A Days Pike Fishing.

Hi guys, its been a little while since my last post and to be honest this one is form a trip last weekend so its not completely fresh in my mind but I remember most of it. I received a message from a friend of mine telling me that he and another friend were heading out to fish the reservoir for it's Carp, this was not something I was particularly interested in at the time, however I have not seen these guys in quite some time and it was good to catch up with them! I decided to head down and fish for the Pike, hopefully you will remember Dan and Bironn from previous posts on here, once we had arrived the guys set up on what they called the causeway swims, I don't think they are actually called that but I would need to consult my map of the site to find out. I decided to help them get set up and started having a lead around for to find a few clear spots while they sorted rigs and stuff, once done I clipped up the rod for them and proceeded to set up my rod  and pick a lure. For the first few hours I sat with the guys socialising having a few odd casts in between from the swims either side of theirs, until I decided to go for my first walk around the water, I went off for just over 45 minutes and cast in nearly every swim I could until I finally snagged up and lost my trace, I decided to head back over to the guys to sit and chat while I set myself back up again,  a few hours past by before I knew it and I had not done any fishing so I headed off again, this time I walked the entirety of the reservoir without as much as a follow, to be honest I feel its still to warm for the pike and with the water being crazy deep in some places I was kind of on a fools hope thinking I might get one out!

          By this point it was getting dark so we packed up and decided to stop off and fish the waterworks just up the road from the res to try save the blank for the day, this turned out to be a great idea as both Bironn and myself managed to do so, unfortunately Dan didn't get any bites but he said himself he wasn't feeling it and as we all know if your minds not in it then your not enjoying it and probably going to fail!

               We started off casting around until I noticed a fish show mid river and decided to cast a Berkley yellow shad from the Pike pack upstream and straight retrieved it, I felt a small bump followed by a huge crash to which I struck into a great looking little Pike.

The guys were great and both of them sprung to help as soon as I gave the shout I was in, Bironn grabbed the net and scoped up the fish, meanwhile Dan had sorted all unhooking equipment, lighting and even grabbed a camera ready to snap a few shots!

       Now it was Bironn's turn to get a fish, to be honest I'm not sure of the tactics he used I just heard him shout "I got one hooked up" and rushed to return the favour with the net, once again Dan was on top of things where everything else was concerned.

After returning his fish we all decided to have 'just one last cast' as all anglers do, this however was on account of some big blue flashes behind us and with a thunderstorm forecast that day we weren't taking any chances holding carbon rods in the air!

           This turned out to be a great shout for me as I managed to hook into another really good looking Pike this time on the light green shad from the same Berkley pack I believe its called the mullet version, I was absolutely over the moon with how this part of the session had gone!

This one was a little bit bigger than the first and with only being there a maximum of 30 minutes it just goes to prove half an hour in the right spot is better than a whole day in the wrong one!

 

         Thanks for reading guys and until next time stay safe and good luck with any fishing you may be doing!

Early Morning LRF Session.

So this morning I have been on another post night shift LRF session to see in the weekend properly, its been a while since the last time I did this straight from work so I was very much looking forward to it. As I said in my last post I am now going to be taking all my lure fishing a lot more seriously in all aspects since joining the Lure Nuts group! I also asked on Twitter after my last post for some feedback from a couple of people who's opinion I value very highly on all matters regarding my fishing and anything to do with it, after a short chat with one of the guys I have taken on board what he said and have decided to do this post a bit differently and cut down on the word count.

The mornings action started very quickly as it was still pitch black skies when this little Rock Goby took my bait, I had literally been at the Quay for maybe ten minute, this was the first drop in after quickly setting up my rod, attaching a fresh leader and tying on my 2g jig head and hooking on a 1" segment of Isome worm. This was a new species for me and also the fish to christen my new Savage Gear Light Range Fishing rod.
        

After another twenty minutes or so and quite a few bites that I either missed or I got taken into weed where the hook was discharged I was finally into another fish, Once again to my absolute delight it was another species of fish I have not caught before! This time I had gotten my hands on a Scorpion Fish and what a awesome looking little guy he was to! After this fish though the water started moving a lot faster, or it seemed to be anyway so I changed over the jig head to a 3g one and put on a slightly bigger piece of Isome.

After returning the last fish and changing over jig head I took a walk about twenty or thirty yards down the Quay, on the first put it I had a take on the drop from this cool little Corkwing Wrasse, as you know by now if you read this blog much you will see I get a fair few of these and they have very much become a expected species for me and one I can bank on getting. After a further three more of the same though it was once again time to move position.

I was getting ready to move when I heard a beep from a motorbike horn and looked up to see my brother sat staring at me, he had decided to come down and fish with me for a hour or so which was good as I had now gained a photographer. I sat in the same place messing around with different retrieves while he set up, I managed to hook a further two Corkwings and another Rock Goby this one was bigger though so I asked him to take a picture for me, once he had done this we headed of down the Quay a bit more.

It seemed though no matter where we went small Corkwings and Goby were prevalent in every nook and cranny we dropped into, this was not a problem of coarse as they put up a good scrap on a 0.5-5g rod and were a whole lot of fun! After walking the entirety of the Quay now though and having had a few phone calls from the boss at home we decided to call it a day at that and made this pristine little Goby the last fish of the morning.

       

Thanks for reading guys I hope you enjoyed this format as it is something a lot different to what I normally do, please feel free to comment bellow and let me know what you think but until next time stay safe, be happy and enjoy your fishing!

Jig Fishing For Perch.

So today I headed out in search of some Perch, I went back to the water works at Longham, as you will have seen by now if you are someone who has read my blog before this is somewhere I quite like to spend my time when targeting Perch, there is a few reasons for this but the main ones being its ten minutes from my house and the average stamp of fish is around the lb mark, with 2lb fish coming out more and more now and with the odd 3lb beast being reported to. The aim of todays session was to put some new techniques into practise, recently as you may know I have joined a group called Lure Nuts, since being accepted into the family I have decided to focus most if not all of my fishing time into lure fishing, another thing you will have noticed on reading my past posts is that lure fishing is something I was very much getting into anyway but this has sparked a whole new level of interest for me! As I was saying I decided to go jig fishing but this time try to do it properly, what I mean by this is putting 'proper' jig fishing retrieves and things into practise, I have used shads and jig heads before but mainly casting and counting down before straight retrieving, I also used the sink and draw retrieve quite often to, as I said since joining the group I have wanted to do more and more lure fishing but also spend more time getting it right instead of all day chucking and winding as if I was using a spinner! I have spent a whole lot of time on youtube lately watching different lure fishing techniques and in particular researching jig fishing, after many a conversation with myself over the last week or so I decided that jig fishing was going to be my starting point and have got a lot of different trips planned over the next few weeks to learn different things, something I have not done on here before is to ask for you guys advice on stuff but please if you know of any good youtube videos, articles or anything else you feel might help me comment below so I can check it out!

Onto the fishing then, when I arrived today I was in luck as a few of the guys that work for Bournemouth water were here, one guy in particular was Ian who is the head bailiff on the reservoir up the road, I have fished the reservoir a fair bit now and have gotten to know Ian quite well, I explained to him todays plan as I signed in and he waited for me, once I had done he told me to follow him and he took me and gave me a guided tour, even though I have fished here numerous times the information he shared with me could prove invaluable on the correct days in the future, he told me things about deep areas and also about some hidden underwater structure which as we all know is the type of area you are going to find Perch. Once my tour was over and Ian went back to work I headed over to what I call the fish stairs and began to rig up, as I was going to be starting inline with the weir so I decided to go with a 10g jig head to stop it being washed all over the place when retrieving, I hooked on a small white Berkley shad from the Berkley Perch pack I picked up in my local Go Outdoors store a few weeks back, to start with I dropped the lure over the edge onto a patch of gravel I could see plain as day, I began to move the lure backwards and forwards with different lifts and things on the rod tip to see what it did in the water, about five minutes past by and once I had finished playing I was more than happy I could use the lure the way I wanted to and made my first cast. Another thing I have decided I want to work on is my discipline when it comes to searching the water as up until now I have very much been one of those people who looks and says ok I'm going to cast here now and end up fishing random spots never remembering where I cast to or when, that though as of today is going to change! I made a series of casts in a fan from right to left so as to cover all the water in front of me, on my third cast I missed a bite so decided to go back over the spot again, this was a idea that paid off for me as once I had retrieved back to roughly the same place I missed the bite I had another this time though I struck into the fish and it felt a good one, after a few minutes I was reaching for my net and unfortunately almost as soon as the fish hit the surface my hook pulled. Gutted but determined not to let it stop me from my days learning I cast to the next spot in the sequence I had laid out in my head, no bite on that one but on the next I was back into another fish, once again it didn't feel a bad size and after a minute or two I finally managed to get one in the net.

As I said in my previous post my Perch pb is 1lb 13oz and this fish wasn't near that so I didn't weigh it, I simply enjoyed looking at it for a little while took a few pictures of and with it and then returned it back to the water. I have now officially christened my new net and unhooking mat that my other half had bought me a few days ago and I could not be happier with the session so far, I guess I would have been a bit happier if I landed the first fish to but I did not expect to be getting any bites for a while as I tried to get used to the new style of fishing. I continued casting in my fan and on what was to be the last cast with this lure I had a bite from something much bigger, I knew at this moment I was either playing a British record Perch or I had hooked a Pike, I mean to be honest I just knew I had hooked into a Pike not a massive one but again I was happy to have hooked another fish, after a short while of playing the fish as I was using my ultra light set up I got it to a point where it was wallowing on the surface ready to be netted, you can imagine my utter heartbreak as my shad fell in slow motion from the fishes mouth and I desperately tried to reach it with the net, unfortunately I couldn't reach and to add to insult to injury the fish stayed in the same spot for what felt like a age before sinking back to the depths, I'm even sure it winked at me before doing so! With this cast being the last in the sequence I changed up the lure, I stuck with the same packet of shads just changed the colour, I went with a green coloured one I would describe it as a Perch pattern but I'm probably wrong. I began to cast in the same fan as before starting back from the beginning again, things started off slow with this lure as after the first four casts I didn't even have a knock, however on the fifth cast I hooked another fish but this time I could tell it was smaller, when it surfaced though I was happy to see it was the target species again.

Although this one was a lot smaller it was in near mint condition only for a split in the peck fin shown in the picture above, this fish was a little bit smaller than the average stamp that are normally caught from this water but to be honest for me its not all about the size, I know I mention my pb and things but that really is only part of why I fish, personally I believe that if you worry to much about personal bests and things then you end up loosing a lot of the appreciation for the smaller details and as this fish shows they don't have to be big to be beautiful!

         Thanks for reading once again guys I hope you enjoyed, I have a whole lot more fishing planned in the very near future so I'm hoping to bring you more regular posts again for a little while at least. Until next time stay safe everyone and good luck with whatever your out to achieve.

A Quick Perch Session.

Hi guys, I have finally found some time to get out fresh water fishing, I did however want to write this blog post on the same day I went so that the trip was fresh in mind but unfortunately that didn't happen, there was a few other miss haps on the day one big one being that after around twenty minutes of turning my camera glasses on, as I was planning on making my first youtube video in a while, the battery died. I also set out to try the Ned Rig this again went wrong as somehow I managed to forget to pack my jig head box. On a more positive note I did manage to get some more drop shotting practise as I managed to pull together enough stuff from what I had packed to do so, I mean to be fair to myself I had actually packed all my drop shot gear and as well as managing to remember everything else needed for the trip just not any jig heads so it wasn't to much of a disaster on the fishing gear front, the video front on the other hand.... not so great.

            Right so onto some fishing, this time out I was heading back to the water works at Longham, which I believe is the lower end of the Stour. As many of you know this is a little spot I really enjoy fishing as you really never know how the fishing is going to be or what is going to take your lure on any given day! This trips target though as the title suggests was the Perch, I have been seeing a whole load of reports of people having 3lb fish out quite regularly lately, of course some of these look like there was half a gallon of water in the weigh sling with them at the time of being weighed as is normally the case with some people, but some of the fish looked massive as well and as someone who personal best still sits 3oz shy of 2lb this looked like the perfect opportunity to better it! This brings me nicely onto the reason for choosing the Ned Rig, I have been watching a lot of videos and also reading a tonne of catch reports lately where big Perch have been caught using the method, this made the decision to try the rig a easy one. As I said before I was also planning on doing a youtube video which is something I have not done in a long time also so thought it would be good to do something totally new for me at the same time again. Obviously though after the days miss haps neither of these actually tool place so on to what did, once I had arrived at the venue I had a quick peak around before heading of to sign in and to my delight I was the only angler there, so once I got myself sorted and round to the river I started off on the drop shot with a small red worm imitation in a spot quite close to the first wall you come to, there is some really fast flowing water coming through there but this little section has a small branch in the water and the water behind it is pretty much slack. I have sat here on other days when I have just been for a walk and when the water is clear I have seen Perch in the spot and some big ones as well. After maybe thirty minutes of cycling through different depths and going from worms to shads and bug shaped lures nothing had worked so it was of to the next spot for me. I headed over to the area I have spoken about on this blog before, there is big outlet pipe that is constantly pumping huge quantities of water into the river, I absolutely love fishing this area as it is so full of life from millions of minnows and fry right up to Pike. I decided this time to go straight in with a shad lure a slightly larger one of around two and a half inches and a grey colouring with gold glittery flecks down the flanks, this proved to be the correct decision as with in two or three minutes I was into my first fish, it was a good starting size but not going to beat my pb so I took a few pictures and put it back without weighing it.

At this point I was excited with how the session had started as I have not had many fish from this water before and this was for me a pretty good size fish to have started on, because of the quick success I decided to stay with the same lure, I mean why wouldn't you, this though changed after another ten minutes or so with out even a knock, at this point I had wondered weather this was a lone fish and not the shoal I was looking for but at the same time o wondered if I had maybe spooked any other fish that were there? I decided this time not to move but just to change up lures, I stuck to exactly the same shape and size just went for a bright yellow and orange coloured one, this to my amazement got me a bite almost the second the weight hit the bottom, although I was happy to have gotten another bite this fish was tiny and I was over excited about the fact I may have found the lure that was going to get me the numbers I knew I was going to need to wade through to just maybe, hopefully snare the big one that I put it back with out taking a picture and got the lure straight back into the water, after maybe five minutes of working the lure back and forth around the area that was being churned up by the water from the pipe I was in to another fish, this one however go me excited as it felt a much better fish, once again though it was not the personal best I was after but I was very happy all the same.

As you can see in this picture I had a little play around with the arrangement of stuff, this is something I have started to do more often in my pictures now and I have been having a lot of fun trying to come up with new ways of showing size of fish compared to different things as well as show what gear I was using, in a way I wish I had not unhooked the fish until after the picture to show the lure I used, but at the same time I very glad I didn't because as you may be able to see here the fish jumped around a bit and wrapped itself in the line, one of the main things I'm glad about is that the fish did not come to any unnecessary harm for the sake of a photo! Fish safety is always paramount for me and I hope it is for you guys too, another thing you might be able to see in the picture is when I am lure fishing I always use a net with rubberised mesh as this reduces the chance of the hook or hooks depending on what your using being tangled and again maybe harming the fish.

          Ok so back to the fishing, I gave this lure another try to no avail, once again I played about with style of lures and the depths I was working them at and again no bites, it was now also getting a bit later on in the day and I had to go get ready for my night shift so I decided to start to pack my gear up and make my way back round to sign myself out, I was walking past the spot I tried first when something in the back of my mind said to me I hadn't tried the yellow shad in the spot so maybe I should give it a go, this turned out to be a great idea as no more than a minute of working the lure by the wall next to some reeds produced a bite, this fish was not only going to be my last fish of the day but it was also the biggest of the trip to. Once again the fish was not going to be beating my pb so I grabbed a few pictures and released it before heading off to sign out and go home.

         Thank you all once again for reading the blog and once again I hope you enjoyed it! I'm going to leave you with some more great news and something I have been hoping would happen for quite sometime now, I am very happy to say I am now officially a member of the Lure Nuts Family, these are a great group of guys that are all mad about lure fishing, they are very happy to help anyone with any questions and can be found on various social media sites the Twitter is @LureNuts and the Instagram is the same, don't forget to also search them on Facebook! Once again thank for reading hopefully see you next time.