20/02/11 - Fishponds

Weight – 97lb 10oz
Catch – 13 Carp.
Weather – Cloudy. Chilly light breeze
Match – Glenfall – 2nd

12 turned for today’s match. Graham Beevor & I sorted the pegs, because we both wanted to see less anglers pegged in the arm of the lake and ended up putting pegs 1 & 4 in, although in hindsight I would have swapped peg 4 with 3 to give peg 22 on the opposite bank more room.

I would have been happy with most pegs today and pulled peg 1 at the bottom of the arm, but at least this time I had more space to play with. This peg is a cracking pleasure peg, but in a match can be a bit hit or miss. After yesterdays practice session, I decided to be less aggressive with my feed and also swapped .15 & 16 B911 to .14 to 18 B911 on my pole rigs.

Settled on 5 swims, #1-the far bank feeding 8mm pellet, #2-13m at 1o’clock feeding micro pellet, #3- 12m at 11o’clock where it started to shallow up towards the end of the lake. The same rig would be used at 10m along the right bank at the bottom of the shelf. Swims #3 & 4 where both feed with 4mm pellet & corn. Swim #5 was down the left hand margin, but I never even tried here.

I started on the waggler & lead towards the far side as I let the pole swims settle, but nothing. After 40mins I could see a few fish being caught as I switched swim #2 with double red maggot, but it was another 10mins before I caught my 1st carp, which was a relief. Another followed 30mins later, but it was slow. Dave Bradley on peg 4 and Craig Davidge on peg 15 were setting the pace from the pegs I could see. My concern after my slow start was the wind had being blowing out of this end of the lake yesterday so I wasn’t convinced there would be many fish in the area.

After 3 hours I was up to 3 fish and felt I was about 4th from the anglers I could see, but there were 5 others I couldn’t see. To be honest I was chopping and changing too much, when I should just be patient. I had kept feeding 4x 8mm’s every 5mins to the far side and during the 4th hour I had 4 carp all on double corn and the tip. In the meantime I decided to up the feed over swims #3 & 4, instead of catapulting 15-20x 4mm’s every 15mins, I was now feeding every 10mins.

With 2 hours to go, the breeze picked up a little and it was starting feel cold, which lead to a few bank walkers trying to get warm. I decided to bin swim #2 to concentrate on swims #3 &4. I was still behind Dave & Craig, with reports that Graham Beevor was catching regularly from peg 10, as was Tim Allen on peg 12. So it was looking like I was fishing for 3rd.

My pole swims produced 4 carp (3 on corn and the other on pellet) which I surprised about, since I was expecting to catch more particularly towards the end of the match. I finished with 2 carp in the last ½ hour and knew I had beaten Craig who stopped catching with 90min to go. Although Dave was protesting he hadn’t caught much, but I knew it would be close.

Dave was 2nd to weigh after me and his 92lb was as close as expected. Grahams peg must have been solid, because he won with 174lb, fishing into the corner. I actually fancied his peg today, because yesterday there were some big fish crashing around and the wind had been blowing that way. Tim’s catch had been over estimated (never have Andy Bradley as a bank runner – he cant count). Craig claimed 4th spot with 65lb, leaving me with 2nd.

That time of the year again....

As winter slowly starts to slip away and with those nice spring days hopefully just around the corner, I cant help but get sea trout off my mind.

Sea trout run the majority of Irish rivers to spawn from October-December then as spent fish fall back out to sea to feed and condition themselves at sea before returning to their rivers for their next spawning period. So sea trout are hungry predators gorging in the sea surely they will be easy to catch....think again, catching/chasing sea trout on lures, is to say the least challenging and sometimes quite frustrating (but can become an obsession very quickly), but well worth it when that bar of silver slides onto the beach.

These silver bullets are a great sport fish which will do everything they can to shake the hook and they have quite a nack of doing just that. It is also hard to get good hookups as sea trout have very soft mouths while at sea. Small trebles are a must when fishing sea trout if you want a good hook hold.

The key to locating sea trout is to find an area where you think they may be feeding, estuaries, lagoons etc. Visit these marks at various stages of the tide and if there are sea trout present they will show you wont miss them as they jump clear out of the water on a regular basis some say this is to knock off irritating sea lice they may have picked up at sea.

So once you have located the sea trout or know of particular marks where they are present there are a couple of lures I wouldnt be without. As most areas where sea trout hold have a flow of current I like to knock small jigs through the current such as duo press bait fusion and kamuy, p boys and nabura dekas etc. This method can be lethal for trout covering a lot of ground quickly fluterring baits just above the bottom where sea trout sit in wait for passing food.

There are also areas like back eddies (slack water) where small lures like the Zonk 77 and Grace minnow can be very effective lures for catching out sea trout feeding in these areas.

The sea trout are predominantly feeding on small sandeels and small fish therefore these lures seem to work well. Match the hatch!!!

Zonk 77

Grace minnow

Press bait fusion

Press bait Kamuy

Nabura deka

*Important Note*

If you intend to fish for sea trout you will need a licence. You can purchase your licence here

Nantes 2011

At the moment Cian is away in Nantes at the superb fishing show see here for some words from Henry Gilbey about the show. Cian will write up a full report of all new findings (lures/rods/techniques) from his visit over to France sometime next week.

Tight lines,

James.

Careful what you wish for

The conditions have been good this last week with easterlies blowing and good bags of fish being produced. We hoped that this wind direction would continue at the weekend, it did but just too much, 30mph with gusts to 50mph to be precise.

Safety was the first concern for the club match so we switched from our chosen venue to Ferryden. This gave us protection from the howling SE's. It started well with a few fish early on this faded fast and as the tide started to empty the flow grew stronger and the tackle losses also grew in proportion. Not to worry, we all came home safe with a fish or two.

Check Will out in this pic .I'm sure he thinks he's on the cover of FHM lol

19/02/11 - Fishponds

Weight – 55lb 2oz
Catch – 8 Carp.
Weather – Cloudy damp start. Sunny periods later

Today was a practice session to see how the lake was fishing before tomorrows match. As I was setting up Graham Beevor turned up with the same intention, so any thoughts of a quiet day had gone. Although he did make me smile when he received a phone call asking if he was still coming to his drumming lesson in an hours time! Graham, proceeded to tell the caller he only had 1 arm, which he lost in the war, so was unable to attend. The caller was very apologetic.

I really wanted to see whether I could catch on the waggler, using a 3AA Insert Waggler & 8mm pellet. Started on the tip & double corn. Although I had a carp after 10mins it was slow going. I tried the pellet cone and then a small feeder and caught on each method, but again very slow.

In the meantime, I had started to regularly fire 8mm pellet at 25m. When I tried the waggler, I initially started at half depth and gradually went deeper, until I started fishing on the deck in 9ft of water. I stayed on the waggler for much longer than I should have, but did catch 1 carp on 8mm pellet and 1 on corn later on.

I had also set up a pole swim at 11m, feeding micro pellet, mixed with groundbait, feeding 4mm over the top. Surprisingly I didn’t catch and had to set up a new swim to my left feeding only 4mms & a few bits of corn. I caught another carp here.

A frustrating day, because I was getting phantom bites, which were either liners or small fish pecking at the bait.

ice fishing lake geneva wisconsin

Our friend Randal sent these shots over this evening from his trip today to Lake Geneva, Wi. Looks like he got a nice mixed bag with some good size fish...

a nice lake geneva bluegill

a lake geneva pike

lake geneva crappie

Fish Structures On Ice

Here is a short video of cutting down some fence row mulberry and hedge trees. We used these trees to make a bunch of fish structures this winter. We bunched up the trees and weighted them down with 5 gallon buckets full of concrete and placed them on the ice.


Here are some pictures for those of you too lazy to watch the video. We used the Timberline HT Timber Shears attachment for the Bobcat to cut down lots of trees along the old fence row very quickly!

Land Auction and Ice Fishing

I went to a land auction in Fulton County yesterday. Good tillable land went for 7300 per acre and pure timber went for 2100 per acre. Was interesting, but about what was expected with grains at all time highs and recreational land prices continuing to fall. Now is actually a very good time to pick up some hunting land if your in the market.

Anyhow then I headed over to meet up with some clients to talk game plan 2011. It just so happened we found some marginally safe ice on one of the lakes and it just so happened I had 4 ice fishing rods and 3 vexilars an auger and some old bait left in my truck. It also just so happened to be 55 degrees and sunny outside. After a couple hours of finding nothing willing to bite it just so happened we found some strategically placed trees submerged 15 feet down out in the middle of a cove and it just so happened we caught some nice fish for dinner!







It just so happened I actually got my text book, fairy tale ending to ice fishing for this season! The ice is no longer safe on a good majority of lakes and ponds in my zone. There is open water around most edges and it won't be long with this forecast to be lots of open water everywhere very soon.