Total tosh!

Springs looking rather trim!!!

The title says it all really! It's been total tosh this last week or so....I'm drawing blanks all over the place at present and to call myself a blanker is an understatement in the least. Monday I went over to an old haunt in Pontardulais. White Springs Fishery.....I have to confess that after catching the fish I wanted to catch from there back some 5 or 6 years ago, I had vowed I wouldn't head back over there as the place wasn't really my bag. But Jesse and I wanted to hook up as it had been some 5 years since we graced the banks together for a social and Springs seemed to be the best option for it.

A small part of me was interested to see how the venue now looked and it was with some trepidation that I drove over there to fish for 48 hours. I was met at the hut by a fella who took my cash and I went down to the swim which Jesse had booked a fortnight prior. We did the usual man hugs and chatted for a while whilst getting set up for a hopeful night ahead. The lake was apparently fishing very poorly and I have to say that this didn't fill us with much hope as the weather had turned very cold over the past few hours and frosts were likely over night.

We had a good play with the new camera equipment I had purchased and the GoPro worked fantastically well on the bait boat. We managed to get some great footage of swims, bait drops and even a little under water stuff of PVA bags melting (or not) as the case seemed! A little more on this in a moment!

There were a pair of lads to our left who looked like they were spending the night as they had a tonne of kit with them.....The only problem was they were hell bent on piling in as much bait as they could muster up!

One of the two guys kept casting a 3oz lead every few minutes and then proceeded to follow it with a kilo of particles and boilies! Crazy, giving the current weather conditions and poor fishing. They then fished until 8pm and packed up from their days fishing. What a nightmare. Despite the pillocks, the fact that the place looked like it had had a massive haircut that kind of ruined its small appeal, Jesse and I had a nice time and it was lovely to catch up with him. Many giggles had and some great grub cooked by the big man too! Thanks pal.

The first night past by with little more than a few bleeps and come morning we were scratching our heads. We did some testing on rigs and PVA in the margins and found that the cold water really causes the melt down times to increase ten fold! 

We tried many different set ups and some were worse than others. The one thing we did see was that knots are a total no no and twisting the hook through the bag causes the rig to twist horrifically. Also compressing pellets or broken boilies had a really profound effect of slowing down the break down even more! I'll upload a few vids here for you to see what I mean!

Anyway, the only bite we had in the 48hrs came to my rod fished a yard or so from the base of the island margin drop off in 5 feet of water. This produced a slow take and a small hooked fish which kited towards us hard. The fish swum around for a minute or two before seemingly removing the hook and swimming away free of my rig. On closer inspection it appears that the COG link broke or parted on the leadcore section.

Jesse tinkering with rigs!

This is the 4th or 5th time this has happened and despite super gluing it together it has still strangely failed???? I have decided that this method is just far too risky and I'm not going to consider their usage again within my angling. The idea in principle seems great but in actual fact I'm not sold on it being any better than a heavy inline lead. Make up your own minds but it's not something I will be endorsing.

After the blank session at springs I felt a river session was in order after a final barbel before the river shuts up shop. I managed to talk the wife into letting me head out on Thursday and despite the river looking absolutely spot on, it never happened there either.

I sat from first light until last light and tried 4 different swims. None of them produced more than a few twitches and I again left the water with my tail between my legs. Very disappointing to say the least. I've decided to pack my barbel gear away now until late Feb/early March and I'll probably concentrate on my Perch and Pike fishing for a while now.

What ever you guys are up to....I hope it's catching and that your all well.
Kindest regards
Keith x