First thing to pass on today is the sad news that angler and angling reporter Roy Garland has died. Roy spent many years taking photos of anglers for the reports he put in the Bristol Evening Post and Green Un. I got to know quite well as he took a few photos of my team and of course I got a few results which he needed to report on. Roy had a good sense of humour too, and he always used to stay to the end of a match results to have a beer and chat. Overall, Roy did a lot of good for local angling by promoting in the papers, and there was many a time that non anglers told me that had seen my picture in the paper. God Bless you Roy, RIP.
A long time friend Clayton Hudson told me a while back that despite living in Bath for about 20 years he had not fished the K&A canal, he managed to put the right today and had a few hours out by Bathampton. His pleasure session was very similar to how matches go, dropped in some bread, caught a skimmer first cast and then had an hour of catching them before all went quiet and he struggled then for odd small roach. Couple of pictures of where Clayton fished and his catch.
My blog title today was supposed to be something like "last day of the river season", but the rain came again and unfortunately made a mess of the river by me. I had ordered some caster and maggots and so thought I will have to get out somewhere and use them, and decided upon Bitterwell. That meant more thought on how to get a bit more tackle into a Toyota Aygo this week, I got my box in and a net bag, plus a container with a reel and wagglers. One rod tube and the landing net pole. I was just going to the fish a waggler.
I got out to Bitterwell about 10:30 and there were not many anglers there, I think Mother's Day had kept a few away (I'd seen my mum the day before). I chose a peg on the road bank where it appeared that the wind would be almost off my back, conducive for waggler fishing. I set up a 4AAA Preston waggler (blue coloured with high visibility insert) and put just 1 no 8 and 1 no 10 down the line. 0.10 Accu Power to a 18 SFL-B hook. As ever the lake was pretty much flat calm as I began, but wasn't expecting this to stay the same all day.
As I began by feeding lightly with maggots and casters Fishery Manager and Thatchers PI team mate Paul Isaacs came round to collect the day ticket money. I had a small roach straight away and a few casts later a 6oz skimmer. I felt a bit rusty if I am honest, and needed to change catapults to get the bait where I wanted it, but was soon in the swing of things, cast, sink line, feed. For the first hour I had regular bites from small roach and one little 6oz carp, but had to keep swapping from red, white or fluoro maggot on the hook. I had started off bottom and went deeper to try to catch some of the skimmers that are in there, I could see that over the lake Chris Davis had caught a few small skimmers on the pole. A regular local angler then came walking around and started to chat to me, and during this time I had bite when the rod was not in my hand, I struck to hard and snapped the hook length, doh.
A nasty bit of rain and wind then appeared which had me reaching for my coat, and not long after this I hooked a better fish and it was skimmer of about 1.5lb. Next cast and a pounder, and then a few casts later another nice skimmer. They disappeared as soon as they arrived, and the swim went a bit quiet after this, switching to a fluoro maggot I had a few small roach and perch. Going back to red maggot was much slower but it was all the skimmers would have. I had another visitor as I was fishing, Les Williams, I haven't seen him for quite a long time and he had a very large camera on him as his hobby these days is photography, mainly wildlife. He showed me quite a number of pictures of birds that he had taken, and he is clearly very adept at photography. Whilst Les was by me I managed to snare my biggest skimmer about 2lb.
The wind was gusting all over the place after the early calm, and feeding had been a nightmare. My bites had really slowed up and I noticed the waggler was beginning to tow through. I added a little more depth and stopped feeding casters and increased the maggots. This pretty much had an immediate effect with roach and perch responding. I was catching quite nicely again, but the temperature was dropping really fast and my hands began to get very cold as more light rain fell. Desperate for a pee I decided it was time to pack up and go home. Chris had already gone home, we had a quick chat as he passed me and said he had about 14lb. An angler further up from me had struggled to catch early but had a nice run of skimmers on the pole when he put some groundbait in. I did my best to take a photo of my fish in the keepnet, felt like about 14lb I guess.
I enjoyed that today, fishing a waggler is great fun and busy fishing. I am sure a pole approach added in as an option would have given me a few more skimmers but I it's nice just now and again to not pick one up.
Before I finish I noticed that another mate of mine Brian Gay has been filming some underwater videos, he has put them on YouTube. If you search for "Angling Images Fishing Media" you will find them. Very interesting to watch how the fish react to some bait going in, take a look, he's got plenty of other stuff on there too.
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