Festive Fishing Exploits

Fishing and Shopping:
Well I don't know about you but I have been fortunate enough to get some fishing in over the festive period. It started on the Wednesday before Xmas with the wife suggesting that I have a mornings fishing before we went and done the final present shopping, I didn't need telling twice and jumped at the chance as I had blanked in the previous Sundays Match.
Anyway I made amends and caught a few fish on what was a bloody cold morning and included some decent Roach on Caster trotting some 20 yards down the swim.
Later that day we went over to Springfields shopping centre in Spalding and just as we were walking back to the car I walked past a shop full of fishing tackle. I thought that's strange as it wasn't there the last time I had visited and on looking up I saw the sign Dragon Carp, now having seen their adverts many times in magazines but never actually visiting any of their shops I just had to go in and have a look. I am not normally really interested in budget tackle but I was intrigued to see what kind of quality the gear was as it was very cheap. I had a quick look around and decided most of it was probably worth the price if you were on a tight budget but not really what I would buy. Just as I was about to leave the shop I noticed the centre pins and just had to see how bad they were for £30 and £40 respectively and so I asked if I could have a closer look at them. Now to say they would not appeal to the purist float anglers would be an understatement but at the price they were definitely functional pieces of kit that I thought worth taking a punt on as a second reel. I paid my £40 and off I went, when I got home I decided to have a closer look at it and compare it to the Okuma I already own. The first thing that I noticed was that the reel would spin for as least as long as the Okuma although it was not silent  with some noise coming from the bearings and a little play in the spool. Next I removed the spool and had a look at the pathetic ratchet mechanism and decided that it would probably fail very early on so I decided to remove it along with the line guide. Well at least I wasn't going to be pissed when something broke or fell off as there isn't a lot left to go wrong, I loaded it with some 2lb line and put it with my tackle ready to field test the next time out.

River Nene - Wansford - Monday 12th December 2011

Today I visited the River Nene at Wansford as I had a day off of work and was hoping for a few fish after blanking on the canal on Sunday. I arrived at the river at 9am and the temperature gauge in the car was reading 2 degrees and with a cold breeze blowing from a westerly direction it was less than inviting.
I decided to fish peg 16 for no other reason than I had never fished it before and the angler below me on the same peg in the last match had only weighed about 2 1/2 lb and I wondered what I could manage.
Anyway I levelled my seat box and sat looking at the peg for a few minutes looking for any signs of fish movement as the water was very cold and clear, I could see the bottom about 5 meters out in 8ft of water.
I set up the pole first and had a plumb around the peg and found 9ft of water at 11.5m which would have to do as fishing any further out would have made presentation difficult with the wind blowing downstream. I also set up an elasticated whip at 5.5m with a 2gr rig for fishing Maggot and Caster over Groundbait.


 Line 1 breadpunch at 11.5m and line 2 Casters at 5.5m to-hand



River Nene Match 4th December

Having just returned from a week in sunny Fuerteventura with the wife I was keen to get back on the river and the timing couldn't really have been better. Deeping St James AC had a sweepstake arranged on the Nene at Wansford on the Sunday and so I made the call and booked myself in. On arrival  at the draw I noticed that there were a few anglers less than the last match I had attended before I went on holiday but never the less there were 14 of us which was good as it would allow some of the lesser pegs to be dropped from the match.
Into the draw bag and out comes peg 15 which was about mid point on the stretch and was a park and fish peg not that any of the pegs have much of a walk which is great for match fishing.
The river was very clear and had little flow but there were plenty of fish topping although I suspect most of them were Bleak.


The view from peg 15