Clivey pond, an un-expected catch....

Greenheart · #1 05-11-2008, 06:48 AM

Set off bright & early yesterday morning to my local fishery, Clivey Pond to try for a Tench for the species hunt. I arrived at about 6.45am to find two people already fishing there & not much being caught...

The general concensus of opinion was that the fish were not used to the oxygenator pump that had been turned on due to the hot weather & which can be seen in the first pic...
Also the carp were having a mass spawning orgy in the bankside reeds & were definately not interested in feeding.
I mixed a little groundbait, added a few free samples of sweetcorn & liquidised bread & baited up tight to the island to try & attract the Tench.
Then fishing my pole at about 9 metres, I carefully placed my sweetcorn baited rig as close to the overhanging bushes as possible.

Forthe first hour or so, i could'nt get a bite. I tried both Sweetcorn & Breadflake. Nothing....
At about 8am, the on-site tackle shop opened. So I nipped in & invested in a half pint of mixed maggots. Back to my swim, re-baited with maggot & was instantly into a succession of Bream, Rudd, Roach & the occasional Perch.

I was even getting a few pasty size Carp. Obviously one's that were too young to spawn. However I did pick up a couple of better speciemens up to about 9lb which were a bit of a handful on 3lb line & size 14 hooks. Thankfully my Pole elastic did it's job & no fish were lost. These were all returned directly to the water, as Carp are not allowed to be retained in nets here.

At around 10am I recieved a phonecall from Bananna Steve, to say he was unable to come. I think he had a few too many Bananna's last night....

Then I had a suprise. I had shallowed up my rig to about 10" below the surface to try & catch one of the large Rudd that were grabbing the maggots that I was loosefeeding. I got a real hit & run take & pulled in one of these....

My first ever stillwater Chub. A nice little fish of about 1lb.

I had'nt realised that the water held these until Claudia (Twiddler) caught one on our last visit here a couple of weeks back. When I spoke to the fishery owner about it, he told me that he had introduced 18 of them to the water last season, but that none had been caught. Well by 5pm when I decided to pack up, i'd caught five of em... Bonus, I did'nt get my target species, Tench, but I did get an un-expected 1.5 species hunt points for the Chub....
All in all a cracking days fishing. I'd estimate that I had around 60lb of fish including the Carp, so all in all, a great days fishing.

Then it was back home (A two minute drive away) for an evening Barbecue & a few pints of Cider with some friends...

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