Morgans Pond 18/02/06

[Pross]

Well, I finally got to wet a line for the first time this year on Saturday. Having tried to decide whether to go after the cod or settle for a relaxing spot of coarse fishing on my local associations water my decision was made by baby sitting duties in the evening so I went off to Morgans Pond for a few hours.

When I went to retrieve my bait from (I thought) and air tight seat box I was greeted by the dreaded sight of lots of holes in the bags of ground bait and boilies. I went in to clear out the mess and nearly s**t myself as a large mouse jumped out of the box. I still can't work out how he got in there but he must have been in there for at least two months since my last trip and had been gorging himself on high protein bait for that time. By time I'd cleaned the box out, disinfected it and ditched all my sea rigs, spare line and floats that the super rodent had destroyed (you'd never think such a small creature could leave such a flood of liquid!) I had about 3 hours to get to the tackle shop and fish.

The reports for Morgans were good with over a ton of roach recently introduced to the water and there a several thousand small carp although all the large carp died some months back (130+ double figure fish) and the association is wisely waiting before restocking. I set up 3 rods, 2 carp rods one with a method feeder and pepperami as bait the other with an open ended feeder and sweet corn plus a float rod on which I had a 4 no. 4 waggler float and triple mixed coloured maggots on a size 16 hook and 2lb line. With the bottom rods out and left on their rests I set about getting the depth right on the float which was finally set slightly over depth at around 7 feet. Nothing happened for the first half an hour or so as I played about with the depth and located the drop off on a pond I hadn't fished before but then I started getting bites and pulled in my first (and biggest) roach of the day which was around the 3/4lb to 1lb (photo didn't come out ). Next chuck I had another which dropped off and then lots of missed bites before this one which was about 10oz. Another 4 followed before all too soon I had to pack up. While packing up the association match secretary came by and stopped for a chat and on reeling in to see how I had my float shotted he pulled another similar fish in with it.

All in all a highly enjoyable 2 hours fishing, contrary to the weather reports it was a beautiful sunny day with no wind and my biggest problem was seeing the float against the brightness of the water. Ended with 6 roach of between about 8oz and 14oz, nothing on the bottom rods which was hardly surprising in the one instance as my method mix had failed to dissolve and I wound it in 2 hours later in the same state I'd cast it out .

I'll be back there as soon as I can to chase the good pike that are in there (up to 19lb recently) enjoying the delights on the newly stocked roach. Apparently the fishing is the best it has been in years now that there are no carp anglers bivvying there for days at a time chucking in 10's of kgs of particle baits etc. but that's a whole new contraversial subject!

[Old Smoothound]

Well Done Pross

One heavy weight Mouse about now then, after eating high protein bait that is

Some nice roach there mate.

[Fishing Forum Admin]

Well done mate and great read

Points added plus record set

[Pross]

Hey hey, I'm a record holder!

[pingu]

well done mark, excellant report
watch out mice love landing nets as well!!

[baitmaster]

nice roach there and a good read

tightlines
baitmaster

[Norfolkboy]

Well done, always enjoy your reports Mark, keep it up

[fishypaul]

nice report mate,glad you got out at last.

you should have kept the mouse as livebait

[Pross]

Yeah, probably good for catching cat fish I'll get my coat!

[Greenheart]

Nice report Pross. I,ve had a few problems with mice chewing holes in my keepnet in the past. Morgans pond, is that the lake at Newport? The name rings a bell.