First blank of the season

[Portland Pirate]

I had planned to go for a days trout fishing at Revels. I managed to bag a whole day on the lake for just 16 quid on an ebay auction. Only problem was they had double booked me, so the Trout fishing was out the window.

As myself and DBDB had fishing passes we decided to increase our score on the species list. We had been informed that Revels had just introduced 100 small Barbel into their main lake, and the previous few days the silver fishing had been very good.

When we arrived we were greated by a cold easterly wind, that seemed to have put the fish right back into winter mode.
As we really wanted to target some of the more common species jus to build up our score, we opted to fish the aptly named desperation lake. As its name suggests you should be able to at least avoid a blank on this lake.

Despite having some nice maggots and fishing extremely lite neither myslef or DBDB were able to get a single fish on the bank. I was missing quite a few bites, which I later realised was down to my own stupidity and lack of proper set up. Instead of setting the float depth correctly by plumbing the bottow, I just took a guess and ended up spending several hours fishing over depth. Hence the bites but lack of hook ups.

Still I think it does to have a blank now and then to re-focus your technique. Well thats my excuse any way.