New Fishing Season - New Waters

This Season I thought I would try out some new Waters, so I joined a local club, in the Cotswold, that has the fishing rights to 6 lakes of varying sizes and 2 river stretches one on the Thames and the other on the river Ray.

The lake I have chosen to target first is one of the smaller lakes being approximately 8 acres in size, and averages around 12ft deep, and a few marginal shelves can be found. A very picturesque lake, fringed with Lily pads with many of the swims accessible by car. On site there are toilets and shower facilities that have disabled access.

The lake is reported to l holds a good stock of various species of fish, including Carp, Tench, Roach, Rudd, Crucian's, Perch, Pike and Bream, many of them good specimens. There are carp to nearly 40Ibs, Bream and Tench into double figures, Pike into 30Ib bracket, and a number of good Roach, Perch and Crucian Carp.

I arrived at the lake at 9.30 on a breezy Wednesday morning to find the lake quite busy for midweek. so I spent the first hour walking around the water looking for signs of fish and picking the brains of those anglers already on the lake. When ever you fish a new water Getting tips and advise from the locals can be invaluable.

During my walk around the lake there were only one spot were I spotted topping fish and that was the first swim on the right hand side of the lake just in front of a large reed bed that stretched about 10 feet out into the lake, so decided that this is were my campaign was going to start from.

I was going to be using 2 rods, so I baited up a small area just of the reed bed with sweet corn and trout pellets round about were I saw the topping fish, I then dropped a method feeder over the top with a small piece of meat and a plastic piece of corn on the hook.

Using a marker rod I had a feel around an area some 30 yards straight out in front of the swim were I found a couple of clear gravel patches and decided to give these a go with the second rod. This time I spodded out sweet corm, pellets and some cubed meat in a tight area on the gravel patches and again used a method feeder this time I had a 6mm pellet topped with plastic corn on the hook.

At about 11.14 the bobbin on left hand rod (the one by the reed bed) lifted slightly then fell back down a split second later it smacked the underside of the rod and line began to disappeared of the reel, I struck into it, the rod bent over sharply then everything went slack. I reeled the rod in re baited it and was just about to cast it back out when the right hand rod screamed of. This time when I struck into it the rod tip jerked about for a few minute then again it went slack and I thought I had lost a second fish but as it approached the bank the rod started to jerk about again and a nice sized bream rolled in front of the net a bream that when weighed was just over 5lb. Not a bad start.

Over the next 3 hours I manage to land 2 more bream and lose 5 others all from the right hand rod over the gravel patch whilst the left hand rod lay completely silent even though there were still signs there were fish in and around the baited area. Then everything just went dead and I never had a single bite for over 4 hours so decided to call it a day.

After packing up I had another walk around the lake and a chat with those angler still on the lake and it turns out that I was the only one to catch anything, so all in all not a bad start to my campaign.