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.


More Fishing and Tackle testing:
Christmas eve is upon us, the shopping is all completed the presents are wrapped and so a quick trip to the river is the least that I deserve and it will be a chance to test the cheap Chinese pin. On arriving at the river I am a little disappointed that the wind is howling downstream so presenting a stick float other than straight off the rod end was going to prove tricky anyway I set up a 15ft rod and attached the centre pin.
The first problem I had was how to stop the reel over running when threading the rod now that I had discarded the ratchet mechanism, this was solved with a small piece of foam placed between the rod handle and the spool.
Well I must say that the cheap pin worked a treat and I spent the next couple of hours working my stick float through the swim taking Numerous small dace on hemp which by the way was the only way I could avoid the millions of Bleak I had in front of me. All in all I am pleased with the budget centre pin that cost only £40 and feel the mods I have made have improved it to suite my needs.


A very cheap but functional reel

Ivan Marks - The Peoples Champion: I received this as a Christmas present from my wife Michelle and just thought I would recommend it as a very interesting read for anyone that was a fan of this great angling legend. It is mainly made up of column article he wrote for the Angling Times in the 70s, and apart from being an interesting insight into Ivan at his peak a lot of what he says is as relevant today as when he wrote it.

An interesting read

Tuesday 27th on the bank again:
After sitting around the house for half of the morning my wife suggested that I take myself of to the river for a few hours as I would be back at work Wednesday, I didn't rush to get out of the house and got to the river at about 12.15.
I spoke to another angler who was just packing up and he told me that although he had struggled most of the morning he had ended the session with a few better Roach.
I decided to drop into a peg half way along the stretch and with very little wind I decided I would fish a stick float down the middle of the river as I t was not too wide at this point.
After plumbing up I put a single maggot on the hook and had a few runs through the swim before putting any bait in, The float was slightly overdepth but inched through the peg without finding any snags so I introduced 2 hard balls of dark groundbait.
Second trot through and the float disappeared and I had my first Dace which was follows by a succession of similar sized fish. I topped up with a hard nugget of groundbait every few casts and this kept the bites coming until the inevitable happened and a Pike put in an appearance and swam off downstream at a rate of knots.



There were plenty of bites from small fish like this one

This upset the fish and they seemed to move further down the peg which didn't help as it gave the Pike more time to snatch my fish while I was retrieving them, anyway I persevered for a while longer before calling it a day. I finished the day by seeing what would attract big perch into the margin at the end of my keepnet, and there was a definite attraction to noise as every time I dropped a hard nugget of groundbait in a big Perch would appear and take an odd maggot or pinkie and then skulk off again out of site. Anyway the time I spent was really valuable in helping me come up with a plan to catch them the next time I have a match as they don't very often show during the matches and as yet I haven't had much success on the chopped worm so we will have to see next time out.

Not the greatest catch but things could be mutch worse at this time of year

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