What with New Years Eve and Day,
fishing this week has been limited to the back end of the week.
Unfortunately, although the weather looked and felt fine, even good
enough for a red letter day, one factor was working against the
angler and that has been atmospheric pressure. I remember a spell a
couple of months ago that was similar, mild and dry with cloud cover
and a westerly, yet with atmospherics hovering around 1035mb the
fishing was terrible, and this week has been similar.
Wednesday wasn’t too bad as the
atmospherics were still rising. I was out guiding with young Jake,
who wanted some practice catching and handling pike, so we headed to
Frensham Small Pond a usually productive lake holding plenty of
jacks. Arriving at around 8am we headed straight to the dam wall as
nine-times-out-of-ten this is where the pike have shoaled the roach
up, yet after an hour and a half we knew we were in the wrong place
as pike could be seen chasing fry half way up the lake. Jake asked me
what I would do in such a situation and I said move to the fish, so
that’s exactly what we did and within ten minutes of casting out
Jake was posing with a nice pike. The action was steady with a
further six pike being netted along with around the same either
missed or lost from hook pulls. It was a great day out where Jake
leant loads including how to mount baits, make traces, the importance
of a recast as well as handing pike out of the water and unhooking.
Thursday I had planned a whole day
perch fishing with my brother on a new water, yet a feature for
Anglers Mail had me working overtime. The day was rescheduled and the
venue changed to our more local Gold Valley Lakes where l finally
caught up with him early afternoon. He was happily catching quality
roach and perch on the float in the main lake and I roved around
trying to find a few larger specimens on Bungalow, yet my efforts
went unnoticed. It was when I went to write up my daily session
report that l noticed how high the pressure was and instantly knew
why the fishing wasn’t as good as I had expected.
I should have gone chub fishing the
following day, as these don’t seem to be as affected as other
species are with pressure levels but instead headed to Old Bury Hill
with zander on my mind. Arriving mid afternoon it soon became
apparent that the fishing was slow, yet a carp and two bream to the
carp anglers proved fish were feeding and with small fish dimpling
the surface at dusk my hopes were high. Come 7.30pm all confidence
had gone and with four other zander anglers catching just one zed
between them we all packed up together blaming the atmospherics for
the lack of action.
Top tip and lessons leant this week.
I leant the importance of moving to
showing fish many years ago but it was a great lesson for young Jake
to witness this first hand. If we had stayed in our initial swims we
may well have gone home on a blank. If you look at the image of Jake
sitting on the dam rod next to our rods and look up the lake you can
see where two pike have just struck!
Top tip for the week is to arrive as
early as possible and watch the water as fish often give their
location away at this time of the day. I even moved from my normal
tried and tested swims at Old Bury Hill on Friday evening to an area
that’s not often fished as l thought that the pressure might not
effect shallow water as it did deep, yet this made no difference at
all, however at least I headed home knowing l had made the effort.
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