Sunday 19th April 2015
With me missing my next match due to me getting involved in some stag do frolics, I was anxious to get a pleasure session in sometime - otherwise it would be a long wait until the next match I can attend on the 9th May. So it was very nice of Mrs Fishernutstu to give me a free pass today to visit Woodshaw Reservoir. Woodshaw is another water on the Warrington card and this was set to be only my second visit to the venue ever.
On arrival at the water, there were already a few anglers on, which meant that the pegs I was thinking of trying were already occupied. A quick chat with the bailiff for some advice saw me make my way to peg 15. Under advice, I set up my stall to fish the short pole for the day. I set up 3 rigs - 1 to fish to my right and left on 5 sections, in the same depth of water about a metre from the bank, the other 2 were straight in front of me at 6 sections, one on the deck and one up in the water. Woodshaw is only a shallow venue so none of my rigs were much more than about 3 1/2 feet deep.
Bait choices for the day were to be quite simple. I had a pint of maggot and half a pint of caster for fishing straight in front me and softened 4mm pellets for the left and right swims. I pumped a mixture of 4 and 6 mm expanders for the hook as well as having a small selection of soft hookers.
To start my session off I put in a cad pots worth of pellets on the left and right swims and then went out on the middle swim with a maggot hook bait and the bottom rig. Catapulting maggot over the top I was instantly catching small palm sized Roach, each taking the maggot hook bait before the float had settled. After 15 mins or so of this routine it was clear these Roach were there in numbers and were never going to let my bait get to the deck so I changed tactics slightly and potted in a large pot of maggots and pellets and switched from a bulk and 2 dropper set up to fishing the bulk just above my 6inch hooklength. Whilst this worked in the sense of being able to get my bait to the bottom, it was still only small Roach and the odd skimmer that were taking whatever hook bait I put in front of them. Feeling this is not the kind of day I wanted, I put in another large pot of maggot and pellets and picked up the rig for my left hand swim. Filling my cad pot with pellets and going with a 6mm expander, I placed my rig in and waited - my thoughts were on the reported Crucians and Tench that inhabited this water and I was wondering if they had started to wake up. Well it wasn't long before I got my answer as a nice Crucian of around 1lb was happily swimming round in circles on the surface in front of me as my float sat motionless - was it going to be one of those days? Thankfully the answer was no, as out of the blue my float dipped beneath the surface and I was soon playing a nice fish to the net - I can't decide for myself if this is a Crucian, a Brown Goldfish or a hybrid of the two (could it even be a dreaded F1)?
This seemed to be a trigger as I was getting bites frequently on this line for a while from this point. The small Roach and Skimmers were still there in numbers but at least on this line they were complimented by some bonus fish in the shape of some decent, odd looking hybrids, Tench, larger skimmers to 2lb and Definite Crucians.
This line generally produced for the rest of the session. During odd quiet spells I tried the right hand swim but this produced nothing and I also picked up my shallow rig every now and again and had fun picking off shallow Roach on caster, some were coming in at a nice size too. Eventually the sun came out and it was right in my eyes so I called time on the session at around 2:30pm, quite satisfied and looking forward to coming back to Woodshaw when the fish had properly woken up.
It'll be a couple of weeks now until I get out again so I'll be doing some housekeeping with the tackle in that time, mainly changing reel lines and pole elastics - incidentally I have opted to give Nick Gilbert's pole elastics a try this time based on many recommendations from friends.
Until the next time - tight lines
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