Cheeky day session!

With the new year upon us, I was desperate to get out and break the duck early on, as last year it took a couple of months and after a string of bad results it had really begun to become a thorn in my side. This year however I decided I was going to play it safe and set forth to a venue which posed more chance of a bite and after a brief chat with regular fishing companion Ian. We came up with the idea of giving one of the coarse lakes at Raker Lakes a go, although I had fished the venue’s specimen water, Kingfisher Lake, in the past I had never set foot on the other lakes. As I packed the gear the night before I ensured I had plenty of options packed.

We arrived at the fishery a tad later than 7:30am and after a quick chat with the bailiff, we found out that the lake we had in mind to fish was being occupied for a match. He then put us in the direction of the Highbank Lake and revealed that peg 15 had been doing the business lately, so with post haste we loaded the gear and trundled round to the swims. Ian was in an either confident mood or good one, as he gave me the pick of the swims and I jumped into peg 15 and he plonked himself next door in peg 16.

Both of us had absolutely no information on the lake, therefore it was a clean pallet and I decided to adopt tactics that I would usually use when I approach well stocked venues in winter. Just before I rigged my rods up both me and Ian had a quick look in the bins that were next to us. We were basically trying to gauge what had previously been used recently and it would hopefully give us a bit of direction when it came to deciding what hook baits we were going to play with first. Both bins were full of empty sweetcorn tins, perfect! A single DNA PB wafter which had happily been soaking in some NuttaS food dip for the past couple of weeks, was soon dispatched roughly halfway out on the narrow lake. Within a second a felt a relatively firm donk and I was taken aback by how shallow it was, I set the rod down and began to decipher what was going to go on the other rod.

On the other rod I decided to go for one of my all-time favourite winter baits, the underrated spicy pepperami! I snipped a small chunk off and drilled into the bait and wedged a cork insert into the bait just to take the weight of the hook off. Despite being drilled into this poor old piece of pepperami hadn’t been finished with yet, I removed the outer skin of the bait to allow the bait’s oily contents to flush out once it hit the water. If that wasn’t enough I gave the bait a quick dunk in the NuttaS food dip before casting out. I placed the rig slightly closer in compared to the now right rod and with a softer donk and bigger drop I was confident that I was fishing two contrasting spots, so with a bit of luck if I managed a bite or two I would be able to dictate where the fish were.

It took roughly an hour for the first bite to come, I received a small dropback on the left rod, which was on the pepperami which had just been recast back onto the spot. As I wound down and lifted into the fish I was met with a far from weighty resistance but after a plucky performance, the first fish of the year was drawn over the net cord. At roughly three pound it wasn’t the leviathan of the deep many of us chase but its condition and awesome winter colours certainly brought a smile to my face. Being the greedy angler I am, I instantly unhooked the small fella and got the hook bait back onto the spot as I was certain there was more fish to be had and I’ve found that in winter feeding periods can be a matter of minutes and its very important to capitalise on these short spells of activity.

As me and Ian had a celebratory brew to toast the fish my left rod on the PB wafter steadily steamed off, this time a shorter fight followed but a bigger fish was the result. This time it was a corking mirror, still a single but gave me food for thought as it came off the shallower spot. I gave the hook bait a fresh glug of NuttaS goodness and sent the rig straight out there. I added another couple of fish to the tally both mid singles but the interesting thing was that both of them fell to the wafter rod again which capped off a productive hour.

There was a dramatic lull in the action as the lake seemed to shut off, I was no longer receiving any line bites and I decided to rove my right rod around the swim in order to try and stumble across any unsuspecting carp. Despite my efforts it took a couple of hours for the fish to switch on again after ten hectic minutes two more singles had been banked and one lost. All of which had come off the same spot. It was evident that the yellow wafters were doing the trick and despite me chopping and changing on the other rod I couldn’t buy a bite. I decided to place the unproductive rod tight to the far margin in front of a peg board, hoping that the milky malt wafter would be enough to tempt a carp for the sake of variety!

Another hour spell of inactivity followed before I received a couple of liners off the hotspot and just as I was debating with myself whether to drop the rod a bit closer, the rod ripped off! Another little common followed and as I slipped her back the far margin rod let off a few bleeps indicating another small fish was hooked. The smallest fish of the day and the cheeky scamp must have only weighed a couple of pounds but it added to the tally and it was nice to finally catch one that wasn’t off the hotspot.

In the closing hour I landed another two singles and lost another one, one from each spot. Ian ended up with two late fish, both of which he abstracted from his near margin, which just shows that you should never ignore your margins. Particularly at commercials! Despite the fact we didn’t manage a double between us, it was definitely mission success and a mission I greatly enjoyed. No matter what the size it’s just fun catching hits of fish, especially in early January and it was a much needed confidence boost as I enjoyed a season of mixed successes last season.

So with the year kicked off in style let’s hope I can let the success in continue and as I both have bigger plans and several competitions this year and I’ll need all the luck and confidence I can get. Good luck to everyone in their fishing exploits this year and I’ll hopefully see you on the bank sometime.

K