Epic prawns!

Joel caught some nice fish including his first carp of 2014

The weather has taken its toll on my winter fishing this year and although I really wanted to spend my colder months chasing river Pike and Chub its just not happened due to the endless floods that have occurred. Lets hope they subside soon and provide some respite for those poor individuals who've been worst hit with flooded homes and businesses.

The lakes have been fishing a little harder in the wet weather now too. I spent a long cold day down our club lake with my buddy Joel for just one small perch and a Carp each from the margins. All taken on glugged prawns.

A stunning winter common

I'm still after a big old stripey and I nearly caught one this week. I ventured down the club lake early on in the day to meet Gary and Colin there. We had a good chin wag before starting off and I chose to fish the float to my right, just off a small bed of reeds and Gary took the next swim along to do the same. Colin tried a swim near to the islands.

It was a sincerely tough old day out there and very few fish were caught during daylight hours. Gary and I were probably in one of the better spots for this time of year and despite the cold wind being off our backs, it was difficult to get any sort of really good bites. I started on a size 6 hook with a huge tiger prawn and ended up scaling right down to a size 20 and a single red maggot, just to get something that resembled a hittable bite!

Just a small one!

Lovely evening

Eventually this technique started to score and I started to grab a few nice bream to around 5lbs. These made up for the fact that pretty much nothing else was showing any interest in our baits. Gary started to find a few skimmers as well and it wasn't long before the pair of us had taken about 15 bream each.

Gary disappeared around 5pm and Colin left too. He managed a nice mirror of around 8lbs on surface fished bread of all things! In February! I stayed on a bit longer and fished into dark....

As the light faded I switched back up to a size 6 hook again and switched back over to a nice big tiger prawn glugged in our wonderful River Monster Amino compound with DMPT. I started to introduce a few loose prawns and some maggots around two spots I fancied might well hold a perch or two. I lost my first fish to a tree root and quickly tackled up with a replacement hook length. Within a few minutes I was cradling my first of the session at around a pound and a quarter. 

Glugged prawns did the trick

A bit better at a pound and a half!

After a couple more casts I decided to try my other spot further to the right of the swim. This prompted a very quick bite and I was hooked into a very large fish....It came straight to the surface to my right hand side and I could see it was a huge perch of well over 4lbs! I couldn't believe my eyes! What happened next brought me to tears....As I was playing the fish it became entangled in someones discarded strong mono that they hard broken off in the reeds. I just couldn't budge the fish and as she rolled around trying to shake the hook, my hook link parted company with me and the fish.

I fell back in disgust and felt absolutely sick in the pit of my stomach.....gutted! I retied a hook length and tried again near the hot spot. A few minutes passed by and I received another perch take on the prawns. This was no where near as big but another pound and a half fish made things seem a little less strained.

A nice 13lb common to end the day!

I decided it was time to pack up so I placed my float tight into the margin in front of me while I packed up the rest of my gear. With in seconds I was into another fish, this was a carp though. A good scrap ensued on my light weight kit and it took a few minutes before I subdued the fish. Around 13lbs and a nice common to end the session.

I'm really hoping that the weather subsides a little soon as I have the want to get out and catch a few nice Grayling on my Nymphing kit. I have a nice box full of nymphs ready to cast out on my gorgeous 9 foot 5 weight fly rod! Can't wait!