Same

Tuesday was horrible.  It started raining sometime in the night and didn’t stop all day.  This wasn’t enough to put me off a short trip to the club lake though.  As usual I found Carp, plenty of them cruising around a weedy bay and more crashing out in open water.  I chose to fish the latter and had a frustrating evening watching Carp swim around but refusing to touch my baits.  Apparently Bream had been spawning in the bay and I wonder if the Carp were preoccupied, feeding on the spawn?  That’s my excuse anyway.  By the time the sun disappeared I was damp and I’d had enough.

Sunday was lovely.  After a nice lay in we emerged to find a warm sunny morning with a clear blue sky.  Jobs in town made me grumpy but watching that knock out on the news cheered me up.  Carl Froch proved everything he said after the first fight was true; he did box very badly on that occasion, he did under-estimate Groves but he did win the fight and the ref did save Groves from being knocked out.  Saturday night Froch conclusively proved that he was the better fighter.

Mid afternoon saw me and Shelley arrive at the puddle.  She hasn’t caught a decent fish for a while so this should be ideal for her to get a bend in the rod and a bit of practice.  There were only a couple of anglers but two thirds of the lake was covered by duck weed so we had to share the same area, this we were able to do without encroaching.  We both fished a boilie rod, snowman set ups on helicopter rigs with a small PVA bag of boilies attached flicked out to either side then I began feeding floaters.  Within minutes Carp were slurping down the pellets and my boilie rod was ripping off.  A fish was attached for a few seconds then off again.  No worries the rod was soon back out, there were loads of fish about so it was only a matter of time.

I used to love floater fishing more than any other method of catching Carp but here it seems too easy.  In no time at all I’d managed to lose one and land two, a Common and a Mirror but neither were worth the scales.  With nothing happening on the boilie rods I wound one in for a recast at which point the other screamed into life.  Shelley picked it up and bent into a fish, she was a little out of practice at first but the clutch done the trick and a better Common was soon in the net.  Mission accomplished and with all three rods out of the water it was an easy decision to load the car and head off somewhere else.  The puddle is what it is, great to see a bend in the rod but not a place where you can just chill out and forget the world.

Early evening saw us arrive at the Marsh, settling into my favourite corner, a spot that is comfortable, familiar and makes me feel confident.  We shared three rods; a helicopter snowman rig cast to the reeds, a chod and pop up whacked to the treeline and pop up corn fished in open water.  The areas were baited liberally with pellets and chopped boilies, then we sat and chilled out in the sun.

There was one other angler at the far end of the lake but he was out of sight so it was if we had the place to ourselves.  We spent a lovely evening relaxing, reading, listening to bird song and watching Grebes feed their young. I’m particularly pleased to see two juveniles have survived the attentions of Otters this spring.  A few fish bubbled, there was the odd decent splash and as the sun began to sink the surface came alive with Rudd.  By the time we started tidying up the bats were out and no fish had interrupted our relaxation.  This didn’t matter one bit, the time spent blanking in this wild piece of Suffolk was much more enjoyable than the hour catching at the puddle.