - is a first.