28/08/09 - Rood Ashton

Weight – 113lb 9oz
Catch – 36 Carp, 1 Roach.
Weather – Rainy start, later mostly sunny. Very Windy
Water Temp– 17.5c > 18.5c

Today’s trip to Rood Ashton was a practice for Mondays charity match organised by Mark (Slider). The last time I fished here was 3 years ago, so I needed some up to date info from Mark, who only lives a couple of miles away from the venue. Paste was apparently the bait, which I was more than happy about, however I did notice in the results page of the Angling Times that Rod Wootton won a Carps AC match using pellet.

I asked Mark about whether the waggler would work, the answer was nobody uses it there and he even suggested I had a problem, because I always want to get my wagglers out!

The weather forecast wasn’t great, with heavy winds and showers. I had considered not going, but I had booked the day off work and with other commitments over the weekend I forced myself to go.

On arrival the rain started and the next couple of hours it remained showery. With a strong westerly I didn’t wander too far from the car park and set up right of the first tree, which provided enough shelter to fish the pole up to 11m. Just to illustrate the strength of the wind, I had 13m of pole blown off the 3 flat pole rollers, hence the reason why fishing 11m seemed to be better.

I started at 11m fishing paste over 6mms, but there was a real strong tow which meant I couldn’t fish the paste as soft as I would like and the pellet rig was like fishing the stick!

After an hour I had a 4 fish, but wasn’t happy with my presentation and a few foul hooked fish suggested there was a few fish around. I had fed next to the tree and managed a few fish on paste, but I had to pull hard to get them out of the snags, which meant a few more lost fish.

When I started the session, I really didn’t fancy the waggler and left the rods in the ready made holdall, but decided to catapult 8mms out just in case conditions improved. After 2 hours it was obvious fishing the pole was difficult due to the wind, so it was time to get the wagglers out. 2nd cast I landed a foul hooker, a switch to a shorter hooklength I started to get a little run of fish.

Back on the pole I switched to a heavier 4x18 float in the 2.5ft swim, which helped with the presentation but the wind had switched around slightly, so my sheltered spot, wasn’t quite so sheltered.

The wind proved to be a real pain and I could have probably caught more. I was pleased to catch on the waggler, because it at least proved it can work, however the average size of fish was smaller at 3lb, whilst my paste fish averaged 4lb.

Needless to say Mark will be bring his waggler rod on Monday.