Sometimes it is worth the walk, Todber Good Friday

mithrandir · #1 04-09-2007, 10:03 AM

Finally got a chance to sit down and write a quick report of our fishing trip on Friday.

Claudia and I set off for Todber to see if this warm weather had stared the carp feeding or not.

Arrived early to see a bank full of bivvies, was going to be a busy session. I had previously planned to take the long walk to the far end of the lake, the deepest part, as I felt it might be a good move, seeing the number of people it was Hobsons Choice, we were down the far end.

I started setting the gear up whilst Claudia went to wait for the shop to open and buy the tickets ( and a bit of tackle too knowing her!)

Claudia had the swim one up from me and was casting to the bar just in front of the island.

Well by 8.45 I had both rods in the water, small boilies over pva bags of pellet, and was settling down to a well earned smoke. I was not even half way through it when my alarm burst into life and shortly after I had a 5lb common carp posing for photo's on my unhooking mat.

Claudia had only one of her rods set up and in the water and whilst she was setting up her tackle on the second rod her first one burst into life and in came a 7 lb mirror, she was too busy to photo this one!

That was the story for the next two hours, I never managed to finish a single smoke as I was interrupted every time I settled back down. When the guy from the fishery came round to see how we were doing he said that the lads
up in the bivvies had said we were bagging up down in the corner. I managed to land 11 fish between 3 and 7 pounds and Claudia managed about 6, in those first two hours then someone turned the biting switch off on the fish, the whole lake went quiet and I finally got my smoke and a coffee!

Some of these were beautifully scaled.

The rest of the day was slow, I was catching a fish an hour until we went home, one was a 9 1/2 lber ( I cursed a

bit with that as I wanted another double), but at 3 pm I was rewarded by a cracking bite near the outlet pipe for the lake, it was quite weedy there and I had been hunting for a clear spot and must have found it as when it took it stayed deep and kept stripping line against my clutch, it was a real bit of sport as it then swam under then over my other line to tangle me up, dived for the reeds near my swim, and belted off as it came near the net. It was nearly 10 minutes of fight before I got it to break surface and saw it was a decent size, and a few minutes later it was in the net, with me sweating as I had only got a 6lb hooklink on, weighed in at 11 1/2 lbs, my second biggest fish ever and probably my best fight.

Claudia was not so lucky with her swim, she manage 8 carp one bream and a black crucian/ brown goldfish/mongrel!!

Her best fish of the day was this 8lb common

I ended the day with 18 carp and one bream and a total bag of 94 lb. not a bad day at all, better than most on the lake, as we walked back the lads who were still bivied up were saying they had caught about 10 fish each so far in the 24 hours they had been there, one had taken a 20lber out overnight but it was definitely the hot spot down on my swim.

Really was a Good Friday for me!

The bream we caught seemed to be ready to spawn as they were covered in white nodules, something neither of us has seen before so here are some photo's for anyone else who has not seen it before

bream

spawning bream