A real struggle

Tips down and out the way of rowers!

The time had come for another trip up the Wye....The weather has changed slightly and the wet weather I could see coming in from our lounge window. I waited and waited for the next bit of free time and finally I had an opening to get out and fish.

I decided to get out on the Sunday evening for a few hours and then rough it over night before re-starting a fresh in the morning. The Sunday evening produced little more than a wet set of clothes, damp chair and a head ache in the form of the Rowing clubs efforts to grab every second of the day into complete darkness.....causing major issues for the anglers fishing.

I reset my traps on the Monday morning and fished hard for 5 hours in the one usually productive spot without so much as a bite. I decided on a move and headed for another likely upstream spot. This heralded absolutely nothing at all as well...Oh well, another move further upstream towards the end of the beat and some slightly shallower water. 3 hours later and i'm still devoid of a bite.

A final move saw m sat on the little River Monnow. The bank side was pretty much undisturbed and had clearly been very under fished this season. The water had a nice pace to it and a little bit of colour too, All looked spot on for a bite to be honest. Another 4 hours passed and in came the heavy rain. I decided to call it a day and another very blank session.

My next opportunity arrived when Ryan rang me with an invite for the evening. Things looked great for a bite and the river had dropped a few inches and still had a decent colour to it....It had to be right this time surely?

Well, it bloody wasn't that's for sure as we sat for the best part of 4 hours with the only bite coming from a foul hooked fish on one of Ryan's rods....this produced a staggering first run followed by a ping and a few scales being his only reward. Very frustrating....This being topped off by endless piles of large beds of floating weed and debris. This proved to be most problematic with the rods only being able to sit still for a few minutes at a time.

The Monnow looked spot on but still produced nothing!!

With the river now up over 2.10m it's likely to not fish much more this season for the barbel and chub. I'm now thinking about getting my pike fishing hat back on. I feel kind of sad to see the back end of the barbel fishing for this year and I kind of thought I would have better results than that of the 2013 season. Saying that last season I caught 64 barbel including 9 doubles and this year I've had exactly 60 and just 2 doubles....This all down in my opinion to the varied venues I have fished this season rather than just my club stretch.

I'm going out this week all being well to try my hand at an overnighter on a local little water and try out some new baits etc. I'm hoping the carp there haven't switched off for the winter too! Tight lines to you all and I hope your still all catching a few worth while fish!

Keith x

New friends and even a fish or two!

First perch of the Autumn for me

What a change in the weather all of a sudden eh? Wow! Last week we were bathing in the delights of a late burst of summer sun with over night temperatures well into the upper teens....this week we've had the first frosts of the year. What a difference a few days makes. Last nights clear sky and full moon saw a cold, dew coated ground and needless to say cold hands and feet.

I had a short evening session down at my club lake on Monday after picking Natasha up from school. I took the minimalist amount of kit and set up a single AAA split shot rig and pretty much free lined a large tiger prawn over some maggots and pellets for a big Perch. I chose a favourite little spot next to a nice set of think reeds where the stripeys tend to hold up in wait for an unsuspecting fry to swim past.

Unintended but welcome

Things went quite well from the off and almost straight away I was into a nice perch of just under a pound. I lost a good one that I think was well over 2lbs to a hook pull on the very next cast. I kept applying the bait and slowly tempted more fry into the swim which was followed by the obligatory perch. I managed 7 in the end with the biggest going 1lb 5oz. I also had a couple of small carp and lost a much bigger one. The eels then moved in and after four of them I decided it was time to call it a night!

Tuesday evening came around fast and I had a pre-planned trip in the diary with a client up the River Wye. I dropped by his house at 4.45pm and we headed up to the river. Knowing only a little bit about each other, it was a great opportunity to get to know each other better and hopefully even catch a fish or two. I'm always dubious of people in this day and age, so with Mathew coming from Thornhill in Cardiff, I made sure I went tooled up and wore my stab vest just in case he tried to rob me or something???? lol On a serious note and joking aside, I thoroughly enjoyed the guys company and I look forward to many more sessions with him over the coming months.

Nice little chub to start proceedings

We stopped on route for the obligatory Costa Lota Coffee and by 5.45pm we were making our first casts into the river. The boat traffic wasn't too heavy but as usual there were a few numpties who were adamant they needed to be just inches off the bank. Anyway, by the time we were finally ready to take on the Barbel, the boats had all bar cleared off. Mathew went slightly down stream of me and fished a single rod and a feeder set up with a River Monster boilie on board. I went for a feeder set up on one and a straight lead and pva bag on the other. Both on the ever reliable River Monster.

It took about an hour before the first bit of action and that came from a nice 4lb chub on the straight lead set up. At least we hadn't blanked I thought. Another half hour passed by with no action and just as Matt and I were talking about carp and barbel and going through a few phone snaps etc. Off went the feeder rod with a superb take that stripped line from the reel. I lent into a powerful fish that kited hard down stream and across the river.

3 times i've seen this fish in 7 months.... She loves River Monster Boilies!!!

It took a good five minutes to finally subdue her and I unhooked another beautiful River Wye Barbel. My 59th fish of the season so far. It was a long looking fish with a very obvious yellow blemish just under the right side of it's cheek. After looking at the pics this morning, it's a fish I caught on the last day of the season at 10lb 3oz and Tash had it at 8lb 10oz on Sept 5th. This time she went 8lb 6oz.

The final bit of action for the evening came a short time later with a slightly better fish of 9lb 1oz finding the net and finishing our lovely sociable evening off. Mathew unfortunately blanked which was strange as he was down stream of my rods and pretty much on a banker spot that I wanted him to fish??? Unfortunate as he fished hard and well.....There's always next time though and despite whooping his arse, he's promised me a re-match soon on one of his stretches....I can see this being a good chance for him to give me a good thrashing!

Booooooommm....9lb 1oz to finish off a tough evening! Well happy with that!

Anyway, lots of interesting stuff going on with the business, with a couple of new field testers coming on board and a few new baits to test as well. I hope your all well and make sure you get out there and enjoy what the final part of Autumn has to offer before the weather gets too bad to get out there!

Tight lines
Keith x

Great times & social unwinds!

Hi all.....

Busy few days in the office again with some lovely orders going out. Thanks to all those who've continued to support myself and the business through it's recent upheavals. Thankfully things seem to be settling down nicely now and stuff is flowing much better. I'm hoping to add a little bit more new kit to the web store in the coming weeks so please bare with me a bit longer on that front.

Beautiful Somerset skyline at dusk!

Fishing has been very interesting this last week with a great social session I've had lined up with my good friend Keith Parris, who I haven't seen properly for almost 3 years. Which is too long for good mates to be apart. It had been planned for some time but we just never seemed to get the opportunity to get the free time to actually plan a specific day and time to meet. I had a trip to see one of my field testers penned in for last week but had to pull out at last minute due to work ties and other commitments but this week had to be done due to the serious lack of opportunity that KP and I had to meet up.

Good banter between best friends.

We opted to fish a venue I had been to some 7-8 years ago in Somerset. Emerald Pools. A very pretty little complex of 4 ponds with lots of lovely corners and spots to fish to. The main specimen lake, Jade Pool, around 2 acres in size used to be a kind of horseshoe shape with a big island section across the middle and a reasonable stocking of quality good sized fish to low thirties. On arrival on Sunday I was amazed to find the place had been re-dug twice and now looked totally different!

I wasn't overly surprised by the reasons for the changes but they were possibly a little too dramatic for my liking....The nice little nooks and crannies were now pretty much just a square hole where everyone casts towards the middle and catches each others lines. Not my idea of fun! But, we paid our money and took our chances. The venue was very busy on arrival but many of the anglers were just leaving as we rocked up with our session gear.

Biggest of the session at 16lb 1oz....

There were all walks of life around the ponds and all age groups. My main concern was for the group of 5 Polish anglers that were taking up almost half the pool with a good half dozen very widely spread roads which had no regard for the other anglers on the complex! Never mind they were to leave shortly after our arrival and so did everyone else for that matter. Every one there was telling a similar story though and that was that it was fishing very tough and only a handful of carp had been caught over the last few weeks! This was despite what I could see in front of everyone....bubbles galore and feeding activity everywhere!!!!!

Colourful characters outnumbered by tiddlers.

We opted to fish a pair of swims which afforded good access to the majority of the ponds main bulk of water and also access to the free to use huts which were a great addition in my opinion. This gave us the use of running water and a light, so we could wash up dirty pans etc after dinner. We3 took our time getting set up and it was almost dark before we finally got properly sat down to a fresh steak curry cooked by my fair hand. KP had a fish straight away and at 5 pounds although pretty it was never going to break any records. Unfortunately this was going to set the tone for pretty much the next 48 hours!

My first fish was a little bit more tasty....a stunning ghosty common of 16lb 1oz found the net from a spot I had liberally baited just to my left at a rod length out. The other rods were a little slower to kick off but soon I was into a fish a chuck and I struggled for 3 hours to keep a rod in the water! The more bait I gave them, the more I caught!

KP got in on the action despite seeming to have a lesser swim.

These fish were so dam hungry that it was silly! I have to say that I felt there needed to be a vast reduction in the stock levels in there for a supposed specimen pond....There were crazy levels of fish in there and to add more fish to it was just unbelievable in my opinion! We're all fishery managers at heart and would all do things differently but a reduction in stock density would allow room for growth of fish and not just a whole pond full of oxygen starved, mouth battered fish. Some of which I felt were showing real signs of problems starting to occur.

Anyhow, gripe over, the fishing was nothing short of continuous and after 19 fish in the first 6 hours fishing, I was starting to wonder why so many people were complaining about the lack of action??? I can only put it down to poor angling as we had no problems at all. I tried to get a little sleep on Sunday night but my alarms were sounding with an almost continuous tone. By morning I was well into the late 20's with about 6 of those fish scraping double figures. Not really what I was after to be honest but lovely to see plenty of action regardless. I decided to up the anti and put on a size 2 curved hook and a double 16mm Fireball boilie with a long hair. This was an attempt to hopefully trigger les bite activity from the smaller fish.

One of the more attractive larger fish I encountered.

My actions were little more than an effort and within minutes I was again playing another 5-8lb common. Followed by yet another......etc etc etc etc What did you have to do to get the bigger fish out. It really was like playing a numbers game in there. KP managed to bag a few small ones but nothing over double figure for him at all. I finished the 48 hr session on 37 or 38?? I forget??? Could have been more to be honest, especially with the bream too.

The fishing was manic but peaceful and to be honest it was just great to catch up with my good friend who it had been far too long apart from. Nice weather and great company make for an even greater time. I'm now struggling to see an opportunity for my next adventure due to many family commitments and I think it's probably going to be at least 3 weeks now before I get some proper free time to get back out there and give things a real bash before the winter starts to arrive. I have a huge buzz this year for the Pike season and although 1st October is the official start to proceedings, it still feels far to warm and summery to be thinking about predators! For the present I still have Barbel, Chub and Carp on the agenda!

Tight lines friends x