DES TAYLOR “Let the good times roll again!”
Fish are on the feed in a beautiful reservoir
OUR BRITISH weather is nothing if not interesting. We went from high pressure and freezing conditions to low pressure with warm winds and temperatures up to 160C, and that meant the carp in a water close to me would be feeding their heads off.
I’d been eagerly awaiting this change of fortune and for two days I made the most of it, taking six fish to over 20lb. The biggest was a common, but I also had a near-leather ghostie – what an incredible-looking fish!
The morning of that first day was a little drizzly and cool, but I badly wanted to get on the bank. My early start was repaid, as things soon turned around and it ended up seeming more like summer than late winter.
This fishery is an elevated reservoir, and from it you can look down the Severn Valley – a delightful place to be in these troubled times.
The water level had been low throughout autumn and winter, but the amount of rain we had over the last few months topped it right up again and the margins have a fresh growth of plants. Creepy-crawlies and worms flushed from the newly-flooded terrain haven’t gone unnoticed by the carp, which are grubbing around the shallows for that abundance of natural food – so guess where I put my baits!
I simply walked 30 yards along the bank, cast a rodlength out and then walked each rod back to my rests. That way I wasn’t sitting down over the fish.
Bait was a 12mm Citruz wafter with a tiny PVA bag of boilie flake, a combo that has served me well this winter.
Of my three rods, two of them spooked fish off the area when I cast them in, but I was confident they’d be back.
Sure enough, within the hour a rod was away and a beautiful common was on the bank. As I held it up for the photograph I thought: “Let the good times roll again, Dessie boy.”
I had another common and a small mirror, all to the same tactics, and my short journey home was a happy one.
I was back there next day but this time there was a gale blowing. Carol Kirkwood had told me on the TV it was coming, but I didn’t expect it to be like fishing from the end of Blackpool’s North Pier!
It crossed my mind to take the easy, more sheltered end of the lake but I knew those fish would’ve followed the wind, so I sat there once again with three rods in the margins. To tell you the truth, I had a job to stand up, and I had to put my woollen hat on because the new Aussie hat, a Christmas present from my wife Maggie, would have ended up in the next county.
But again, the tactic worked and one of the fish was that lemon-coloured ghostie that will be even more of a stunner when it gets to around 30lb.
There was only one thing missing to round off such a day – a pint of cider in front of the pub’s open log fire on the way home. But that’s on the way soon, or so Boris tells me. Until then, stay safe, my friends.