The Curse of the Brollies at Todber

[Banana Steve]

05:30 Saturday the 1St of March, lying in my bed listening the howling winds battering the roof tiles, I am thinking to myself “do I really want to go out into those winds.”

06:45 I step outside to load my car, the winds have started to drop, my sprits start to lift.

08:00 Outside Ian’s House, Winds have dropped, and I am now looking forward to the day.

09:00 Arrive at Todber manor, tickets and tackle bought.

09:10 Arrive at Wadmill Lake. Winds have re-appeared with a vengeance.


09:30 back at the Tackle shop, “Can I have a new Umbrella Please, the wind has blown mine up”


Once I had settled down and put my “New” brolly up, I managed to get comfortable to a certain point; I did find that the wind was being a pain, with strong gusts. I decided that I would fish one rod and try and different way of fishing the feeder than I normally do. Instead of fishing the paternoster rig, I fished a semi fixed rig using the Korda safety rig set up with my feeder.



I used a hair rig set up and decided to fish with soft Hookable Jelly pellets, after the first two hours I had not even had a nibble, Ian too had caught nothing. Then out of the blue my tip flew round to produce a nice common of around 5lb.



With Ian fishing way off to my right I received a text that he too had caught a common of around the same size


As the day progressed the wind did start to die down however, my bites were far few, where as Ian was catching well in the deeper water, he reported to me a Silver bream and Bronze bream for 3 points. This made me more determined to try and catch, so off came the pellet and on went double maggot, to be rewarded by a Brown Goldfish of 2lb.

30 mins later another good fish was on and to my surprise a Tench, not massive but worth 1 ½ points


As the day progressed the wind started to pick up and at 16:30 we called it a day.

17:30: Nice and warm drinking a nice pint in the local pub near Todber, a perfect end to the day. Apart from Todber has now claimed two brollies, mine and Ian’s, it is just over a year ago when Ian lost his.

[Norfolkboy]

Nice one Steve, sounds tough going.

[Fishing Forum Admin]

Well done in all that wind

[Twiddler]

Well done on the fish in such windy conditions......and a few more points, gotta watch you guys...need to catch up methink ;-)

And I'm sure you took the brolly on purpose just so you will have an excuse to tackle tart again
You knew what would happen

[fishypaul]

nice fish there steve, good catch in those conditions

[mithrandir]

Good to see the tench are feeding, must be warming up now.

Those brown goldfish are a pest in that lake, I believe the owner is keen to get them out, he told me that they are some "heinz" hybrids, but they do go some!

[Greenheart]

Nice report Steve, & yes, the wind definately made it hard work, but at least my brolly survived this time. I set up a bit further down the lake from Steve & fished the deeper water. I set up two rods. One Carp rod, baited with a pineapple pop-up boilie & the other a feeder rod, rigged up with a cage feeder & paternoster rigged hooklength with a size 18 hook, baited with a single maggot. The swim feeder was loaded with my favourite mix of red Van Den Eynde Expo groundbait mixed 50/50 with brown crumb. Things started very slowly, with the wind making it very difficult to spot bites. However gradually the wind dropped & I started to pick up a few small roach, silver bream & the occasional perch. Then I had a screaming run on the carp rod, which resulted in a somewhat tatty mirror carp of around 5-6lb. It had a few large red sores & looked distinctly unhealthy, but still gave a good account of itself.

I continued to pick up a steady stream of roach on the feeder rod until I had a very cautious bite, which I struck into & a large fish leapt straight out of the water. I assumed it was a carp, however it's fight was very poor & as it came to the net, I discovered that it was a Large & very fat Bronze Bream. I unscrewed my landing net handle & weighed this fish using the landing net head. The scales went around to just over 4 kilos, so I would guestimate that the Bream weighed around 7 - 71/2lb once the weight of the net had been deducted.

Another two species to knock off my species hunt list & another 3 points for the moonrakers. Another good if difficult day...

[Catfish Virgin (Still!)]

Nice Tench and Bream there guys. Roll on summer when I can get back on the lakes and forget all about this moving water lark!

Don't you just love it when the Bream (that thinks it's a Trout) come flying out of the water! Or maybe you're striking a tad too hard??

[perch_king]

well done lads sound like a good session

[Portland Pirate]

I really need to get myself to that lake, it sounds lovely. Want better weather though.