A Spot of Silver Fishing at Todber

[Banana Steve]

Well Sunday the 15th arrived and I was outside my house waiting for my lift at 7:00am. Simon arrived at 7:15 our chosen venue was the match lake at Coking Farm in Dorset. Our plan was to arrive there at 8:00am, after a brief stop for supplies we made our way there. On arrival the small tackle shop was open; we were looking forward to some silver fish fishing. As we approached the tackle shop we started to notice the cars passing us that were all loaded up with match tackle, mm not looking good, on entering the shop and asking if the match lakes were free we were told that they were both booked out for matches. Poo!

The only other option was to travel just down the road to Todber Manor and hopefully get onto Park Lake or White Post. So it was back in the car and we shot over to Todber, luckily its only 5 minutes away. We just had to hope that were no matches on those lakes.

Well we were in luck this time and Park was free. So after paying our day ticket we headed down to the lake. We choose the side with the wind at our backs and we found that the side we choose was a lot calmer.






Tactics for me was to aim for the silver fish, Roach, Skimmers etc. and my chosen method was to go retro. Out came my old Traverse X 12 foot match rod and one of my homemade peacock wagglers.

With last couple of days before we went there had been some hard frosts, the bites were very slow to start with. But with perseverance the fish started to bite and it wasn’t too long before I hooked my first fish of the session. Not a huge fish but a very welcome fish; and it was also points for the species hunt.

Roach:



As the day progressed the bites started to become more positive including some nice fish taking the bait including this F1:



As you can see in the photo one of my homemade floats, I tried this one for a short period to see how the float bears up, as you can see it worked.

With a few more fish taken during the day, I managed 3 more points, 1.5 for the common carp and 1.5 for a Skimmer Beam (Silver Bream)

Skimmer:


Common Carp:



The day started to get colder and by 2pm I was ready to head home! Mind you I was still getting over a virus. So we called it a day. We both caught but to be honest it could have been better, but I wasn’t prepared for fishing Park, but we caught what we came for, so that is always a bonus.

[tjnorton]

Looks like a nice little session Steve. Still waiting to get my 1st trip of the year yet.

tj

[Greenheart]

Well done guys. Last weekend was decidedly cool for fishing....

[northern eye]

Nice winter session. Looking forward to getting back on the stillwaters soon.

[pingu]

well done with change of venue and tactics

dave