Day out at Gold Valley

[mithrandir]

Due to the recent light rain that has been falling in some parts of the country we changed our plans for Saturdays fishing from river ( too much flow and dirt ) to a commercial. Claudia and I have a friendly match in a couple of months and we thought we might as well go there and do a bit of bait testing on the venue so as we might have a bit of an edge on the day.

So bright and early on Saturday ( whatever happened to a lie in on the weekends?) we packed up the Tackle Wagon and headed off to Gold Valley Lakes to do a days puddle chucking on the Syndicate Lake.

We arrived just after 7am and did the usual bit of retail therapy in the tackle shop ( new landing net for Claudia this week, bait for me! ). There was a strange yelow disc in the sky and a dryness in the air that made me remember those far off days of summer that my approaching years and senility make it seem like not 12 months ago.

We walked down to the far end of the near bank and set up in adjacent swims, the far bank was going to be used for a match between 11 and 4. My tactics for the day were to fish two rods ( a difficult thing here as things can get hectic ), lefthand rod was going to be traditional carp techniques, ground bait, cage feeders, boilies, whilst the righthand was going to be the method told to Claudia, ie. PVA bag of fishery pellets and a pellet as hook bait.

The Righthand rod was set up with 8lb mainline, size 10 Drennan hair rig hook to nylon pre bought, a bait band tied through the hair and an 11 mm pellet slipped through the band, a small PVA mesh of mixed 4mm, 8mm and 11mm pellets. This bait was cast out on a running leger rig using an 18g weight about two thirds of the way to the mid lake rope ( this is a match lake and
a rope with floats on runs down the middle to stop you casting to the other half of the lake ).

The bait hit the water at 8.05am and I started to set up my second rod.

Whilst setting up the second rod I heard the baitrunner clutch running and realised I had first fish of the day on, after a spirited fight this 7lb mirror was in the net and lying on my unhooking mat on the boards of my swim.



The morning was going to continue like that, my right hand rod on the pellets went off every 15 minutes, with a couple of hours around lunch when it slowed down for a bit.

The lefthand rod was set up in many different ways during the day, hair rigged boillies, short or long hooklinks, cage feeders. All the time this rod was very slow at producing, although at

9am the first take on there was whilst I was playing a fish on the other rod, with a little help from Claudia ( who said " I told you not to fish 2 rods" ) who held the fish on the line whilst I landed and hooked the first one. So a double header of a 7lb mirror and an 8lb common ( sorry no time to take a picture of two on the bank ).

Later in the day Claudia got into a double header, whilst I was helping her one of my rods went off so I dealt with her one, she continued to play the other in ( I will let her tell that story ) whilst I dived over to my rod and started to play it as my second rod burst into life, 4 fish on the bank in 5 minutes, oh what a peaceful, gentle, relaxing days fishing we had.

At noon as the weather was beginning to cloud over, the match was rolling on the other bank and the fishing was a bit slow I hooked into a 10 1/2lb common, when I retrived this I found a foul hooked death rig in it's side. The poor think had been snagged by a size 6 hook on braid connected to a method feeder on a boom held onto 40 foot of what looked like 30lb shock leader with a fixed backstop. The idiot that put this in the water could not tie knots properly either as the shock leader end had the distinctive pig tail twists where the knot had come undone. Wound on it's side was looking quite nasty so I treated in with some Klinik and took a quick photo whilst the treatment took effect. Not a gory one I got the pretty side.



here are a couple of pictures of the lake showing the matchmen hard at work






Here is one of the prettier fish caught



And here is the smallest catch of the day for me, a first for me too as I think this s a proper Crucian, small, high backed and no whiskers.





My outcome for the day was that the pellets were by far the best bait, so much so that I ended up dropping the other tactics and using pellet baits on both rods, one in the middle and one in the margins. The margins here seemed to really switch on after lunch with me catching an 11lb common not 3 feet from my swim, and hooking into a couple of really good sized fish that broke off my hook link right near the end ( I seem to get a bit clumsy playing fish at the end of the day as I get tired, lost 3 all day, 2 in the last 30 minutes fishing ).

My total for the day ( 8 am to 7pm ) was 31 fish in the net to a grand total of 148 3/4 lb.

With a day ticket price of £15 for 2 rods for the day that made it about 10 pence a pound for carp, cheaper than a Polish deli!


Things have come a long way from that summer Saturday that Claudia and I started fishing for the very first time and the total excitement of landing that first 4 oz brown trout. It was exactly 1 year ago today.

[Fishing Forum Admin]

Great read and sounds like a lot more thinking going on the fishing tatics - well done

[Norfolkboy]

Well done Mike, sounds very hectic!!!

[fishypaul]

what a superb days fishing mike,first class report and pics mate

[perch_king]

well done mate nice report and pics

[pingu]

sounds a top day there mike

dave

[Twiddler]

My set up was slightly different to Mikes.....as I had planned to fish on rod at the time ( I learnt my lesson last time I fished the lake and almost ended up loosing my rod).

I had one float rod and a feeder rod with me...so I decided to do a bit of roach bashing to start off with.

I set up the float rod with a 3AAA Waggler, 5lb mainline, 3lb hook length, size 16 hook, single red maggot as bait.

During the roach catching I noticed that some nice species carp were cruising the surface, so I decided to try a rig out I saw in the AT the other day.
Off came the waggler, replaced by a bubble float tight to the mainline,I drilled a whole in to a pop up cork ball threaded it on to the 4 lb hook length, secured it with a float stop on both sides.
That way I could move the cork up and down the hook length to adjust the depth I wanted to fish.
For example, moving the cork ball closer to the hook, the bait would sit closer to the surface, moving the cork ball back, it'll allow the bait to sink deeper in to the water.

I used a hair rig with a size 14 hook, a 8mm pellet for bait....I managed to cast out close to where i saw the fish cruising and within 3 mins I had the first bite
A 3.5lb common


Sadly I lost the rig in a snag on my second cast and I changed my set up back to a waggler, as I only had one bubble float with me, this time however I put a hair rig on with a size 14 hook. Left the float rod to rest and changed over to my feeder rod.
Simple set up, 8lb mainline, running ledger, size 12 hook on a hair.....8mm pellet covered in dynamite halibut paste as bait with a small mesh bag full of freebies.
I cast out about 13yrds to my right, where I spotted some feeding bubbles.

I carried on fishing like that all morning and it produced me a good amount of common and mirrors between 4-7lb and my first double of the day


A 11lb common

I was gutted when my brand new landing net handle broke bringing the fish in...(complained to the tackle shop, guy said it was a pretty common fault on those handles and fixed it properly) lucky I still had my old one with me, which I used for the rest of the day, to let the glue on the other one dry.

Things went a little quiet in the afternoon so I decided to put my float rod out too....I put a pellet on the hair and fished it about 2.5inch over depth in the margin, which I had been feeding all day.
To be honest I didn't expect to catch there until the early in the evening, so you can imagine my surprise when my rod bend over (lucky I had my clutch set very light) and the reel started to scream.
I had to play this one very gentle and carefully as I was on very light tackle....so I was fully in concentration when I hear my baitrunner screaming off.....Oh F*** sprang to mind....Mikeeeeeee HELLLLLLLP I than screamed.

Soon he was by my side playing and landing a fish on my feeder rod....while I was still playing the one on my float rod. Next we heard Mikes rod screaming off....how inconsiderate of the fish lol.

It took me a good 8-10 mins before I finally landed my second double of the day

a 14lb mirror


I was chuffed to bits that I didn't loose this one, specially being on light tackle and the carp in that lake go off like steam trains....I bet the lake owner puts speed in to the pellets lol

Anyway, I decided to put the float rod to rest and carry on fishing the feeder rod....I kept fishing and feeding the margins and had a few more good fish out there.

I started to pack up around 18.30hrs, as the weather was just about to change...Mike carried on to get one last catch to make it a 140lb bag.....but lost a very good size one last minute.

Oh well....save that one for the match

[fishypaul]

well done claudia some lovely fish

[Rob M]

Well done guys, great reports and pictures!

[Norfolkboy]

Well done Claudia