PB's and tangles!

Pross · #1 05-02-2006, 01:38 PM

Having been a good boy and done a few jobs in the garden over the weekend I was given a pass to go out after completing my chores yesterday afternoon.

By time I'd finished and got to the tackle shop they were closed and I was left with just sweetcorn as bait. Oh well, I thought, at least I could get a few hours peace and quiet and I might get lucky so of I went to Morgan's Pond, Newport. It was much quieter there than I had feared with lots of free pegs to fish near the car park and I chose a peg with the breeze in my face which is how I prefer it. I set up with an open ended feeder on my carp rod which is a bit heavy for the job but the only rod I have and used corn in the feeder and a couple of pieces of corn on a hair rig, cast it to the edge of some lillies and left it on the rest. I then set up my float rod, plumbed the depth and cast out using a 4 bb float about 3m out. Nothing much happened in the first hour, not even a sniff and then the guy next to me packed up and gave me his leftover maggots. I switched to double maggot on a size 16 hook and immediately got a bite which I hit and in came a roach of about 6oz. I recast and within minutes my float lifted and started moving against the wind, I struck and brought a bream of about 2lb towards the bank only to lose it a couple of feet out (1.5 points lost). I cast back out and almost immediately had another bite, there was no way I was losing another so I struck hard just as it must let go of the bait and my float flew back over my head and into a tree behind!

. I quickly set back up and cast out again and shortly had another roach on the bank, slightly bigger at about 8oz. I was expecting to get roach after roach by now without the bream I needed for points but then I hooked and landed this

Which I originally thought was a bream but on inspection of the photo I think is possibly a hybrid? After a while my bite alarm went on the other rod which now had a maggot and corn cocktail on the hook and as I never get anything on the feeder I looked around angrily to see what duck or goose and set it off but all I saw was my line coming back towards me! I tightened up and struck to feel a decent fish on the end and eventually this beauty came to the bank

a lovely bream worth weighing and which my scales recorded as 4lb 2oz which was not only my pb bream but my pb freshwater fish

. I continued missing bites on the float as the sun and surface ripple made the float hard to spot and got in another argument with a tree while casting and then my alarm went again. I reeled in another bream which if anything looked bigger, I had forgotten my landing net and wasn't prepared to lose it so brought it right to the edge and went to handline it the foot onto the bank only for the hook link to snap!

I fished on with the wind getting colder and light starting to fade slightly and although the fish were leaping and breaking surface all over the place and a heron was happily catching at will a few pegs away the bites had dried up a bit. Just as I was starting to think about packing up my float lifted and took off gently across the lake and, ever hopeful it was an early tench, I struck only for the float to come back at me again and wrap itself around my rod. I took that as the signal to call it a day and started packing up when my alarm went again. I struck into another decent feeling fish but this time it won the race to the lillies and I got snag and broken. All in all it was a good three hours of fun, a new pb and 1.5 points but it could have been even better!

pingu · #2 05-02-2006, 01:54 PM

sounds a great session mark and cracking report
guess big thanks must go to the guy with the extra maggots as well

well done

Greenheart · #3 05-02-2006, 01:55 PM

Cracking Report & Photos Pross. I think the fish in the top pic is definately a Silver or Skimmer Bream (Blicca bjoerkna) & the bottom one a Common or Bronze Bream (Abramis brama) Not sure if both these count in the species hunt, although Dan did say that we were going by the BRFC lists now.